Overview:
Arabic, Cantonese, Japanese are said to be the
hardest, based on the approximate learning expectations compiled by the
Foreign Service Institute (FSI) of the US Department of State.
Finnish,
Hungarian, and
Estonian
are also among the hardest because of the countless noun cases. The
Pronunciation is even harder than in Asian languages as they usually
have long tong twisting consonants. However the list doesn't stop there.
This is a list of the 10 candidates, with an explanation why they
made it to this list. If you think other languages should be included
too, please comment at the bottom.
1) Chinese: Many factors make Chinese very difficult to learn.
For example the characters (Hanzi) used in the writing system seem to
be archaic and obscure. Every word is a different symbol and it's not
phonetic so it gives you no clues as to how it is pronounced. The tone
system also is a pain because Mandarin has four tones. One other reason
is, Mandarin has a large number of homophones. For example, the
pronunciation "shì" is associated with over thirty distinct morphemes.
Some people try to learn this language for that specific reason, being
difficult and different.
2) Arabic: The first challenge is the script. Most of the
letters have four different forms, depending on where they stand in the
word, also, vowels are not included when writing. The sounds are tough,
but the words are tougher. An English-speaking student learning a
European language will run across many familiar-looking words, but
English-speaking Arabic students are not so lucky. Arabic is a VSO
language, which means the verb usually comes before the subject and
object. It has a dual number, so nouns and verbs must be learned in
singular, dual, and plural. A present-tense verb has thirteen forms.
There are three noun cases and two genders. The other problem is
dialects. Arabic spoken in Morocco is as different from Arabic spoken in
Egypt and from Modern Standard as French is from Spanish and Latin.
3) Tuyuca: a language of the eastern Amazon. Tuyuca has a
sound system with simple consonants and a few nasal vowels, so is not as
hard to speak. However it is heavily agglutinating. For example one
word, "hóabãsiriga" means "I do not know how to write". It has two words
for "we", inclusive and exclusive. The noun classes (genders) in
Tuyuca’s language family (including close relatives) have been estimated
at between fifty and 140. Most fascinating is that Tuyuca requires
verb-endings on statements to show how the speaker knows something. Diga
ape-wi means that "the boy played soccer (I know because I saw him)".
English can provide such information, but for Tuyuca that is an
obligatory ending on the verb. Evidential languages force speakers to
think hard about how they learned what they say they know.
4) Hungarian: First of all, Hungarian has 35 cases or noun
forms. That fact alone makes it a candidate in this list. Hungarian is
full of very expressive, idiomatic words, and suffixes. The high amount
of vowels and their deep-in-the throat sound makes it very hard to speak
as well. It takes more effort to learn it and maintain what you learned
then most other languages.
5) Japanese: One main reason why Japanese is so hard is that
the written code is different from the spoken code. Therefore, you can't
learn to speak the language by learning to read it, and vice versa.
What's more, there are three different writing systems to master. The
kanji system uses characters borrowed from Chinese. Students need to
learn 2,000 to 3,000 of these characters through rote memorization;
there are no mnemonic devices to help. Written Japanese also makes use
of two syllabary systems: katakana for loan words and emphasis, and
hiragana for spelling suffixes and grammatical particles. The State
Department allows its students three times as long to learn Japanese as
it does languages like Spanish or French.
6) Navajo: This fascinating language can be the most difficult
as well. During World War II, the language was used as a code in the
Pacific War by bilingual Navajo code talkers to send secure military
messages over radio. This had the advantage of being an extremely fast
method of encrypted communication. The code was never broken by the
Japanese, who were mystified by the sounds they intercepted. Navajo was
not chosen as a code language only because it is very hard but also
because there was no published grammar or dictionary of the language and
because native speakers were readily available. Nearly everything that a
language must do is done differently by Navajo than by English. For
example in English, we only mark one person on the verb--third person
singular, present tense (I read --> he read
s) with a suffix. Navajo marks all of the persons with a prefix on the verb.
7) Estonian: This language makes the list too. Estonian has a
very rigid case system. "Case" is a grammatical system under which words
inflect based on their grammatical function in a sentence. There are
twelve cases in Estonian, more than two times the number of cases that
exist in most Slavic languages. Apart from the fact that Estonian has
many cases, this language is also hard because it has many exceptions in
grammar rules, also, many words mean several different things.
8) Basque is also up on top based on a study made by the
British Foreign Office. The Basque language has 24 cases. It is
impossible to link Basque with any Indo-European language. Basque is
probably the oldest known spoken language in Europe. Basque is called an
agglutinative language, meaning it likes to use suffixes, prefixes and
infixes, so new words are frequently formed by adding a common tag onto
the end or the beginning or in the middle of a simpler word. Basque is
synthetic, rather than analytic. In other words, Basque uses case
endings to denote relationships between words. Basque doesn't just
change the end of the verb, it changes the beginning too. In addition to
the Indo-European languages moods, Basque also has a few more moods
(ex. the potential) and, finally, Basque has a complex system of
denoting subject, direct object and indirect object - all of which are
crammed into the verb itself.
9) Polish: This language has seven cases and Polish grammar
has more exception than rules. German for example has four cases all of
which are logical. Polish cases however seem to need more time and
effort to learn the logical pattern (if any) or rules; you might have to
learn the entire language. Polish has seven cases and Polish grammar
has more exception than rules. German for example has four cases all
which are logical, Polish cases seem to have no pattern or rules; you
have to learn the entire language. Furthermore Polish people rarely hear
foreigners speak their language, so with no accent or regional
variation, pronunciation must be exact or they will have no idea what
you are talking about.
10) Icelandic is a very hard language to learn because of its
archaic vocabulary and complex grammar. Icelandic kept all the old noun
declension and verb conjugations. Many Icelandic phonemes don't have
exact English equivalents. The only way you can learn them is by
listening to recordings or to native speakers.
But here is something you should know. The more different a language
is from your own (in terms of characters, grammar ...) , the harder it
might seem to you to learn it. One more element should be considered in
deciding which language is the most difficult: whether a language
follows a logical pattern in its grammar, for example, in English, there
is a general rule for creating plurals, adding "s" or "es". In Arabic
on the other hand, the plural is irregular most of the time and
non-native students spend much of their time learning how to use it.
Finally, one thing is certain, no matter how hard a language is, you
really need three things that are essential for learning it: adequate
and appropriate learning resources, understanding of the way you learn,
and passion of learning.
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