What do you think is the most difficult language to learn

Английский помогите, пожалуйста!

What do you think is the most difficult language to learn?
Chinese? Japanese? No, it is Basque, the language which
__________________ in northwestern Spain and southwestern
France.
SPEAK

It __________________ to any other language in the world. In
Basque, the name of the language is officially “Euskara”.
NOT RELATE

In French, the language is normally called “basque”, though in
recent times “euskara” has become common. Spanish has a
__________________ variety of names for the language than
French. Today, it is most commonly referred to as “el vasco”,
”la lengua vasca” or “el euskera”.
GREAT

Slavery in North America
August 13, 1619 is the date when two and a half centuries of
slavery in North America began. On this day the first Africans
kidnapped by the Portuguese arrived in the British colony of
Virginia and __________________ by English colonists. BUY

__________________ at Jamestown in 1607, the Virginia
Colony was home to about 700 people by 1619.
FOUND

The first enslaved Africans to arrive there disembarked at Point
Comfort, in what __________________ today as Hampton
Roads.
KNOW

Most of __________________ names, as well as the exact
number of those who remained at Point Comfort, have been
lost to history, but much is known about their journey.
THEY

The Hardest Languages in the World to Learn

Get ready to put in some serious study time if you’re looking to master one of these.

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. Serious about learning Hungarian? Or Navajo? Or Thai, which contains an alphabet comprised of a staggering 44 consonants and 32 different vowels? Then you better be ready to study. To help you understand what you’re getting into, we’ve compiled this list of the hardest languages to learn. And for the English words you’re still getting wrong, check out The 14 Hardest Words to Pronounce in the English Language.

To learn Arabic, you have to learn a new alphabet, and get used to reading from right to left. A lot of the sounds in the language are difficult for English speakers to master, and the grammar is packed with irregular verbs. Even if you manage to overcome all of that, it is also a language with many, many dialects that vary widely. So, you might be able to get by in Jordan, but have a hard time in Kuwait.

For English terms you need to finally perfect, here are 23 Words You Need to Stop Mispronouncing.

Russian is rated a two of three in difficulty by the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), which ranks languages based on how long it would take the average native English speaker to learn it, so it’s not as difficult as some of the other languages on this list. However, there are some definite roadblocks to becoming fluent in Russian, among them being that spelling isn’t always straightforward, it’s full of vowel sounds unfamiliar to the average English speaker, and it requires learning an entirely new alphabet to master.

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. But being able to speak is a completely different can of worms, thanks to grammar that is totally different from English and pronunciation that is laden with difficult-to-master rules. ae0fcc31ae342fd3a1346ebb1f342fcb

And for words you should cut out of your vocabulary right this second, check out Stop Using These Phrases to Sound Instantly Smarter.

Navajo is hard enough to figure out that code talkers in World War II used the language to develop a code for communicating that the Germans wouldn’t be able to track.

Finnish has a reputation for being a tricky language to learn, and with good reason. Nouns have 15 different cases, while in English, they have only three: subjective, objective, possessive. The language is in the Finno-Urgic language family, so it doesn’t have any Latin or German influence to help you guess what something means.

The one thing that does make it a little easier is that it is written the way it sounds in the same alphabet as English. In theory, pronunciation is also fairly straightforward, but it can be easy to get hung up on long vowel and consonant sounds.

And for some useful wisdom from a «dead» language, here are 40 Latin Phrases So Genius You’ll Sound Like a Master Orator.

Unusual grammar, difficult pronunciation, and six different tones make Vietnamese a challenge for English speakers. So, how long does it take to master it?

Expect to spend around 1,100 hours in class to attain speaking and reading proficiency, according to the FSI.

The trickiest part of Mongolian is the pronunciation. Once you’ve got that down, the grammar is not so hard, as long as you know Finnish. And the alphabet’s a breeze, assuming you can read Russian. If you don’t meet those two criteria, though, it is a very challenging language to master.

For English sayings you didn’t realize were offensive, check out 7 Common Phrases That You Didn’t Know Have Racist Origins.

Hungarian is a member of the same small language family as Finnish, so the average English speaker won’t be finding much familiarity in its vocabulary. It also has 18 cases and 14 vowels, which makes saying things right particularly difficult.

The language also relies more heavily on idioms than other languages, so if you dropped out of the sky with a few select phrases under your belt, you might feel like everyone is speaking in inside jokes or a secret code.

It isn’t the grammar that will bog you down when you’re trying to learn Thai, it’s the writing and the pronunciation, which has five different tones and long and short vowel sounds. The alphabet has a staggering 44 consonants and 32 vowels.

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With four cases and three genders assigned to their words, as well as many letters unfamiliar to English speakers, Icelandic is no walk in the park to learn. Words can also be very long, and deciphering how to pronounce them can defy intuition. It’s frequently listed as one of the more difficult languages to learn for English speakers.

Estonian is packed with a whopping 14 noun cases. In addition to that, consonants and vowels have three distinct lengths: short, long, and overly long. But the fun doesn’t stop there. The grammar is also loaded with exceptions that require a ton of practice.

Georgian has its own writing system that no other language uses. And a lot of the letters look surprisingly similar. For example, ვ, კ, პ, ჰ, ყ, ფ, გ, and ც are all different letters that you might have a hard time distinguishing between if you’re new to the game. The pronunciation is also pretty challenging for native English speakers.

Declension in Czech is its own special nightmare, but you won’t even need to worry about that until you get past the seemingly insurmountable hurdle that is pronouncing the words correctly. On the one hand, each letter only has one pronunciation ever. On the other hand, Čtvrtek means Thursday, and mastering the way each of those sounds works together is going to take you a while.

It’s helpful if you speak another Slavic language, but otherwise, it’s going to be a challenge.

Albanian’s 36-letter alphabet should clue you in that attempting to master this language is going to be a wild ride. In addition, the grammar is filled with exceptions to the rule that you’ll have to remember.

Turkish is an agglutinative language, which means, in crude terms, that complex words are formed by tacking stuff on without changing the previous stuff at all. 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.

Compared to the Finno-Ugric languages on the list (Finnish, Hungarian, Estonian), the seven cases you have to contend with in Polish don’t seem too intimidating. The pronunciation is what will get you. There are a lot of sounds that simply aren’t present in the English language and require a lot of practice to master.

The most obvious impediment to learning Greek is the alphabet. The grammar can also be a little tricky, with some unusual conjugations, lots of rules, and gendered nouns. And pronunciation requires some practice because there are sounds that don’t have an equivalent in English. There’s a reason «it’s Greek to me» is a common idiom for expressing confusion, after all.

Mandarin is one of the few languages ranked as the most difficult to learn for English speakers by the Foreign Service Institute. 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. Knowing how to read it doesn’t even particularly help learn how to write it. It’s not for the faint of heart.

The first obstacle to learning Japanese is the writing system, which will provide you no clues unless you also speak Chinese. The grammar seems like it’s very simple, but Japanese also uses particles, which are markers for parts of speech that do not have an English equivalent.

The tones in Mandarin make it a challenge for English speakers, but Cantonese has twice as many tones as Mandarin—eight in total. Because of its pictorial writing system, you aren’t going to be able to learn to read phonetically. In addition, because Mandarin is the simplified version of Cantonese and is widely used across mainland China, there simply aren’t as many resources for learning Cantonese.

7 Most Difficult Languages to Learn in the World

All languages are not equal. Some are easiest, but some of the popular foreign languages are difficult languages to acquire. But what are they?

Let’s dive into the seven hardest but also rewarding tongues to learn.

Learning a new language is an enthralling adventure. The globalization of business has resulted in the need for specialized foreign language specialists across the globe.

Although studying a different language is always fun, but not all are similar as per language complexity.

The language difficulty depends on multiple factors — Native or related Languages, methodology, convolution, interest, and available resources.

According to Ethnologue, there are currently 7,111 known living languages in the world. The precise number varies, but nevertheless, it is simply overwhelming.

Some are difficult languages to acquire, whereas many are relatively straightforward. I’ve only considered major ones here, which means no less taught languages.

7 Hardest and Difficult Languages for English Speakers

Do you like challenges? If yes, then why not pick a foreign tongue that can open a world of possibilities?

Here, you can explore the seven most difficult languages to learn.

1. Mandarin Chinese

Mandarin is the most widely spoken Chinese language with more than 1 billion native speakers. If you want to learn Chinese, be ready to sacrifice to spend upward of 2,000 hours from whatever time you might have.

Chinese is a tonal language, making it even more challenging for people to learn and convey the different meanings of words according to the tone and pitch.

The ability to speak the Mandarin language doesn’t help you read it, and vice-versa.

Mandarin characters, with an infinite amount of intricate hanzi drawings, are pretty hard.

You need to learn a minimum of 2,500 characters to read a single newspaper or pass the Intermediate level 5 of the HSK exam. And up to 5,000 characters to communicate fluently and master Mandarin.

Mandarin is probably one of the most difficult languages in the globe for an English speaker to learn.

Regardless of the language challenge, it’s a feat that is amazingly impressive for those who speak Mandarin fluently.

2. Korean

With the rise of K-pop, K-drama, and K-movies, the Korean language demand has been rising as one of the most popular tongues.

Korean is spoken by roughly 75 million people, mainly in South and North Korea.

Unlike Japanese and Chinese characters, Korean alphabets (Hangul) are ridiculous straightforward.

You can start sounding out words and sentences pretty quickly. Despite easy characters to read, Korean is one of the most difficult languages to study.

The Korean language is hard due to its contextual nature, where one sentence can be said in three different ways.

The verbs and syntax can also be conjugated in hundreds of ways, depending on intensity, age, seniority, and mood. Besides, the pronunciation is unique and hard-to-master rules.

3. Japanese

No other popular language sounds—or feels—quite like Japanese.

A Japonic family member and a language isolated, the Japanese enjoy popularity among 125 million speakers. If you’re not sure why to learn Japanese, you can read career options in Japanese.

The Japanese grammar is uncomplicated since Nouns have no gender, no articles, and no plural forms: only two verb tenses, present, and past.

With only five vowel sounds and uniform phonetic orthography, it is moderately simple to pronounce. Like Chinese, Japanese requires that you master thousands of different elaborate characters.

It has a two-syllable system and three independent writing styles (Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji), which further complicates the learning process.

It also has a highly contextual format that requires different forms depending on the situation’s formality. It is tricky to express yourself in a culture with such strict rules.

Besides, it also has a complex system of honorifics.

Japanese is not for the faint of heart. No surprise, it is considered as the super hardest language as per FSI studies.

4. Russian

Boasting a whopping 300 million speakers, Russian is one of the more popular languages globally.

While Russian is not that hard for some speakers in Eastern Europe, it appears challenging for English speakers. It’s beautiful and valuable when you travel to that side of the world.

The alphabet looks complicated, and the pronunciation seems impossible in sounding. It doesn’t use the Latin alphabet, but the Russian alphabet in its Cyrillic script form.

There are several unique letters like Ю, Я, Ж, Д, Ф, Г, Щ, Э, Б, Й that look difficult for native English speakers. However, the language is phonetic as well. With the right mindset, you can learn Russian and speak it just as other native speakers do.

It is, undoubtedly, isn’t an easy language.

However, as long as you are motivated enough, it isn’t that challenging to study either.

Despite its complexity, Learning the Russian language might be worth the extra effort to acquire.

5. Arabic

Arabic is spoken by over 400 million speakers spread across more than 20 countries, mostly in the Middle East and North Africa.

Arabic is a widespread but equally tricky language.

While the letters are fewer than Chinese and Japanese, they also look intimidating. Plus, there are only three sounds in Arabic, not present in English.

The Arabic cursive script includes 28 letters with three vowels supplementing them. There are 13 verb forms, and the pronunciation is difficult to master.

Plus, there are many Arabic dialects across the region.

Some are mutually intelligible, meaning that the Arabic language is spoken in Saudi Arabia or UAE is different from that spoken in Egypt or Sudan.

6. Turkish

Turkish is one of the most popular Turkic languages. Over 80 million people speak Turkish, and most of the speakers live in Turkey.

It is an agglutinative language, which means prefixes and suffixes are attached to words to determine their meaning and indicate the flow of the sentence.

While Turkish uses similar Latin alphabets like French or German; however, it is totally different in grammar, syntax, and vocabulary.

It follows the subject-object-verb structure (SOV) in linguistic typology, which is like Spanish or French.

Turkish is phonetic, and the pronunciation of each letter is unique. Besides, there are no confusing double constants. To sum up, you speak it the same way as you write it.

Also, Turkish has loaned over 5,000 words from French alone. Hence, it will benefit you immensely if you know French when trying to acquire Turkish vocabulary.

The words, however, can be challenging to remember.

The vowel harmony offers endless possibilities, many words of Arabic and Persian origin, accusative cases, and too many tenses that add to the difficulty of learning the Turkish language.

To add to the misery, bewildering grammar and numerous affixes, which is quite different from other European languages, make it a little tricky to learn from a language complexity.

7. Persian (Farsi, Dari, Tajik)

Persian is an Indo-Iranian branch of Indo-European languages. It is called ‘Farsi’ in Iran, ‘Tajik’ in Tajikistan, and ‘Dari’ in Afghanistan.

The Persian language is a very straightforward type of grammar functionality.

The verbs are ridiculously uncomplicated. The language morphology for the classical and contemporary forms has not changed significantly.

Moreover, there aren’t lots of exceptions. People and objects are referred to in the same way.

There are no cases or articles. Comprehension is manageable because it has essential words from English, Arabic, Turkish, and French.

The pronunciation is a bit difficult for English speakers.

There are two different varieties, a literary form, and a conversational style, both with very distinct features. Plus, Persian words with Arabic roots have complicated rules for being transformed in different ways.

Mastering the art of speaking Farsi, Dari, or Tajik can take up to two to three years or even more, depending on one’s native language.

Final thought

This list is not exhaustive. There are many other difficult languages like Cantonese, Croatian, Czech, Finnish, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Mongolian, Polish, Slovenian, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Thai, etc.

While some languages are more comfortable learning and adapting than others, the key to successful language learning is developing the right mindset and strategy.

Any language would be complex for you to learn if you aren’t genuinely motivated. So, which language you’re going to learn?

If you wish to ask any questions, leave a comment below.

Most Difficult Language To Learn

Many people ask the question what is the most difficult language to learn? In that regard, many languages have been claimed to be the hardest language to learn, below are some candidates, for a good reason. However you need to consider other factors that might make a language especially difficult for YOU, those factors can determine how hard or easy you will be able to learn the next language. Make your choice of what’s the hardest language to learn after reading through this article, you can also comment. Don’t forget to bookmark this page!

Most Difficult Language To Learn

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.

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.

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.

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.

You can also check our other articles about the Easiest Language to Learn and the Best Language to Learn, or other important resources in many languages here: Learn Languages. Don’t forget to bookmark this page.

Comments:

If taken literally, the hardest languages for outsiders to learn would be those that are currently unknown by outsiders, for example, Sentinelese. Sentinelese is completely unattested, and no Sentinelese have had significant contact with outsiders for several centuries, so it cannot be learned anywhere but on North Sentinel Island. However, it is illegal for anyone to visit the island, and fishermen accidentally visiting have been killed by the Sentinelese.

What’s the hardest language to learn in the world?

written by
Benny Lewis

If you’ve come here to find a detailed explanation categorising down to precisely one answer, or a small list of the toughest languages, then stop reading the post right now.

I’m not in the business of discouraging people so if you are looking for some more discouragement, you’ve come to the wrong place!

The term “hardest language” exists for no reason other than discouragement and it’s time for me to debunk this ridiculous concept and tell you that it is bullshit. Not dog poo, not hamster droppings, BULL SHIT.

Misleading and pointless criteria

I’ve seen this discussion crop up many times before, and I heard it extensively when I learned one of those in the forbidden list. When a clever linguist comes along he will be very happy to list the reasons that categorise languages as difficult, but your average Joe also has something to say on this. Together their arguments include:

While some of these points do have some merit and the first ones will be used in an argument, the last ones are actually the real reasons for arguing in the first place.

No matter what language you can think of (except perhaps Esperanto) I have heard someone say that it is the hardest one. Many people I have met (especially natives of the languages) have insisted that German, French, Japanese, Chinese, Hungarian, Spanish, Italian, Irish, English and many more are the hardest language in the world and been absolutely convinced of it.

It’s true that if it uses the same writing system as other language(s) I know, my task will be simplified, and if I don’t have to worry about tones it’s an added bonus. But other writing systems are not that bad, and tones can also be learned with just a little bit of work. And of course if it happens to use some of the thousands of similar words to other languages, then my workload is reduced. And yes, a language like Czech/Polish having complex grammar like seven cases does take a bit of getting used to.

But none of these are what actually makes a language hard.

The differences don’t make it difficult

No natural language in the world can ever be the hardest one because children learn them to fluency in just a few years. Icelandic? Japanese? Swahili? Any average five year old from the countries they are spoken in will show you how easily they communicate in those languages.

I really dislike lists of most difficult languages in the world, because they usually have no weight other than biased or very restricted opinion poles or listing particular aspects of languages that earn it bonus oh-noes! points. This completely ignores the most important parts of what makes a language hard.

If I, as an adult, lock myself in a room with two different courses outlining precisely how hard a language is (to be frank, that’s the purpose of most courses), then the one with the most differences will be the winner. If I spend an hour a day studying my Spanish, then an hour studying Japanese, after a few weeks/months I will say Spanish is easier because of the similar words, same writing system etc.

The reason I haven’t attended a full language course for years is because the purpose of a course is to show you what’s different and to break a language into pieces like you might dissect a frog in biology class. When you dissect a frog, it isn’t a frog any more, it’s just a bunch of organs! The frog is dead.

If you’re lucky, your course will give you Frankenstein powers to revive your dead frog, but my learning strategy involves starting with the live version (i.e. speak a language, not study it indefinitely) and nourishing it to help it grow.

What really makes it hard: personal context

I’ve said this before, but the hardest language in the world for me was Spanish. This is usually way up there for many people as the easiest (for English speakers), and yet for me it was harder than Hungarian, and even Japanese and Chinese paled in comparison to the challenge Spanish posed to me.

And yet, many people reading this will be absolutely sure that Spanish is easier than other languages. What made it hard was not the conjugations, subjunctive, accents etc.

It was me.

I made Spanish hard – I had the wrong attitude, I studied in such a way as to focus on what made it so “impossible”, when I tried to speak it I would constantly think how stupid I sounded and I kept reminding myself how hard it was.

The fact of the matter is; if you tell yourself the language is the “hardest one in the world” you are right! That mantra will keep you locked in an inescapable feedback loop that will make it the hardest language. You will set your filter to negative and find many reasons that support your claim.

German was also hard for me the first time I tried to learn it. I was bad at in school, I hated hearing the words “accusative, nominative…” and I wasn’t motivated to really try. If you force me to learn a language I don’t want to learn, I will inevitably dislike it and feel that it’s hard. This is as true for me now as it was then.

Passion makes a language easier

The second time I took on German, even though I had an exam, my motivation to learn was to speak with human beings. When I think of German, I don’t think of cases, verbs, genders etc. I think of the cool people I met in Berlin. This is what a language is really about.

Chinese will be easier for someone to learn if they are interested in Chinese culture, moving to the country, discovering their roots etc. Lack of passion will make any language harder – this is independent of your native language and the differences. If a Spanish speaker was passionate about all that anime they have been watching and dreamt of living in Tokyo some day and was doing everything in their power to make this happen, then Japanese would be easier for them to learn than French would, especially if they weren’t truly motivated to learn French.

Time wasted can also be a demotivator. The reason I can take on a language in “just three months” is not because of exposure to a radioactive spider. If you spend “six years” learning a language you actually just spend an hour or so a week in many cases. At best that adds up to a month in total over several years. It counts as even less if you aren’t giving it your full undivided attention. Saying that it takes two or five or ten years to learn a language is meaningless because most of that time will actually be spent in your native language.

Think of the minutes you put into your language, not the years.

Focusing on the positive makes a language easier

This second time round with German, as I studied I would focus on why the language was easy and this helped me immensely to speak it and even pass the majority of one of the hardest exams in the world for German. In fact, I’ve compiled all of those reasons and put together a Why German is Easy guide for anyone learning German and who thinks it’s hard. Focusing on these reasons and building on them will make the language easy and help people master it quicker.

I have decided from the very start that Hungarian (which is on some of the many random lists as “hardest language” in the world) is easy. I am looking for evidence that supports this and am finding it. Whether it’s easier than Spanish or Irish etc. is irrelevant because I am in Budapest and I need to speak Hungarian. If I could prove that Hungarian was the hardest language in the world (which is so objective to be nothing more than a linguist’s mental masturbation if you ask me) then how could that possibly help me to speak it? That can only demotivate me.

Linguists are welcome to argue over what the hardest language to learn is, but I don’t learn languages, I speak them. When you learn a language, all you are focused on is the details of what makes it different. Most courses are basically just lists of reasons why it’s different. When you speak it, you have the context and the human beings to help you to make it easier. If you want to speak a language, stop focusing on pointless pissing-contests and just speak it!

Think what you like, but don’t tell others what the hardest one is

Before you answer with “No, but you don’t get it, Japanese/Finnish/etc. is the hardest” just think about the following:

A language is not an academic subject, it’s a means of communication between human beings. Communication is hard for reasons of shyness, inexperience, no good motivation and lack of confidence. By propagating this myth of hardest language you are doing nothing more than adding to people’s lack of confidence.

Of course, you are free to continue thinking that language is the hardest one in the universe, but stop going around demotivating everyone else. While you are busy telling us how hard it is, some of us are simply busy speaking the languages. Stop interrupting us please 😉

Benny Lewis

Founder, Fluent in 3 Months

Fun-loving Irish guy, full-time globe trotter and international bestselling author. Benny believes the best approach to language learning is to speak from day one.

Speaks: Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Esperanto, Mandarin Chinese, American Sign Language, Dutch, Irish