Most difficult language

[Game Of Thrones]

Which language do you think is the most difficult to learn?

I say French.

[sologdin]

probably something non-alphabetic.

[Filippa Eilhart]

Chinese? Arabic? Hungarian? Sumerian?

[Stannisaurus2]

Depends on the person's (linguistic, cultural and other) background as well

[baxus]

I'd say that of all European languages Hungarian and Finnish seem the most difficult to learn to me, most of all because they are not similar to any other language.

Slavic languages are tough too, but since my native language is Slavic I have an advantage on those with native language from different group when it comes to learning Slavic languages.

English and German don't seem too difficult to me, but I started learning English when I was 6 and never really focused on learning German though I did take classes. Scandinavian languages sound great to me, like a more melodic version of German and without those harsh "r" and "ch" sounds but I couldn't understand them one bit though I could get bits and pieces when I'd read newspaper articles and such since they're somewhat similar to German.

As far as Romanic (is that the right word?) languages are concerned, I must say they don't seem too difficult to me though I will admit my mistake on that, if needed. It's just that, even without ever learning any of them, I can grasp bits and pieces from Spanish and Italian because of heavy influence of Latin which I took for a year in high school.

Outside of Europe, I'd say that almost any Asian language would prove to be difficult - Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, Hindu, Farsi, Arabic... you name it.

And that's without ever getting into smaller languages such as Native American languages and dialects etc.

Just for the record, Serbian is my native language (which means I'm officially fluent Croatian, Bosnian, Montenegrin too but those are pretty much the same language and I don't count that ;)), I'm fluent in English and have basic knowledge of German and Russian.

[Larry of the Lawn]

Finnish, Basque, or Hungarian are the usual culprits, eh?

Eta: I've heard dolphin is quite unintelligible, save for those lucky savants blessed by Poseidon.

[baxus]

Don't they say English is hardest to learn from scratch? Or are they just a bunch of urban myth propagators?

The person who said English is hardest to learn must've been high.

[straits]

I'd say European languages are not too challenging. Once you have a good grasp on one, you have the basis for the rest of them. Finnish, with its 14+ different noun cases, is probably the hardest European language.

Chinese is probably really difficult due to its complicated writing system, and I read somewhere that it's hard for beginners to learn Arabic because it engages more of your brain to perceive letter shapes. That could be for all non-native languages, though.

[Littlefingers In The Air]

Would it be any surprise to hear from America that English is the hardest language? I suspect not. Of all the languages I can speak adequately, I'd say Japanese was the hardest. Now if we can add in made up languages, it'd be Al Bhed or Vulcan.

[Horza]

Which language do you think is the most difficult to learn?

I say French.

French is easy, even babies can learn it.

[King Tyrion I]

French is easy, even babies can learn it.

C'est facile. D'accord.

I'd go with Arabic and Japanese - I'm still learning it.

[all swedes are racist]

Some might say, the International Language

[Kyoshi]

Mandarin. Years after having predominantly Taiwanese and Chinese friends I still have no idea what they're saying. Cantonese as well. With both languages, both the written and spoken forms are pretty difficult.

[Happy Ent]

It clearly depends on where you start.

Every baby is programmed to acquire the language of its environment without any effort. There are studies to measure the time from “birth to language” for babies, but I’d take these with a grain of salt. (It’s just as plausible that there are differences between populations for how fast you acquire language, just as there are difference in speed of developing motor skills, reflexes, etc. So a factoid like “Chinese babies can speak after x months, while French babies speak after y months” may say more about the Chinese than about Chinese.)

For English speakers, every Germanic language should be relatively trivial, then come the Romanic languages, etc. I don’t know what the extreme for a native English speaker would be, even if we could hold variables like population sizes, corpora, and access to conversation opportunities constant.

I looked into Klingon a while back, and it seems designed to be maximally alien. Very cool, by the way.

So I nominate Klingon.

[Sullen]

Which language do you think is the most difficult to learn?

I say French.

French is relatively easy, as are all the romance languages, really.

Well you learnt it from an early age, so you probably found it easier than an adult would.

I learnt in my late teens, when I would have legally been considered an adult, it's incredibly easy to learn, though the phonetic exceptions are a real pain in the ass.

OT: I'd wager Russian is hell to learn, that's what the people I know who tried to learn it say, at least.

[Kyoshi]

C'est facile. D'accord.

I'd go with Arabic and Japanese - I'm still learning it.

At least with spoken Japanese you can tell where one word ends and the next begins. It's impossible to do with Mandarin and Cantonese. Sometimes with these two languages the difference between FISH and BRIDGE can be a slight inflection inaudible to non native speakers. That's just an example of course, but I know it happens because I have Chinese South African friend who often gets it wrong when speaking to Chinese people born and raised in China.

[Alex.]

The language of love

[Horza]

At least with spoken Japanese you can tell where one word ends and the next begins. It's impossible to do with Mandarin and Cantonese. Sometimes with these two languages the difference between FISH and BRIDGE can be a slight inflection inaudible to non native speakers. That's just an example of course, but I know it happens because I have Chinese South African friend who often gets it wrong when speaking to Chinese people born and raised in China.

Yeah, I didn't exactly breeze through highschool Japanese but tonal languages strike me as extra difficult for non-native speakers.

[King Tyrion I]

At least with spoken Japanese you can tell where one word ends and the next begins. It's impossible to do with Mandarin and Cantonese. Sometimes with these two languages the difference between FISH and BRIDGE can be a slight inflection inaudible to non native speakers. That's just an example of course, but I know it happens because I have Chinese South African friend who often gets it wrong when speaking to Chinese people born and raised in China.

:agree: You're right about this of course.

Didn't think about it.

[Kyoshi]

:agree: You're right about this of course.

Didn't think about it.

Japanese is still difficult. I wanted to start learning but the alphabet kicked me in the chest. Maybe one day.

The easiest language to learn so far is German. It, along with Arabic, are so guttural when spoken that's it's hard to miss anything. But when you start adding umlauts in German I start getting tone deaf. I still don't know how to pronounce the o-umlaut. The most fun letter to write is the double , of course.