Most difficult language

[Darzin]

I was going to say Khoisan, but you guys beat me to it, though really it depends on what your language is because shared vocabulary and similar grammar make it a lot easier. One funny thing about this question people often assume their language is the hardest, it is a common myth in America English is the hardest language, I've heard Russians say Russian is the hardest and poles say Polish is. Whenever I study a language motive speakers always tell me theirs is the hardest in the world.

[Kyoshi]

Many say that is polish.

I think romanic languages are quite simple, I know a few of them, english even simpler.

German is not so though but when I don't practise it for a while i tend to forget it very quickly, I don't know why.

Turkish hungarian and finnish also are quite peculiar.

Hebrew is difficult for me and arabic is similar but more difficult.

I think it also helps if you live in an area that speaks that language. I learnt German and I was getting pretty good at it...But only as long as I went to class and prepared for oral and written exams. When I stopped taking the class I started "losing" some of the things I learnt. But I'm sure if I had had to speak it on a daily basis that would not have happened.

This sounds complicated. (from wikipedia):

Khoisan languages are best known for their use of click consonants as phonemes. These are typically written with letters such as ǃ and ǂ. Clicks are quite versatile as consonants, as they involve two articulations of the tongue which can operate partially independently. Consequently, the languages with the greatest numbers of consonants in the world are Khoisan. The Juǀʼhoan language has 48 click consonants, among nearly as many non-click consonants, strident and pharyngealized vowels, and four tones. The ǃXóõ and ǂHõã languages are even more complex.

Oh gosh. I understand your confusion. You have to hear it to understand. I'm South African, we have a relatively easier language here that also has clicks, but it's still pretty difficult to people like me--those who weren't raised speaking it. Khoisan is quite special.

[john]

The answer is clearly whatever you call what Glaswegians speak.

Ooh the glasgae patter.

I find Polish quite difficult myself. I'm always saying piggy instead of please. This is apparently hilarious whenever I need to ask for something.

[polishgenius]

Ooh the glasgae patter.

I find Polish quite difficult myself. I'm always saying piggy instead of please. This is apparently hilarious whenever I need to ask for something.

Polish consonants are fucking difficult for English speakers, because we have like three times as many. Chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie

However, the opposite is true for vowels, since despite the alphabet, English has something like 26 vowel sounds whereas Polish has seven (maybe eight?). Most concretely, there's no distinction between long and short vowels, so where you struggle with please and pig, Polish people can find it difficult to tell the difference between can't and, erm...

[Datepalm]

Hebrew is pretty easy. Really.

Though I think I agree with someone upthread about the Arabic alphabet. I still find it hard to read smoothly, and I suspect I'd get a lot further with the language if I could, as I don't find the vocabulary/grammar particularly bad.

[john]

Polish consonants are fucking difficult for English speakers, because we have like three times as many. Chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie

However, the opposite is true for vowels, since despite the alphabet, English has something like 26 vowel sounds whereas Polish has seven (maybe eight?). Most concretely, there's no distinction between long and short vowels, so where you struggle with please and pig, Polish people can find it difficult to tell the difference between can't and, erm...

Heh. I have noticed "hungry" and "angry" being pretty much indistinguishable.

I have that beetle poem in one of my polish baby picture books that friends and family find amusing to give to me.

Also, while we're at it, some other polish pronunciation videos I've just been enjoying. -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlOoSsfU6cM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gyo26aiAYw

[Galactus]

I think it also helps if you live in an area that speaks that language. I learnt German and I was getting pretty good at it...But only as long as I went to class and prepared for oral and written exams. When I stopped taking the class I started "losing" some of the things I learnt. But I'm sure if I had had to speak it on a daily basis that would not have happened.

Oh gosh. I understand your confusion. You have to hear it to understand. I'm South African, we have a relatively easier language here that also has clicks, but it's still pretty difficult to people like me--those who weren't raised speaking it. Khoisan is quite special.

Are you thinking of something like !Xhosa or another of the Bantu languages that have adopted clicks, or an actual khoisan language?

[Galactus]

You could understand the song titles on Drukqs!

Chinese grammar is far too simple for that to be the most difficult languge. Are there any other languages with logographic writing systems that are more difficult? How is Korean?

Finnish may be very different from Indo-European languages, but their ortography is unusually consistent. I don't speak the language, but I can almost always pronounce the words correctly when reading them.

Korean allegedly has the best-designed alphabet/writing system in the world.

[Galactus]

I've heard Navajo is pretty tricky.

Generally speaking the hardest language will probably *not* be one that is widely spoken: Those tend to become simplified simply becuase of general linguistic friction. So khoisan and navaho, as well as maybe some papauan language, are strong contenders.

[NoneofYourBiz]

I've taken smatterings of Latin, Greek, French, Hebrew and Farsi, and had 4 years of Spanish in high school. Having a foundation in Latin and Spanish helped me when taking French, as I imagine it would if I tried to learn the other Romance languages. I loved Hebrew but only took a few classes and need the vowel markings to read anything at all. I would definitely like to take more Hebrew but am currently working on Farsi, which I love, but I am learning it through Pimsleur so am only learning to speak, not write. I imagine writing would be difficult.

I agree that judging difficulty is probably dependent on your native language. Mandarin and Cantonese seem difficult to me, not that I have ever tried to learn them. I grew up in a neighborhood with a large Czech population and many of my friends were native speakers and would have great fun at my expense by writing down a sentence in Czech and asking me to pronounce it. Judging from their laughter I think it is safe to say I completely butchered their language. It seemed difficult but maybe if I understood the basic grammatical structure of it and basic pronunciation it would seem less so. Like the Polish posted above they seem to have something against vowels. :-)

[Prue]

Like the Polish posted above they seem to have something against vowels. :-)

http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~beatrice/humor/clinton-deploys-vowels.html

[NoneofYourBiz]

http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~beatrice/humor/clinton-deploys-vowels.html

LOL that is fantastic.

[shadowofasshai]

Icelandic, too many letters, or Welsh Celtic, too many 'L's.

[JonCon's Red Beard]

According to a friend who studied languages, Slavic is the most difficult. The rest, she said, have their own structure and it's easy to catch up.

I've taken smatterings of Latin, Greek, French, Hebrew and Farsi, and had 4 years of Spanish in high school. Having a foundation in Latin and Spanish helped me when taking French, as I imagine it would if I tried to learn the other Romance languages.

I've always felt that way. I went to a French school and the grammar and structure wasn't actually hard for me (my native is Spanish). There is also the case of brazilians understanding us, the rest of South America and we understanding them, even though we don't actually speak each other's languages. Odd.

[Larry of the Lawn]

I heard Esperanto difficult because only robots speak it ans they won't explain how even whenyou ask them nicely #firstworldproblems :-/

[NoneofYourBiz]

According to a friend who studied languages, Slavic is the most difficult. The rest, she said, have their own structure and it's easy to catch up.

I've always felt that way. I went to a French school and the grammar and structure wasn't actually hard for me (my native is Spanish). There is also the case of brazilians understanding us, the rest of South America and we understanding them, even though we don't actually speak each other's languages. Odd.

I definitely found Spanish very helpful when taking French. However, since I was far more familiar with Spanish it did sometimes cause some funny misunderstandings. In high school our French and Spanish classes took a trip to Spain and France. At the time I had not taken any French at all and while in a Paris cafe my friend who had taken French ordered a cafe au lait, which to my accustomed-to-Spanish ears sounded like cafe ole! LOL.

[Lightning Lord]

Korean allegedly has the best-designed alphabet/writing system in the world.

Korean alphabet is super easy to learn as a foreign person. It's straight-forward, simple, mostly logical. Speaking the actual language is a nightmare, though :)

[Gertrude]

This got me curious so I looked it up. As I am googling in English, most lists were skewed to be hardest for an English speaker. Those give us the Romance languages as the easiest to learn. No surprise. Hardest are listed as Arabic, Chinese, Korean and Japanese. Again, not much of a surprise.

I did find one list from the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization. This is their list, and it surprised me -

10. French

9. Danish

8. Norwegian

7. German

6. Finnish

5. Japanese

4. Icelandic

3. Arabic

2. Greek

1. Chinese.

I am really surprised that French made it into the top 10. Then again, as an English speaker, French is one of the easier ones for me to learn, so it's hard to get out of my own head-space and see it objectively. I am also surprised to see that Germanic languages take up 4 of the spots. It's always amused me that although English is technically a Germanic language, it's easier for me to learn the Romance languages. I know - it's heavily influenced by the Norman French and the German roots are farther back, but still.

I am kinda skeptical of this list. The article didn't explain the list, but I have to imagine there is some kind of cut-off concerning native speakers or some other metric. Otherwise, I can't imagine that something like the Khoisan or Celtic languages didn't make the list.

I grew up in a neighborhood with a large Czech population and many of my friends were native speakers and would have great fun at my expense by writing down a sentence in Czech and asking me to pronounce it. Judging from their laughter I think it is safe to say I completely butchered their language. It seemed difficult but maybe if I understood the basic grammatical structure of it and basic pronunciation it would seem less so. Like the Polish posted above they seem to have something against vowels. :-)

I am learning Czech and I was intimidated at first. The pronunciation, as you guessed, is easy once you learn what sounds to make. Except ř. That little bugger defies my tongue. Oh, and L and R can act as (sort of) vowels. So, you know, there's lots of vowels in the language if you squint just right. ;)

[Prue]

I did find one list from the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization. This is their list, and it surprised me -

10. French

9. Danish

8. Norwegian

7. German

6. Finnish

5. Japanese

4. Icelandic

3. Arabic

2. Greek

1. Chinese.

I can only assume that the list is influenced by the fact that the author seems to be Chinese. Maybe most of the people they asked were Chinese, too. So they named their own language first, because it's flattering to think that your own language is super-special and hard to learn ;) (well, in this case I agree that Chinese is hard to learn), and the others either from their own experience of learning a foreign language, or hearsay. Or the survey they filled out only contained the main languages of the world, not the very rare ones.

(edited to indicate that I meant to quote the list Gertrude linked to, but somehow the formatting disappeared)

[Datepalm]

Why Danish, Norwegian and Icelandic, but not Swedish?