There are a number of ways that a language can differ from your own. In terms of learning to read, Korean has a relatively straightforward alphabet that doesn't take too long to learn, unlike the characters used in Chinese and Japanese writing systems, so you can start sounding out words pretty quickly. The oldest living Indo-European language, Greek is an ancient language thats filled with complications for learners. The Top 5 Hardest Languages to Learn for English Speakers Hardly. The West Slavic languages include Polish, Czech, and Slovak. Whats the hardest language to learn if English is not your first language? Arabic only has three cases nominative, genitive, and accusative while Finnish has a staggering 15 cases. There are also various sounds made in the language that dont exist in many other languages. So, what are the origins of the Slavic languages, and what are they? For example, , , , , , , , and are all different letters that you might have a hard time distinguishing between if you're new to the game. Ukrainian was enshrined as the only national language in the constitution in 1991, the year Ukraine became independent, but the law was not enforced nor did it change daily life. Despite being the most widely spoken native language in the world, Mandarin Chinese tops the list of the toughest languages to learn. Number of native speakers: 221 million. The Foreign Service Institute includes time estimates alongside their difficulty rankings, but its important to note that everyones language goals are different. It is pretty foreign to English speakers, but if you speak Japanese, Korean, or Finnish (which are all also on this list), you won't have such a hard time grasping it. Its going to be a generational change, but its going to happen eventually.. One example is Arabic. If you think picking up a little French or Spanish in your spare time is difficult, then you should know the kind of work you're getting into learning some other languages from around the world. In this post, well take a look at the easiest and hardest languages to learn, the factors that determine language difficulty, and a complete ranking of the worlds most widely spoken languagesincluding how long it takes to learn each language. With similar pronunciation and grammar to other salvia languages, the thing that makes learning Russian so difficult is the Cyrillic alphabet which is notably employed throughout eastern Europe and central Asia. The Hardest Languages in the World to Learn, The 14 Hardest Words to Pronounce in the English Language, Stop Using These Phrases to Sound Instantly Smarter, 40 Latin Phrases So Genius You'll Sound Like a Master Orator, 7 Common Phrases That You Didn't Know Have Racist Origins, Hungarian is a member of the same small language family. The Hardest Languages to Learn for English Speakers There are plenty of resources that can tell you the hardest languages to learn if you speak English. Category II Languages. Linguistic distance is a measure of how related one language is to another language. In terms of grammar, the main feature that makes this language easier to learn than other Slavic languages is the lack of noun cases. The first obstacle to learning Japanese is the writing system, which will provide you no clues unless you also speak Chinese. There are three different genders for nouns and various grammar rules unfamiliar to English speakers. Belonging to the Finno-Ugric family, Estonian is a unique language that can be a challenge to learn. It's a famously difficult language for English speakers to learn, with complex grammar and pronunciation. In contrast to English, Czech is a synthetic language. What if youre starting from one of the other thousands of languages on Earth, though? Do Not Sell My Information | Many examples! For instance, the letter is similar to SH (shampoo, shower, shop). Modern Greek is maybe the easiest language to learn that uses a different alphabet. While practicing with language learning apps is useful, chatting with Spanish native speakers is crucial if you want to improve your language skills. It is spoken as a native language by 13 million people, most of whom live in Hungary. Where its most commonly spoken: Arabian Peninsula, the Middle East, North Africa. 4. Where its most commonly spoken: Albania, Kosovo. Which languages are easiest for native English speakers to learn? | CNN This list of the most difficult languages for English speakers to learn comes from data gathered by the US State Department. . However, most languages only use a few dozen of these sounds. A Korean speaker learning Arabic, for example, might have a hard time with the letter , which sounds like an h that is pronounced using the throat. 25 Hardest Languages to Learn, Ranked | Far & Wide Turkish is filled with extremely long verbs. It takes approximately 88 weeks (2200 hours of practice) to reach professional working proficiency in these languages. Comparison: Hardest Languages To Learn - YouTube var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest(); Mandarin Chinese is challenging for a number of reasons. Have you ever wondered how hard MANDARIN is to learn? Were grouping Spanish and French (which are the worlds fourth and fifth most widely spoken languages, respectively) because they are both Romance languages, and theyre similar enough that both Spanish and French speakers will find the same languages difficult for largely the same reasons. Map Shows the Hardest Languages to Learn for English Speakers - Insider Because of its pictorial writing system, you aren't going to be able to learn to read phonetically. If you don't meet those two criteria, though, it is a very challenging language to master. 7 Hardest Languages to Learn For English Speakers - LifeHack There are a lot of sounds that simply aren't present in the English language and require a lot of practice to master. Brilliant planning there, mate. The language requires the memorization of thousands of special characters. Chinese speakers around the world: 1.2 billion native speakers . Russian grammar and phonetics would sound more familiar to you, and some Polish and Russian vocabulary is related. The language is packed with mouthfuls of consonants, making individual words total tongue twisters. Once you've got that down, the grammar is not so hard, as long as you know Finnish. I just dont see any other way. Unlike other Slavic languages, Bulgarian has no case system. Bulgarian is a South Slavic language spoken mainly in Bulgaria. Slavic languages: which are the easiest, which are the hardest? If youre up for a challenge, these are the 25 hardest languages to learn. The language also has a high number of vowel sounds considered difficult for most English speakers to master. You can work at your own pace, or generate a custom plan based on your goals to meet the timeline you have in mind. There are also Bulgarian speakers in some of the neighboring countries. For now, lets take a look at the individual components of each language that affect difficulty levels: In French, the flower translates to la fleur. It means that, in Czech, different grammatical aspects are condensed into one word by changing its structure. Certainly, the most intriguing, yet difficult, aspect of learning Georgian is that it has its own writing system, and many of the letters used look incredibly similar. And in the territories Moscow has occupied since 2014, it has swiftly moved to restore the primacy of Russian culture and language. Is Russian Hard To Learn? - Language Tsar Lets take a look at them in more detail. Albanian's 36-letter alphabet should clue you in that attempting to master this language is going to be a wild ride. Or what abou. Here are the features that the Slavic languages have in common: The general and common grammatical features of all Slavic languages are primarily inflectional morphology with multiple morphemes. It goes without saying that the more time you spend practicing something, the better you will become at it. Karolina Assi is an English and Polish teacher on iTalki.com. How To Learn Spanish and Chatting with Native Speakers The alphabet is made of very elaborate characters; the language is tonal; there are lots of idioms, and the ability to speak the language doesn't help you read it. How to Order Food in French (with Example 102 Essential Spanish Phrases for Traveling. These are the HARDEST LANGUAGES to learn ranked by the time it takes to be FLUENT in them! It's beautiful and valuable when you travel to that side of the world. comparison of Czech with Russian and German, The grammar, pronunciation, and general structure of a language, The alphabet (as mentioned in the article, some Slavic languages use the Cyliric alphabet, which means more things to learn). The silent D, can really throw learners for a loop, with the DD in jeg hedder sounding more like an L. Along with finding places to use Gaelic (theres a major drop in usage in Ireland, never mind globally), the language also has many grammatical cases and dialects that prove hard to pick up. Youll need to learn an entirely new alphabet, and memorize their corresponding letter sounds. So, what are the easiest and the hardest Slavic languages to learn for English speakers? As an example of cognates, here are the words for a smile in different Romance languages: Cognates can make a language feel familiar. Human speech as a whole uses over 800 phonemes, which are the individual sounds that act as the building blocks of spoken language. Nouns have 15 different cases, while in English, they have only three: subjective, objective, possessive. These languages take up to 600 hours to master.
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