What’s the most difficult language in the world?

in language •  7 years ago  (edited)

Learning a language is difficult. Everybody who studied a language in the past knows that. You might not only come across letters or words, which are virtually impossible to pronounce for you, sentence structure and grammar might also differ drastically from your native language. Therefore it also depends on what your native language is, how difficult it is for you to learn another language. For example, a Spanish person will obviously have a much easier time learning Italian, compared to a Chinese person for example. Francis Xavier, an important Jesuit missionary to Japan in the 16th century once stated, that Japanese is the language of the devil. A sentiment that reflected his difficulties in learning the language and that could easily be understood from his perspective, since Japanese writing or spoken language had absolutely nothing in common with any European language of the time. Today Japanese has at least adopted many loanwords from European languages (such as "aisu kurimu" for ice cream, "baiku" for motorcycle, "resutoran" for restaurant and so on). On the other hand, a linguist once said, that if Martians landed on planet earth and he had to advise them which language would be easiest to learn within a short period of time, he would suggest Turkish to them, since it has a very well structured regular grammar, that is easy to memorize compared to other languages. And if you already speak Arabic or French, you have a head start. About 4000 Turkish words are of French origin and between 40-50% are of Arabic origin.
But there are also some distinct criteria, which make some languages stand out. According to the Population Reference Bureau, which took a “guesstimate” in 2002, about 100,000 languages have existed throughout the history of mankind, of which 6000 are still spoken today.
Some only by a handful of people, some by hundreds of millions of people and of course not all of those can be included in this list, but here are some that come to my mind (in no specific order).

Xhosa
“It’s not a noise, it’s a language”, as some people would say. Xhosa is a language spoken by about 19 Million people in South Africa, Lesotho and Zimbabwe. It is defined by click sounds, which are difficult to impossible to learn if you didn’t learn the language from an early stage on. Xhosa has 18 different click sounds. There are two other languages with more click sounds, one of which would be Jul’hoan, spoken by about 10,000 people in Botswana and Namibia, with about 48 click sounds. The other one would be Taa, spoken by about 4,000 people in Botswana with about 83 click sounds (the largest inventory of consonants of all languages in the world).

Check out a tongue twister in Xhosa:

So next time you complain about difficult French pronunciation or harsh German consonants, remember, it could be way way worse.

Arabic
Since I spent many years studying Arabic myself, this is a subject I can speak on out of experience. Studying Arabic is hell. For the average European, Arabic is a mess. Not only that they write in the “wrong” direction (from right to left), their grammar and pronunciation is quite a challenge too. Arabic has only three vowels, a, i and u and many times they are not written down, so you have to know the words, in order to know how to pronounce them.
Using a dictionary is not easy too, because of the way the Arabic language is set up. Arabic language, just like all Semitic languages, uses root consonants, as a base for all their words.
For example, if you want to find the word "maktab" (desk), you have to know, that the consonantal root for the word is "k-t-b/kataba" (to write). So instead of looking up words that start with "m", you have to look for words that start with "k". So "maktab" is something that is used to write upon. It can also mean school (i.e. a place where people write). A "katib" is a writer…And so on. This goes for pretty much all of the words.
Confusing? You got that right!
Another difficult thing about Arabic is its harsh pronunciation. You have several versions of the letters "k", "s" or "t", which take some practice to pronounce. For example” ﻙ “ is pronounced like a regular k. But “ﻕ“ is pronounced like a "k" when you cough up candy, that got stuck in your throat.
I have met people who couldn’t do it all and quit their studies.
But Arabic has had its fair share of influence on other languages too. Some Arabic words in English are: safari (literally means journey), algebra, alcohol, admiral (derived from the word Amir/Emir i.e. meaning commander), coffee, mattress (derived from the root "tarah", which means to throw something, therefore a mattress is something that is thrown/put on the ground), traffic (from "tafriq", meaning distribution), tariff, tobacco, zero etc. The list is long.
So before you attempt to take on this beast of a language, make sure you have a lot of time on your hands and travel there for practice.

Chinese
You probably might as well put any other character-based East Asian language here, but since Chinese is the most commonly spoken language in the world, I’ll go with that. Chinese doesn’t use letters but characters. There are up to 100,000 characters (there is probably not a single living person that knows all of these), even though you “only” need to know 900 characters to be able to read about 90% of a newspaper and have everyday conversations.
Chinese is a tonal language. This means the way you say a word can entirely change its meaning. Depending on how you pronounce a word, it can turn the sentence you want to say into confused sounding gibberish. Words which sound the same, but have a different meaning are called homophones, so these are near homophones. For example, "xióngmāo" means Panda. But "xiōngmáo" (note the different diacritic sign above the letter a, which expresses a different tonality) means chest hair. If you go to the zoo in China, you better not ask the clerk where the chest hair is. ;)
Mastering the four tonalities of Mandarin Chinese has been called one of the supreme challenges for non-Chinese people trying to learn the language. But you could put your foot in it even worse:
"xiǎo jie, shuǐ jiǎo yī wǎn duō shao qián" means: "Miss - how much is a bowl of dumplings?"
While "xiǎo jie, shuì jiào yī wǎn duō shao qián?" means: "Excuse me miss, how much does it cost to sleep [with you] for a night?"
So you better be careful with that tonality! ;)

Of course, then there is the problem of cultural differences on top, which makes it impossible to translate certain grammatical features or words. Arabic has two versions of the plural form. One for everything that comes in two units (it is called Dual) and one for everything that comes in more than two units (E.g. sanatun - one year, sanatāni – two years, sanawātin – 3+ years). And Turkish has the awesome word of "yakamoz", which roughly translates to: "the moonlight which is reflected on the surface of the water". There is also a pretty legendary word in the Finnish language, "Kalsarikännit". It roughly translates to: "Getting drunk at home alone, only in your underwear, with no intentions of going out". Yes, this really exists.
Now try to put that into one English word….;)

Here's an Italian having a hard time with English...;)

What difficulties have you had while learning languages? Which language is your favourite pain in the neck? What language would you like to learn?

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  ·  7 years ago (edited)
For example, a Spanish person will obviously have a much easier time learning Italian, compared to a Chinese person for example.

In general it's said that it is comparable easy to learn similar languages to the ones one knows already. In my own case, however, I noticed that I forgot nearly all my French since I started to learn Spanish! Because words often are so similar I always only remember Spanish words in case I try to speak French ... Actually, to be exact, I still understand French rather well, but just cannot speak it at all anymore (for example if anybody asks me in French to explain him the way, I am completely lost ... so annoying ...). :)

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Thanks for the tip. Yea I made the same experience, that if you stop practicing regularly, you fall back continuously and I can imagine that it is easy to slip up between French and Spanish since they have many similar words, so it can be an advantage and a disadvantage at the same time. I noticed, since i started studying Turkish, that having studied Arabic before is a HUGE advantage, since you already have a big chunk of the same or similar vocabulary at your disposal....

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

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I think when two languages are too similar to each other (but not the same), it can cause problems when learning. I tried learning Portuguese after learning Spanish in HS. Big mistake. The two languages are so similar that I end up mixing them up when writing.

There were also situations when I thought I knew how to say something in Portuguese (because that's how it's said in Spanish and Portuguese has similar words), but it turned out that that phrasing isn't used at all.

Didn't think of it like that, I can imagine that it was a problem mixing those two languages up!

Language is treasure but to master more than 2/3 it's not that easy. I spent 3 years learning Arabic and speak so little. I spent 3 months learning Mandarin and I quit. I spent 3 weeks learning Turkish and only memorize how to spell it's alphabet. Kids learn better.

Yea, its really best if you start at an early age. Kids pick up languages at an incredible pace, while we as adults have to work hard and hammer the languages into our heads. I even believe that it is impossible to master more than 2 languages to native level expert proficiency. Even bi- or trilingual speakers have an "active" and a "passive" language, meaning that they are only best at one language....

I was about to write my next post on prosody when I came across your article, what a great read! I have been learning about 10 languages so far but have never tried Arabic, definitely would like to do it in the near future! I have had some experience learning Chinese and Thai, though, and I must say that learning tones in any of these languages is not as difficult as it seems. It definitely won't happen overnight but from my observation most learners don't do it the right way, which is practising the tones every day, for at least a few weeks. All the mystery and magic surrounding tones fades away once proper work is done!

I would also add Polish to the list of the most difficult languages. I have read numerous articles by other linguists and, to cut the long story short, it seems that after a few months of learning Mandarin you will be able to communicate more freely than after a few months of learning Polish. It's connected to its grammatical complexity, lots of exceptions and pronunciation of Polish language. The idea doesn't take writing into account, of course. Looking forward to your next post!

Thanks! Yea, I heard the same about Polish, that it has a very complex (irregular) grammar and difficult pronunciation...Of course my list is incomplete and I am sure there are many more languages that could be added on there...Generally, I think, languages which have odd sounds, clicks or vowels pose many extra problems on top of grammar, for those learning them. I am going to follow you, because I am curious about your post on prosody. :)

Cheers! It is actually the second part I am writing at the moment, you can see the first one already posted on my blog. :)

It's worth it to follow him ... and if you enjoy eating yummy food I suggest you to follow also his beautiful girl friend @mayasiam who is a really great cook! :)

Cheers, @jaki01! Thank you for your support. :)

Done! :)

  ·  7 years ago 

From my point of view, Polish Orthography seem unfriendly. Among Slavics, Bulgarian is the easiest for me to learn. I heard that Russian language without cases then will become Bulgarian. :)

this is really amazing post, such a nice idea to talk about language,as an arab native speaker i tod you i know a lot of people who foound it really very difficult language, even at the level of speaking andwriting as well, it's not that easy language it consistesso many words even more than frensh and english. have a great time.

Shukran. ;) Yes, I think it is a very difficult language and many people think so too. Our teacher always said ironically, that the first 10 years of studying Arabic are the most difficult, then it slowly gets easier. ;) You are lucky that it is your native language...

thanks buddy with time you will be able to speak arabic. have a great time buddy.

Thanks for the tip .Yea i made the same experience , that if you stop practicing regularly , you fall back contenuously and i can imagine that it is easy tppp slipp up between French since and spanish since they have many similar words, so it can be an advantage and a disadvantage at the same time .here's an Italian having a hard time with English.thanks for the share

thanks for great article , I like English and Turkish so much and i think they are easy to learn , I agree with you , Chinese is the most difficult for me

Learning Khmer (Cambodian Language) at the moment and struggling with the reading and writing. Doesn't make any sense. Luckily we have a good private and patient Khmer teacher that comes to the house 1 hour each week day.

Right you are! mandarin (Chinese) is the most difficult language I read.

Whoa there's a language by making clicking sounds? I only know of the bird or like a bird whistle sounds bec I saw a viral vid in Facebook.

My gosh to think I thought Chinese was difficult. Maybe I should learn them sound languages instead of sign language. Haha.

Da ich gerade auch eine Serie über Sprachenlernen begonnen habe, freue ich mich über diesen soeben entdeckten Post von dir.
https://steemit.com/deutsch/@martinamartini/jede-sprache-ein-leben-meine-erfahrungen-mit-sprachenlernen-teil-1
Xhosa zu lernen habe ich mal definitiv nicht vor, denn shcon das spanische Zungen-R macht mir immer noch Probleme.
Hingegen kann ich bei ungefähr 30 anderen Sprachen mitreden, davon habe ich allerdings von einigen erst einen Hauch von einer Ahnung. Zur Zeit lerne ich unter anderen Japanisch. Bei Chinesisch und Arabisch ist das Lernen der Sprache und Schrift an sich gar nicht schwer. Das Trügerische ist nur, dass man glaubt, sprechen zu lernen, aber wenn man dann ein paar Worte zu einem Native Speaker sagt, versteht er Bahnhof. Folglich stimmt die Aussprache also doch nicht. Mehrmins Detail möchte ich hier nicht gehen, es ist ja ohnehin geplant...
Du wirst lachen, aber mit fällt es schwerer, mir ungarische Vokabeln zu merken als chinesische, und auch beim Irisch-Gälischen, das doch nur zwei Flugstunden von uns entfernt gesprochen wird, dachte ich schon mal, das lerne ich nie. So weit nur mal ein paar Bemerkungen, sonst wird das eh schon ein Artikel... Isländisch soll besonders schwer sein, ist momentan aber nicht mein Thema. Wenn dich Isländisch interessiert, es ist im deutschsprachigen Wikipedia zielich ausführlich behandelt, schon fast ein Sprachkurs.
Wenn du Lust auf Verwirrung hast, lerne mehrere skandinavischen Sprachen gleichzeitig so wie ich. Samt Dänisch und parallel dazu Holländisch und Afrikaans. Ich setze aber meinen Selbstversuch fort, 20 Sprachen gleichzeitig zu lernen, weil's mir Spass macht...

Wow, 20 Sprachen, da hast du dir aber ordentlich was vorgenommen. Halte uns auf dem laufenden, wie du vorankommst haha...Bei den skandinavischen Sprachen kann ich mir vorstellen, dass due Recht hast, da gibt es dann doch frappierende Ähnlichkeiten, die das Ganze verwirrender machen....

I like English learn. But I not speak, lol.

Keep trying, you can do it. Just dont give up. :)

@ wolf65 excellent Post, from my point of view the most difficult language in the world is Spanish, because it is very variant in its dialects depending on the passion where it is studied. There are words that in a country mean something and the same word has another meaning in another.

In my opinion, all languages with non alphabetical letters (chinese, arabic, japanesse etc) are very difficult.

Yes, I agree, but Arabic does have alphabetical letters, they just look very different.

  ·  7 years ago 

I think the difficulty of Arabic is its complicated grammar

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  ·  7 years ago (edited)

I think the answer of you title is multiple, nubilous and countless. Different individuals will have different THE MOST DIFFICULT LANGUAGEs IN THE WORLD. The difficulty of a language depends on the learner's experience. For isizulu and isiNdebele language speakers, they can easily learn Xhosa. Because the three languages share similar grammar rules and vocabulary and the speakers live very near. There are a lot of Arabic lownwords in Persian. So Iranian can learn Arabic more easily than any non-persian and non-semitic languages speakers. The same to Chinese and Japanese. If two languages are very close (dialect continuum), then a speaker can easily master the other language. Just like Russian-Ukrainian-Belarusian, indonesian-malay and Deutsch-Dutch... In China, college students from foreign language department think Russian, Arabic and Deutsch are difficult. One of my friends said Georgian language (or any other Kartvelian language ) is the most difficult in his cognition. I don't think there is a language deserving the title "the most difficult language in the world". Language's Difficulty varies from person to person. And I think Analytic Language is the most easiest language. Anyway, good to see that Chinese is difficult. Ha ha ha...

It's a pity I can't understand anything in his speech.

What language would you like to learn?

I would rather improve languages I can speak: Gearman, English, Russia and Ukrain