Learning a new language is an exciting opportunity to expand your knowledge and awaken your creativity. Many people set out by searching for the easiest languages to learn, which we covered in this post, while others are after more of a challenge. If that’s you, keep on reading to take a look at which languages are hardest to learn. Today, we’re listing our top 10!
But first, why would somebody choose to learn a language that will require more time and effort?
Here’s why you shouldn’t be afraid to learn a difficult language:
- Many of the most demanding languages to learn are also the most widely spoken, making them extremely valuable. For example, Mandarin Chinese is spoken as a native language by 918 million people.
- Taking the time to master a difficult language is good for your brain and can lead to better memory and improved focus. Not convinced? Check this out.
- As we’ve alluded to, there’s a sense of accomplishment that comes with taking on (and overcoming) the challenge of learning a complex language.
What makes a language easy or difficult to learn?
To determine the difficulty of learning a new language, experts analyse the amount of time it will take to gain professional proficiency. It is considered easy if one can gain professional proficiency in 600 hours, and it is considered hard if professional proficiency can only be achieved in 2200 hours.
Here’s how you know you’ve gained professional proficiency:
- You are able to understand almost everything somebody is saying when they speak at a normal speed.
- You can speak comfortably in most situations.
- You are able to communicate well using extensive vocabulary and rarely pausing.
There are a few technical elements that make languages tough to learn, for entirely different reasons. There are tonal languages which require you to adjust the pitch of your voice to change the meaning of a word. Other languages are difficult due to the writing style, such as reading right to left or using characters that are not consistent with the English alphabet. Then, there are languages with either very strict or loose grammar rules. If the language you want to learn ticks two or three of those boxes, it would be considered hard to learn.
So which languages are hardest to learn?
Here is our list of the 10 hardest languages to learn, in no particular order:
Arabic
Arabic is a Semitic language that is spoken natively by 245 million people and non-natively by 29 million people. It’s spoken in 26 countries throughout the Middle East as well as in Northern Africa.
It’s a beautiful language, but one that proves to be arduous for English speakers because almost every aspect of the language is hard to pick up. There’s the Arabic script, which is read from right to left, the complicated grammar and pronunciation, with several sounds that English doesn’t have.
So why bother learning Arabic? You will have greater insight into the diverse Arab culture and open yourself to new opportunities. And don’t forget about the satisfaction of learning one of the most difficult languages in the world.
Japanese
This East Asian language is part of the Japonic language family and is spoken by 128 million people, mostly in Japan.
What makes Japanese demanding to learn is the fact that it has three different writing systems! Japanese contains tens of thousands of characters known as “kanji”, “katanka” and “hirangana”. To gain a basic level of Japanese literacy, you will need to memorise around 2000 of these characters. Something else that makes Japanese hard to learn is the emphasis on respectful speech or “keigo”. A word like “you” could have ten possible translations, depending on the formality of the situation and who you are talking to.
Despite this, there are several reasons to learn Japanese, such as gaining a deeper understanding of Japanese pop culture and opening up new career opportunities.
Polish
Polish is the second most spoken Slavic language, after Russian. Even though it has a familiar alphabet, English speakers get confused by its complex gender system and free word order. There is no set rule to sentence structure, with information to tell us who is doing what. For example, the sentence “I fed the cat in the morning” could change to “I fed this morning the cat” or “This morning the cat I fed”.
English speakers will also find the spelling and grammar in Polish to be tricky. The amount of consonants can make words hard to spell and even harder to pronounce. For example, “bezwzględny” means ruthless, and “szczęście” means “happiness”.
Korean
Korean is spoken by 80 million people in North and South Korea.
It’s an East Asian language that is considered to contain the most logical system of writing in the world. Here’s why: The Korean alphabet was created by King Sejong the Great, who wanted to develop a simplified writing system specifically suited to the Korean language. Together with a committee of scholars, he developed “Hangul”, the Korean alphabet that is still used today. Hangul contains 24 symbols (10 vowels and 14 consonants).
Despite its logic, don’t be misled into thinking it is an easy language to learn. English speakers will still find Korean challenging to learn because of the differences in word order, the double consonants and vowel sounds.
Mandarin Chinese
When asked which languages are hardest to learn, most people will include Mandarin Chinese in their list. As mentioned earlier, Mandarin Chinese is spoken by 918 million native speakers and 199 million non-native speakers, making it a language worth learning.
Mandarin is a tonal language. It uses four tones, and the meaning of a word could change based on the intonation used. For example, the word “ma” could mean “mother”, “fibre”, “horse” or “curse” depending on the intonation.
Written Chinese is also very complex, because its writing system uses tens of thousands of characters to represent objects, concepts and ideas.
Hindi
As one of the official languages of India, Hindi is spoken natively by 341 million people and non-natively by 274 million people. Hindi descends from Sanskrit, an ancient South Asian language that dates back thousands of years.
The writing component of Hindi is what makes it so hard for English speakers to learn. Hindi is a phonetic language, but the pronunciation is tricky because there are so many sounds that English speakers aren’t familiar with. And finally, it can be difficult for new learners to pick up on the subtle differences between words.
Hungarian
Most European languages belong to the Indo-European language family, but Hungarian is a Uralic language. It’s spoken natively by 13 million people, most of whom live in Hungary.
The complicated grammar and pronunciation makes it famously difficult for English speakers to learn. Hungarian consists of 14 vowels with slight differences in pronunciation and consonant clusters with unexpected pronunciation. For example, “sz” is pronounced as “s”, while “s” is pronounced as “sh”.
We love that Hungarian is full of descriptive words that don’t exist in English. The word “Hiányérzet” expresses the feeling you get when you can’t find something you cannot identify, and “Káröröm” is when you feel happy about somebody else’s misfortune.
Russian
Russian uses a Cyrillic alphabet, made up of letters both familiar and unfamiliar to English speakers. While some of the Cyrillic letters might look familiar, they make a different sound than the letter they represent. For example, “B” in the Cyrillic alphabet makes a “V” sound.
In terms of grammar, Russian is easier to learn than Polish. Although Russian and Polish contain many consonants, making spelling and pronunciation difficult, Russian is easier to learn than Polish. Russians don’t use the verb “to be” in the present tense, which can throw off new learners. A sentence like “I am a student” would simply translate to “I student”.
Turkish
Turkish is an agglutinative language, meaning prefixes and suffixes are attached to words to determine what they mean. The end result is extremely long verbs, like “konuşmayı reddediyorlar” which means “they refuse to talk”.
The Turkish language features something that may confuse English speakers: vowel harmony. This is where vowels are changed or endings with vowels are added to make a word flow more smoothly.
The good news is that Turkish has relatively few grammar exceptions in comparison to other languages, and the spelling is quite straightforward!
Danish
While this isn’t the most difficult language to learn, because of its simple grammar concepts, Danish is still on this list! Here’s why: pronunciation!
In Danish, words sound nothing like the way they are spelled. This can be complicated and off-putting for new learners to pick up when trying to learn Danish. For example, “mit navn er” (which means “my name is”) is pronounced “meet now’n air”. To speak Danish well, you will need lots of practice, making it much harder to learn than other Germanic languages.
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