The most hardest language

[Amundsen]

What do you think is the most hardest language to learn??? For natives and strangers. I don't know how it is in Asian countries, or Africa, but my first-Czech is one of the most hardest. English is against Czech ridiculous simple.

[PeterL]

I have read that Basque is the hardest, but I don't know for sure.

[djy78usa]

I would assume the hardest language (and this is coming from a native English speaker) to learn to speak would be one of the Khoisan languages (the "click" languages) of southern Africa. The hardest to learn to read/write, IMO, would be Chinese. But I am, by no means, a language expert. I'm not even that good with my native tounge :)

there is a pretty interesting article on which language is the hardest at:

http://www.language-learning-advisor.com/hardest-language-to-learn-survey.html

Make sure you check out the link at the bottom on what makes a language hard to learn.

[andave_ya]

Arabic?

[Pensive]

I don't know which is the hardest language as I don't know many of them. Personally, I find my own tongue in which I converse daily, Urdu (in writing we use Arabic script and is quite similar to it, in fact has many many words borrowed from it) I feel is harder than English (the other language I know and hardly use in daily life). It is so due to several reasons; we have to join different Arabic alphabets in specific ways to form words in Urdu unlike English where you simply put them. And I find it more complicated too; there are feminine, masculine words....


Arabic?


Do you know Arabic, andave? :)

[andave_ya]

Do you know Arabic, andave? :)

I'm better at understanding than speaking, but my Mom is teaching reading and writing to me as well. Though, it isn't Urdu (unless I'm mistaken, Urdu is spoken in Pakistan?), it's Lebanese Arabic.

[Pensive]

I'm better at understanding than speaking, but my Mom is teaching reading and writing to me as well. Though, it isn't Urdu (unless I'm mistaken, Urdu is spoken in Pakistan?), it's Lebanese Arabic.

Wow, that's cool. Is your mother from Lebanon? :)

Oh yes, Urdu is spoken in Pakistan. And there is a big big difference between Urdu and Arabic even though Urdu uses Arabic script (I can speak Arabic but can't understand much of it due to which :p) but it is a mixture of languages other than Arabic too such as Persian, Turkish, and Hindi and is a fairly new language when compared to Arabic.

[Koa]

LOL I'm just checking LitNet after having been on a languages forum where this topic arises constantly, and I hate it. There's no such bloody thing as the hardest language, because it's all damn relative. English is easy to us because it has a simpler grammar, but it's not all that easy to a Chinese that has to change its way of thinking to learn it... similarly, to us Chinese is hell but its grammar is, I've heard, even simpler than English. It's relative, it depends on your mothertongue and it varies according to the aspect you take into consideration.

[MAi-KSA]

Arabick is the harsest language even to natives speakers

[Amundsen]

Hm. (here) Lot of people says that it is Arabic, or Chinese. In school we have to learn Latin. It's a lot of troubes for me. But :) Per aspera ad astra.

[djy78usa]

You say you have to learn Latin like its a bad thing. Many schools in the U.S. don't even offer it anymore. My high school only offered Spanish and French. I still don't know why I picked French...Spanish would have been much more helpful living in Florida...

[aabbcc]

What do you think is the most hardest language to learn??? For natives and strangers. I don't know how it is in Asian countries, or Africa, but my first-Czech is one of the most hardest. English is against Czech ridiculous simple.

Oh the irony - no offense, but if English is so ridiculously simple, then how come you are not able to write these couple of simple sentences of pretty basic structure correctly in that supposedly incredibly easy language? ;)

English is one of those languages which are easy to commence - at the very beginning of studying it, one can learn and progress rather quickly. However, there is a pretty high wall between basic/intermediate English and between the actual, fluent English. Most of the people whom I have met who claim to speak English are barely what I would call "high intermediate", and I know very few people who write and speak fluent English as a foreign language. The sole fact that English is widespread, global, everywhere around you, does not necessarily mean that it is an easy language - the problem today is that everybody thinks they speak it, but most of the people who studied it as a foreign language do not speak it well enough to pass for speakers. Understanding and being able to use basic/intermediate English is one thing, to speak English and to know the language in its layers - from everyday conversations to academic writing - is another thing.

That being said, I still find English to be significantly easier than the other languages I can speak, despite having learnt it as a second and thus not native language. Its predominately analytic nature and certain lack of morphology makes it somewhat easier for me than the syntetic languages. Also, its vocabulary is largely Latin-based (historically via French), so there is a huge number of familiar words and roots, especially for those of us who speak Romance languages.

One cannot speak in absolute about the issue of the hardest language, for it cannot be answered. Somewhere I read a theory that most natural languages are pretty much of the same "absolute" difficulty, regardless of their structure - some easier aspects of them are accompanied by some harder, and those aspects differ from language to language. One of my native languages, Croatian, has got 7 cases sg./pl., 7 tenses with different bases for perfective/imperfective aspect, a number of irregulations... Yet, its spelling is simple and phonetic, it doesn't have subjunctive, pronunciation is clear and based on only 5 vowels... Something easy, something hard - it is like that in any language. Czech included, Russian included, Italian included, all the languages accompanied by a myth of them being easy/hard included.

[Koa]

Oh the irony - no offense, but if English is so ridiculously simple, then how come you are not able to write these couple of simple sentences of pretty basic structure correctly in that supposedly incredibly easy language? ;)

English is one of those languages which are easy to commence - at the very beginning of studying it, one can learn and progress rather quickly. However, there is a pretty high wall between basic/intermediate English and between the actual, fluent English. Most of the people whom I have met who claim to speak English are barely what I would call "high intermediate", and I know very few people who write and speak fluent English as a foreign language. The sole fact that English is widespread, global, everywhere around you, does not necessarily mean that it is an easy language - the problem today is that everybody thinks they speak it, but most of the people who studied it as a foreign language do not speak it well enough to pass for speakers. Understanding and being able to use basic/intermediate English is one thing, to speak English and to know the language in its layers - from everyday conversations to academic writing - is another thing.

That being said, I still find English to be significantly easier than the other languages I can speak, despite having learnt it as a second and thus not native language. Its predominately analytic nature and certain lack of morphology makes it somewhat easier for me than the syntetic languages. Also, its vocabulary is largely Latin-based (historically via French), so there is a huge number of familiar words and roots, especially for those of us who speak Romance languages.

One cannot speak in absolute about the issue of the hardest language, for it cannot be answered. Somewhere I read a theory that most natural languages are pretty much of the same "absolute" difficulty, regardless of their structure - some easier aspects of them are accompanied by some harder, and those aspects differ from language to language. One of my native languages, Croatian, has got 7 cases sg./pl., 7 tenses with different bases for perfective/imperfective aspect, a number of irregulations... Yet, its spelling is simple and phonetic, it doesn't have subjunctive, pronunciation is clear and based on only 5 vowels... Something easy, something hard - it is like that in any language. Czech included, Russian included, Italian included, all the languages accompanied by a myth of them being easy/hard included.


AMEN !!! :D

[manolia]

Great post Anastasija :thumbs_up
From my narrow perspective arabic seems the hardest language. But who knows what an arab may think? It is all relative, isn't it?

[JBI]

Some indigenous language, like the ones spoken in many tribal areas of Africa, and in remote areas of Oceania. Native Tasmanian was probably an almost impossible language to learn, though it no longer exists.

[Pensive]

Yes, it's all relative. It's just like 'which is the best book in the world'.

[Amundsen]

You say you have to learn Latin like its a bad thing. Many schools in the U.S. don't even offer it anymore. My high school only offered Spanish and French. I still don't know why I picked French...Spanish would have been much more helpful living in Florida...

Hm. I don't think Latin is a bad thing, but we have strange teacher. He is teaching it so fast. My second foreign language is also French, but I could chose from Spanish, German, Russian, Italian and French. (Please apologize my mistakes in the text)


Oh the irony - no offense, but if English is so ridiculously simple, then how come you are not able to write these couple of simple sentences of pretty basic structure correctly in that supposedly incredibly easy language? ;)

English is one of those languages which are easy to commence - at the very beginning of studying it, one can learn and progress rather quickly. However, there is a pretty high wall between basic/intermediate English and between the actual, fluent English. Most of the people whom I have met who claim to speak English are barely what I would call "high intermediate", and I know very few people who write and speak fluent English as a foreign language. The sole fact that English is widespread, global, everywhere around you, does not necessarily mean that it is an easy language - the problem today is that everybody thinks they speak it, but most of the people who studied it as a foreign language do not speak it well enough to pass for speakers. Understanding and being able to use basic/intermediate English is one thing, to speak English and to know the language in its layers - from everyday conversations to academic writing - is another thing.

That being said, I still find English to be significantly easier than the other languages I can speak, despite having learnt it as a second and thus not native language. Its predominately analytic nature and certain lack of morphology makes it somewhat easier for me than the syntetic languages. Also, its vocabulary is largely Latin-based (historically via French), so there is a huge number of familiar words and roots, especially for those of us who speak Romance languages.

One cannot speak in absolute about the issue of the hardest language, for it cannot be answered. Somewhere I read a theory that most natural languages are pretty much of the same "absolute" difficulty, regardless of their structure - some easier aspects of them are accompanied by some harder, and those aspects differ from language to language. One of my native languages, Croatian, has got 7 cases sg./pl., 7 tenses with different bases for perfective/imperfective aspect, a number of irregulations... Yet, its spelling is simple and phonetic, it doesn't have subjunctive, pronunciation is clear and based on only 5 vowels... Something easy, something hard - it is like that in any language. Czech included, Russian included, Italian included, all the languages accompanied by a myth of them being easy/hard included.

Hm. It looks like I ran against my sword. I adore you. Very beautiful reply.

[kasie]

I think the difficulties one encounters in learning a second (or third or fourth or whatever) language may have something to do with the age at which one learns. I had relatively little difficulty in learning French, German, Latin, Italian, even Old English (also known as Anglo-Saxon) in my teens and early twenties but now, in my early sixties I'm having tremendous problems learning Welsh. I can't decide if it's me or Welsh - about 50-50, I think! (Why am I learning Welsh? I live in Wales, the Welsh-speaking part, so it seems a good idea, not to mention good manners....) Welsh has grammatical rules that I've never encountered before. Mutations - don't talk to me about mutations!

I'm sure a change of alphabet makes it harder as well - I've never learned another language that had a non-Roman alphabet so I can't speak from personal experience but I think I would find it very hard to go from Roman letters to, say, Arabic or Chinese script.

I'm sure how you are taught makes a difference too - when I started learning Welsh, we were taught in 'practical situations', being told that was how children acquired a language. Many of us protested, saying that as adults we had internalised rules of grammar and found it difficult to try to assimilate language without these rules. The course for adult learners has now been re-written and includes some old-fashioned 'grammar' and many of us are finding it easier to learn in this way.

[dramasnot6]

For a native english speaker it is DEFINETLY Chinese. No question.

[PeterL]

I think the difficulties one encounters in learning a second (or third or fourth or whatever) language may have something to do with the age at which one learns. I had relatively little difficulty in learning French, German, Latin, Italian, even Old English (also known as Anglo-Saxon) in my teens and early twenties but now, in my early sixties I'm having tremendous problems learning Welsh. I can't decide if it's me or Welsh - about 50-50, I think! (Why am I learning Welsh? I live in Wales, the Welsh-speaking part, so it seems a good idea, not to mention good manners....) Welsh has grammatical rules that I've never encountered before. Mutations - don't talk to me about mutations!

I'm sure a change of alphabet makes it harder as well - I've never learned another language that had a non-Roman alphabet so I can't speak from personal experience but I think I would find it very hard to go from Roman letters to, say, Arabic or Chinese script.

I'm sure how you are taught makes a difference too - when I started learning Welsh, we were taught in 'practical situations', being told that was how children acquired a language. Many of us protested, saying that as adults we had internalised rules of grammar and found it difficult to try to assimilate language without these rules. The course for adult learners has now been re-written and includes some old-fashioned 'grammar' and many of us are finding it easier to learn in this way.

It's Welsh, not you. I don't know Welsh, and I wouldn't try to learn it. It is one of the more conservative IE languages. It has forms and rules that have been dropped by most IE languages. The Balto-Slavic are similar in that way, and Latvian is said to be the least changed from the original Indo-European. It has sixteen cases and some verb forms that I can't understand the use of. I don't think that Welsh is as bad, but it is the most difficult of the ecentum languages.

[kasie]

It's Welsh, not you. I don't know Welsh, and I wouldn't try to learn it. It is one of the more conservative IE languages. It has forms and rules that have been dropped by most IE languages. The Balto-Slavic are similar in that way, and Latvian is said to be the least changed from the original Indo-European. It has sixteen cases and some verb forms that I can't understand the use of. I don't think that Welsh is as bad, but it is the most difficult of the ecentum languages.

Thanks, PeterL, I feel much better about it now! As I said, I'm learning it because I hear it spoken around me - was quite please with myself the other day when I understood enough of a conversation between two friends to catch the drift of it and yesterday managed to read my way round an exhibition (even tho the captions were dual-language so I could check what I thought the Welsh part said :D )

[Taliesin]

It's Welsh, not you. I don't know Welsh, and I wouldn't try to learn it. It is one of the more conservative IE languages. It has forms and rules that have been dropped by most IE languages. The Balto-Slavic are similar in that way, and Latvian is said to be the least changed from the original Indo-European. It has sixteen cases and some verb forms that I can't understand the use of. I don't think that Welsh is as bad, but it is the most difficult of the ecentum languages.


Some corrections: Lithuanian, not Latvian is thought to be the most archaic Indo-European languages. Latvian doesn't have sixteen cases, only seven (as does Lithuanian, at least according to Wikipedia).

[Annamariah]

there is a pretty interesting article on which language is the hardest at:

http://www.language-learning-advisor.com/hardest-language-to-learn-survey.html

"Arabic, Finnish and Japanese (with Russian not too far behind) are all neck and neck for second place. (...)

The strong showing of Finnish is interesting considering the very small number of native speakers compared to the other languages. That should mean that there are far fewer people learning the language, as well. But Finnish remains a very popular choice for hardest language to learn. Testament perhaps to the vaunted Finnish grammar.

As for the other languages, the answers were largely expected as to why they were a hard language to learn : (...) In the case of Finnish, for example, one visitor wrote "3 words : endless noun cases."

For me, English has been the easiest foreign language to learn. Swedish was more difficult, but not too bad. Now I've studied Russian 11 hours a week since September, and I think it's pretty difficult. Not because of the Cyrillic alphabet, but because of the six cases and verb forms (especially different aspects and prefixes). I'm still struggling with them, because it's difficult to know, when you should use accusative, when dative and when genitive and so on. I'm glad Finnish is my mother tongue, because if Russian is giving me such a hard time with it's six cases, I'm sure I could have never learned Finnish as a foreign language :lol:

[aeroport]

Now I've studied Russian 11 hours a week since September, and I think it's pretty difficult. Not because of the Cyrillic alphabet, but because of the six cases and verb forms (especially different aspects and prefixes). I'm still struggling with them, because it's difficult to know, when you should use accusative, when dative and when genitive and so on. I'm glad Finnish is my mother tongue, because if Russian is giving me such a hard time with it's six cases, I'm sure I could have never learned Finnish as a foreign language :lol:

I've always had the impression that it's either Finnish or Russian (which has, needless to say, provoked in me a desire to learn both. :D).

[Annamariah]

I've always had the impression that it's either Finnish or Russian (which has, needless to say, provoked in me a desire to learn both. :D).

That's a great idea, though you just MIGHT get a little frustrated with them before long... :lol:

I think finding a Finnish teacher could also prove to be rather difficult, since Finnish is not exactly one of those languages they usually teach in schools or universities :D

[ben.!]

I'd have to say Chinese is one of the hardest languages. Not only do you have to sound the word phonetically sound, but you also have to say it with a specific pitch and tone. One simple word, said in a different tone, can be a completely different word in Chinese. There are also many different variants of Chinese.

Japanese is also pretty complicated. They have three different alphabets, all used for different things, also different counting systems, I think they have two or three different counting systems. You also must refer to people, talk to them, and establish in the specific words you use what your status is to them. For example, a father may talk what we would term in our language as 'ghetto' to a son. Specific words, and if you were to address the emperor, to save your head from falling off, you must talk to them in a clipped and short wording. The emperor would probably have your head if you spoke to him with the same sort of words you would address your son with. You also must talk in a status-related way to establish bits of furniture. For example, a table may be referred to with manly words, and chairs may have feministic words attached to them. Then there are neutral status things, things that are neither female nor male related.

It's all very complex, these languages. Hence why I don't learn them haha. :D

[aeroport]

Goodness - Chinese FTW! :( Sounds like a nightmare.


That's a great idea, though you just MIGHT get a little frustrated with them before long... :lol:

I think finding a Finnish teacher could also prove to be rather difficult, since Finnish is not exactly one of those languages they usually teach in schools or universities :D

So I'm finding - we don't even have Russian here anymore. Someone was telling me Finnish has something like 13 cases; I can't imagine it, but is this true?

[Annamariah]

So I'm finding - we don't even have Russian here anymore. Someone was telling me Finnish has something like 13 cases; I can't imagine it, but is this true?

Let's take just a word, let's say... a book, since this is a literature forum :D

So.

a book = kirja

kirja, kirjan, kirjaa, kirjana, kirjaksi, kirjassa, kirjasta, kirjaan, kirjalla, kirjalta, kirjalle, kirjatta, kirjoin, kirjoineen

...actually, that's fourteen. There is discussion about whether Finnish has 13, 14 or 15 cases, that depends on how you look at it. There's accusative case, but since it almost always looks like genitive or partitive case, it's not often counted. Then there are instructive and comitative case, but they are so similar that they are sometimes counted as one. :)

But that was an easy word, let's take another, like water = vesi. It has some consonant gradation that I imagine to be rather difficult to learn for a foreigner. At least I can't see any logic in it, but then on the other hand, I have no need to :lol:

vesi, veden, vettä, vetenä, vedeksi, vedessä, vedestä, veteen, vedellä, vedeltä, vedelle, vedettä, vesin, vesineen

And those were only singular forms, there are plural forms of all of those, too.
But trust me, verbs have even more different forms than nouns :D

[RJbibliophil]

As a native Norwegian and English speaker, I have always considered Finnish rather odd as it is so different from the other Germanic languages.

I think Russian or Arabic or Chinese/Japanese/Korean etc. would be difficult to learn.

BTW, how many forms(cases) does German have?

[aeroport]

That's outrageous, Annamariah. I am quite blown away. Looks like my sojourn in Finland will be a bit later than I had hoped... Thank you for the demonstration. :)




BTW, how many forms(cases) does German have?

Four: Nominative, Accusative, Dative, and Genitive.

[JBI]

For a native english speaker it is DEFINETLY Chinese. No question.

What about an indigenous African one? Which dialect of Chinese? Chinese is a rather broad term.

[SleepyWitch]

As a native Norwegian and English speaker, I have always considered Finnish rather odd as it is so different from the other Germanic languages.


Finnish is a Finno-Ugric language.

Finno-Ugric (IPA:[ˌfɪnoʊˈjuːgɹɪk]) is a grouping of languages in the Uralic language family, comprising Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian and related languages. It comprises the Finno-Permic and Ugric language families.

yep, Jamesian is right, German has 4 cases. but it's got 3 genders, as well (masculine, feminine, neutre), so that 3x4 case endings+plural. some of the endings are the same, though. there are like 7 (?) types of plural formation, though (-er, vowel change, vowel change+ -er, -en etc) and the articles take cases, too.

masculine: the man/ the dog
Nom: der Mann/ der Hund
Gen: des Mannes/ des Hundes
Dat: dem Man/ dem Hund
Akk: den Mann/ den Hund

pl.
die Männer/ die Hunde
der Männer/ der Hunde
den Männern/ den Hunden
die Männer/ die Hunde

feminine
the mother/ the rose
die Mutter/ die Rose
der Mutter/ der Rose
der Mutter/ der Rose
die Mutter/ die Rose
pl.
die Mütter/ die Rosen
der Mütter/ der Rosen
den Müttern/ den Rosen
die Mütter/ die Rosen

neure:the child/ the house
das Kind/ das Haus
des Kindes/ des Hauses
dem Kind/ dem Haus
das Kind/ das Haus
pl.
die Kinder/ die Häuser
der Kinder/ der Häuser
den Kindern/ den Häusern
die Kinder/ die Häuser

[Annamariah]

That's outrageous, Annamariah. I am quite blown away. Looks like my sojourn in Finland will be a bit later than I had hoped... Thank you for the demonstration. :)

I hope I didn't scare you too much. Finnish is a nice language, really :lol: