Let’s now head over to the list of the most difficult languages to learn.. 25. Spanish. Score: 0.53. While Spanish is considered among the easiest languages to learn for English speakers, it is ...Feb 7, 2020 · Table of Contents. Which is the most difficult language for English Speakers? 1 – Chinese (Mandarin) 2 – Arabic. 3 – Japanese. 4 – Korean. 5 – Hungarian. 6 – Finnish. 7 – Xhosa. 1. Polish. Script: Latin alphabet with added accents. Where it’s spoken: Poland. Is it tonal? No. Pro tip: A tonal language is one where your vocal pitch is a factor … Standard Chinese – ‘Mandarin’ – is often cited as the most difficult language for English speakers to learn. As it happens, I disagree. But it’s certainly a big challenge. The main problem lies in the writing system. And if you’re serious about learning Chinese, you’ll have to tackle Chinese characters. Feb 25, 2021 · The Hardest Languages To Learn For English Speakers 1. Mandarin Chinese. Interestingly, the hardest language to learn is also the most widely spoken native language in the world. Mandarin Chinese is challenging for a number of reasons. The easiest languages for English speakers to learn are: Danish, Dutch, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Swedish, and French. The US State Department lists these languages as Category I languages. This means they are similar to English culturally and/or linguistically.12. Khoisan. This language is mainly spoken by the nomadic tribes found in the desert and plains of Southern Africa, particularly in the Kalahari desert. It is one of the most difficult languages to learn and to speak due to the huge variations of sounds and tones used in communication.It is more difficult for a native English speaker to learn Hindi than most other languages. The enunciation is vastly different with similar sounding words and subtle differences. The cadence and tone of the speech need extra consideration. And the grammar placement of subjects, predicates, verbs, and nouns is significantly different than English.Russian. Greek. English is taught in Chinese schools, so most Mandarin speakers are familiar with English and the Latin script that makes up the English alphabet. Languages that don’t use a Latin script, though, tend to give Mandarin speakers the most trouble. Arabic is a language most Mandarin speakers will find challenging.The Hardest Languages To Learn For English Speakers 1. Mandarin Chinese. Interestingly, the hardest language to learn is also the most widely spoken native language in the world. Mandarin Chinese is …Oct 25, 2022 · Spanish is the easiest language to learn, according to Busuu and Jumpspeak language-learning programs. They cite these factors: Busuu's rating: Spelling: Very easy. Pronunciation: Very easy ... Feb 24, 2011 ... The 7 hardest languages to learn for English speakers include Arabic, Cantonese, Finnish, Hungarian, Japanese, Mandarin, and more.Here is a list of the top hardest languages to learn: 1. Mandarin. Mandarin is the most widely spoken global language, belonging to the Chinese group of languages. Mandarin, on the other hand, is a hard language to learn to grasp for an English speaker. Because Mandarin is a tonal language, each sound has four unique pronunciations in …Category II - German - Language that requires around 30 weeks in a category of its own. Category III – Languages that usually require around 36 weeks or 900 hours of instruction to reach S-3/R-3. These languages are slightly more difficult, and this group includes Indonesian and Swahili. Category IV – Students usually need around 44 weeks ...Things get more difficult in category IV where Finnish, Polish and Russian all take up to 44 weeks to learn. Category V is the most difficult for English speakers with Arabic, Chinese, Japanese ...Jul 29, 2022 ... Arabic is a language most Mandarin speakers will find challenging. Its writing system is an abjad, which functions very differently from both ...Top 3 most difficult languages to learn. 1. Mandarin Chinese. English is the most spoken language worldwide, and Mandarin Chinese is a close second. So, when you learn Mandarin Chinese as a second language, there are quite a few people around the world you can talk to. It’s not going to be an easy journey, though.Learning computer programming is an exciting and rewarding endeavor. However, with numerous programming languages available today, choosing the right one to start your learning jou...For some languages, you’ll need to start from the very beginning to gain a handle on their writing systems and sounds, and syntax. Compared to other languages, these languages need thousands of hours of study to achieve fluency. Below are ten of the most difficult languages for an English speaker to learn. 1. Mandarin.It is difficult to choose one language as the most difficult for Spanish speakers to learn to write, as the answer can always depend on many factors. Arabic An Egyptian television documentary made it clear a decade ago that learning to write Arabic is difficult even for Arabs, and charged that children can spend most of their lives up to the ...Nov 23, 2023 · Something to keep in mind, though: When deciding which language you want to learn, you should also consider how difficult the language will be for you to learn. The more difficult the language, the more challenges you’ll face and the bigger time commitment you’ll need. Learning a Language That’s “Easy” for English Speakers January 29, 2024. English is widely considered very difficult to learn. It can be easy to pick up, but as your level advances in the language it becomes more and more difficult to master. It naturally depends on what your native language is and many will have an easier time than others, but English is among the most difficult to learn. 6. Arabic. Number of native speakers: 221 million. Country with the greatest number of speakers: Egypt. Why it's hard: Despite 221 million native speakers that you can potentially learn from, Arabic is still one of the hardest languages to learn. First, vowels are not included when writing. Category I is the easiest with languages such as French, Spanish and Italian all requiring approximately 23-24 weeks of study time. Things get more difficult in category IV where Finnish, Polish and Russian all take up to 44 weeks to learn. Category V is the most difficult for English speakers with Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and Korean all ...Category IV: For people who like a challenge. Category IV includes the most challenging European languages for English speakers to pick up. Here you’ll find Slavic and Baltic languages such as Polish, Croatian, and Latvian, as well as Greek, Turkish, and Icelandic. This category also includes Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian.21st September 2021 by Atlas & Boots. This article may contain affiliate links. Foreign Service Institute language difficulty rankings are an indication of how long a native English speaker would need to reach proficiency in a number of different languages. There are five categories, ranked from easiest to the hardest based on how many ...Estonian language is one of the hardest languages to learn for a native English speaker, based on data from the US State Department's Foreign Service Inst.Nov 28, 2017 ... Japanese. According to the Foreign Service Institute, Japanese is the most difficult language for a native English speaker to learn. This ...Jul 29, 2022 ... Arabic is a language most Mandarin speakers will find challenging. Its writing system is an abjad, which functions very differently from both ...English and German are pretty similar to an extend, which makes it not that hard to learn (at least for Germans, might be different the other way round). Also Spanish, Italian, and French have similarities. I guess mandarin would be the hardest language to learn for most people. 3. Pedarogue.Babbel also says Mandarin is hard to learn because it is a tonal language, in which “a word’s meaning has to be affected by the tone.”. An example of this in English that Babbel cites is ...C++. C++ is considered one of the most difficult programming languages to master due to its immense complexity. It has highly advanced object-oriented programming features like multiple inheritance, templates, overloading, exception handling, and memory management, requiring new and delete for allocation/deallocation.They also state that it is much more difficult than other languages that can take around the same time to learn. 2. Mandarin. One of the difficulties of traveling in China is that you have two languages to keep in mind. Mandarin is the more common one spoken, so it might be the one you are more inclined to learn.Learning how to speak Finnish can take up to 44 weeks. In comparison, the most difficult languages, like Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, and Cantonese would usually take around 88 weeks of study time. Finnish isn’t the toughest language you can pursue as a person keen to learn multiple tongues. Although it’s not the easiest either.But if you’re looking for a tougher linguistic challenge, try learning Hungarian. It will take you about 44 weeks (and around 1,100 hours) of instruction, as it’s considered a language “with significant linguistic and/or cultural differences from English.”. Check out the FSI’s full list of languages on the next page.An Honest Analysis For Beginners. by Olly Richards. Many beginner level language students have the misconception that German is an almost impossible language to learn. Seemingly endless compound words and the concept of noun genders is often enough to scare people off learning German for good. However, German actually isn’t nearly as …The official language of Bulgaria, spoken by an estimated 6 million people, is considered among the most difficult languages to learn, according to the Foreign Service Institute. 6. Arabic. Number of native speakers: 221 million. Country with the greatest number of speakers: Egypt. Why it's hard: Despite 221 million native speakers that you can potentially learn from, Arabic is still one of the hardest languages to learn. First, vowels are not included when writing. Finnish and Hungarian are classed as Category IV, and would take an average learner 44 weeks (1,100 class hours) to become moderately fluent in. Russian and most Middle Eastern languages also get a Category IV rating. Chinese is thought to be learnable in 88 weeks (2,200 class hours) and Japan is the hardest, with the highest …Jan 24, 2021 ... Iceland has gotten a bad rap for being a locale for one of the most challenging languages. A mixture of old Viking tongues and influences from ...Feb 27, 2019 · 4. Korean. One of the most difficult languages to learn, Korean, the 13th most spoken language in the world, is also in our top. Benefitting from two different writing systems ( Hangul and Hanja), Korean is spoken by more than 75 million people of whom 72 million live in South Korea and North Korea. Dec 15, 2017 · Category IV: For people who like a challenge. Category IV includes the most challenging European languages for English speakers to pick up. Here you’ll find Slavic and Baltic languages such as Polish, Croatian, and Latvian, as well as Greek, Turkish, and Icelandic. This category also includes Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian. The Most Difficult Languages To Learn. Arabic Arabic ranks as the most challenging language to learn. Native to around 110 million people in the Middle East and North Africa, it features a right-to-left script and unfamiliar sounds in pronunciation. These rankings are based on the assessment of language difficulty, with Arabic requiring an ... Standard Chinese – ‘Mandarin’ – is often cited as the most difficult language for English speakers to learn. As it happens, I disagree. But it’s certainly a big challenge. The main problem lies in the writing system. And if you’re serious about learning Chinese, you’ll have to tackle Chinese characters. 3. Mandarin Chinese. Similar languages: Cantonese The language with the biggest proportion of native speakers in the world, Mandarin Chinese is notorious in the anglophone world for its complexity.. Don’t let that put you off! Mandarin opens up China and the rest of Asia as a travel destination, and is spoken by one in six people around …Mandarin Chinese is considered the most difficult language to learn due to its complex writing system and tonal pronunciation. What is the most speakable language in Africa? Swahili, with over 100 million speakers, is the most widely spoken African language. It is known for its ease of pronunciation and simplified grammar.May 1, 2023 · 7. Mandarin Chinese. Millions of expats speak, read and write Chinese, though it has a reputation for being one of the hardest languages to learn for English speakers. Chinese has earned that reputation for being difficult primarily due to its tones and writing system. Mandarin is a tonal language with four tones. Jan 23, 2023 · 1. C++: C++ is the first and, by far, the most difficult programming language. This language is even more difficult than its predecessor, C. It was founded in 1983 and has been causing programming students restless nights ever since. C++ is an object-oriented and imperative programming language. Some people learn new languages easily and for other people the process can take several years. Find out why some people learn new languages easily. Advertisement According to Rich...Welsh has the most native speakers of all the UK’s Celtic languages. But despite the nearly 900,000 people who use it daily, it’s a pretty difficult language to wrap your head around. While it is known to be slightly easier than other Celtic languages like Irish, …English and German are pretty similar to an extend, which makes it not that hard to learn (at least for Germans, might be different the other way round). Also Spanish, Italian, and French have similarities. I guess mandarin would be the hardest language to learn for most people. 3. Pedarogue.And the reverse is also true: Check out the easiest and the hardest languages to learn for English speakers, which largely depend on how similar the languages are to English. And it depends on your goals. Generally, English is easy enough to start learning, but it can be difficult to fully master. This is because many of the basic …This is one of the criteria used by UNESCO to determine which languages are the most difficult to learn. Using declensions, non-homophonous homographs and suffixes will also weigh in the balance. While French has the reputation of being one of the most difficult languages to learn, Chinese is the one that comes out on top.8. Russian. The first indication that we are facing a difficult language to learn is its alphabet. Russians do not use the Latin letters of most Western languages, instead dealing with the so-called Cyrillic alphabet.. Some Cyrillic letters are identical to those of the Latin alphabet, but they sound completely different.Sep 26, 2023 · Difficult languages to learn that take 44 weeks. 5. Hindi. Hindi is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world, with over 500 million speakers. It is the official language of India and is also spoken in various other countries, including Nepal, Fiji, Mauritius, and Suriname. As you'll see in a moment, Cantonese is our top pick when it comes to the hardest languages to learn, though a native speaker of Mandarin would probably argue ...Learn which languages are the most difficult to learn for English speakers, based on linguistic factors and studies. Find out the benefits of learning a difficult language and how to make it easier with …Italian - lilting and rhythmic, to many people speaking the Italian language sounds like singing. It’s often considered to be the most romantic language in the world. Portuguese - it’s the dramatic and expressive intonation that marks this language out as romantic. Portuguese’s drawn out vowels emphasize its musicality and allure.10. Thai. Class hours: 1,100. No. of native speakers: 20.4 million. Country with greatest no. of speakers: Thailand. Thai makes it into the list as it too is a tonal language and often considered one of the hardest languages to learn. It uses five different tones, which can change the context of what is being said. Zulu. Category V: 88 weeks (2200 hours) Languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers. Arabic. Cantonese (Chinese) Mandarin (Chinese) * Japanese. Korean. * Languages preceded by asterisks are usually more difficult for native English speakers to learn than other languages in the same category. The time it takes to learn a language is something every learner takes into account before deciding to learn a certain language. To help you make a time-efficient decision, The Foreign Service Institute sorted major languages around the world into 5 categories of difficulty according to their differences from English. Let’s see some maps …Learning any new language takes time, dedication and motivation. But some languages require more work (hours) to master than others do. Whether a language is harder or easier or you for you to learn depends on a few things: 1) What your native language is. 2) How much the language you want to learn differs from your native …Foreign Service Institute. The School of Language Studies (SLS) provides language and culture training to U.S. government employees with job-related needs. It addresses all aspects of language training, from classroom instruction and distance learning, to learning consultation services and testing. Student Orientation. C++. C++ is considered one of the most difficult programming languages to master due to its immense complexity. It has highly advanced object-oriented programming features like multiple inheritance, templates, overloading, exception handling, and memory management, requiring new and delete for allocation/deallocation. Of these 10 hardest languages to learn, some, like Hungarian and Finnish, are considered quite complex because they have little to no resemblance to any other languages. As an Anglophone, learning German will probably be the easiest of these 10 languages since it is also a Germanic language. As a general rule, we have less difficulty learning ... MANDARIN. Mandarin, a part of Chinese language the most widely spoken language in the world, is however the hardest language in the world. It is very different from other languages in the world. In …Italian - lilting and rhythmic, to many people speaking the Italian language sounds like singing. It’s often considered to be the most romantic language in the world. Portuguese - it’s the dramatic and expressive intonation that marks this language out as romantic. Portuguese’s drawn out vowels emphasize its musicality and allure.Origin Country. Iran. Persian, the official language of Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Dagestan, and Russia, is one the most difficult languages in the world to learn. It comes from the Indo-Iranian subdivision of the Iranian branch. Persian is popularly known as Farsi; modern Persian has no grammatical gender.Reason #1: Chinese tones are hard (and unfamiliar!) English is not a tonal language. Adding tones to every word you speak is a very unfamiliar and difficult process for non-native speakers. First, you need to listen and comprehend the tone, which is difficult at the beginning (more so if you’re tone deaf!). Then you need to be able to …It’s also one of the official languages of the United Nations. Mandarin Chinese is a tonal language, meaning a word’s meaning can change depending on its pronunciation. For example, the word “ma” can mean mother, hemp, horse, or scold, depending on the tone it’s spoken in. This can make mastering Mandarin pronunciation …1. Mandarin. Number of native speakers: 1.2 billion. Country with the greatest number of speakers: China. It may be the most widely spoken language in the world, but it is particularly challenging for English speakers.Feb 27, 2019 · 4. Korean. One of the most difficult languages to learn, Korean, the 13th most spoken language in the world, is also in our top. Benefitting from two different writing systems ( Hangul and Hanja), Korean is spoken by more than 75 million people of whom 72 million live in South Korea and North Korea. 6. Arabic. Number of native speakers: 221 million. Country with the greatest number of speakers: Egypt. Why it's hard: Despite 221 million native speakers that you can potentially learn from, Arabic is still one of the hardest languages to learn. First, vowels are not included when writing.Language learning can be a challenging endeavor, especially for non-native speakers. However, with the right tools and resources, anyone can achieve fluency and proficiency in a ne...Tim Brinkhof. According to many linguists, the most difficult language in the world isn’t Mandarin or Basque or Hungarian or Xhosa, spoken in South Africa, but Navajo. Concentrated in Arizona ...It’s widely accepted that English is hard to learn - if not the most difficult language to learn. Let’s take a look at some of the most common reasons why people find it so challenging. There are lots of rules. In the English language, as with many other languages, there are a lot of rules for new speakers to learn. And these rules aren’t ...Oct 21, 2020 · Here are some of the reasons. Writing system. It makes Chinese one of the hardest languages to learn for English speakers, but for Spanish, and all those who use letters as well. Chinese uses special characters, thousands of them because each of the characters represents the word. Tones.
5 days ago · Xhosa. Xhosa is known to be one of the most difficult languages to learn in South Africa due to its use of click consonants and complex grammar rules. It is spoken by approximately 8 million people in South Africa. Learn more. 2. . Productivity tips
HTML, JavaScript, Python, PHP, and Ruby are considered the easiest programming languages to learn. They have relatively simple syntax and have readymade functions or libraries. This makes pretty beginner friendly and one of the most popular programming languages. Whereas, languages like C++, Assembly Language, and …Welsh has the most native speakers of all the UK’s Celtic languages. But despite the nearly 900,000 people who use it daily, it’s a pretty difficult language to wrap your head around. While it is known to be slightly easier than other Celtic languages like Irish, …The language features grammatical rules that are often broken, an alphabet that can confuse people who are used to a character-based system, and spelling and pronunciation irregularities that perplex even native speakers. Here are some of the linguistic inconsistencies that make the English language difficult for non-native speakers to learn ...Mandarin Chinese is considered the most difficult language to learn due to its complex writing system and tonal pronunciation. What is the most speakable language in Africa? Swahili, with over 100 million speakers, is the most widely spoken African language. It is known for its ease of pronunciation and simplified grammar.In the world of language learning, a dictionary is an essential tool that cannot be overlooked. When it comes to learning English, having a reliable dictionary by your side can gre...Mar 30, 2022 ... Top 7 Most Difficult Languages to Learn · 1. Mandarin Chinese · 2. Arabic · 3. Polish · 4. Russian · 5. Japanese · 6. Dan...Tagalog. Tagalog is the language spoken by 1/4th of the total population of the Philippines. Its grammar and uncommon sentence structure rules make it pretty difficult to master. Navajo. Navajo is one of the Southern Athabaskan languages and is spoken in the southwestern part of the United States. Norwegian.Dec 5, 2017 ... These are "super-hard languages" that are "exceptionally difficult for native English speakers" to learn, including Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin,...21st September 2021 by Atlas & Boots. This article may contain affiliate links. Foreign Service Institute language difficulty rankings are an indication of how long a native English speaker would need to reach proficiency in a number of different languages. There are five categories, ranked from easiest to the hardest based on how many ...Oct 21, 2021 ... Top 20 Most Difficult Languages to Learn ... With enough dedication, you can become fluent in any language you choose. For this list, we'll be ...1. C++. C++ is one of the popular languages with speed and efficiency that surpasses quite a few others. As a fairly common language, yet, C++ is challenging to learn. It has many complex moving parts that users need help solving. Accordingly, it is also hard for learners to fully know its advanced algorithms.They also state that it is much more difficult than other languages that can take around the same time to learn. 2. Mandarin. One of the difficulties of traveling in China is that you have two languages to keep in mind. Mandarin is the more common one spoken, so it might be the one you are more inclined to learn.Language learners believe that since it is a Baltic language (linked to Latvian, too), it is difficult to learn. Three million people worldwide speak the Lithuanian language as of now, among which most are native speakers of Lithuania. Many people learn Lithuanian to keep their culture alive, but it is not an easy language to become fluent in ...Feb 7, 2020 · Table of Contents. Which is the most difficult language for English Speakers? 1 – Chinese (Mandarin) 2 – Arabic. 3 – Japanese. 4 – Korean. 5 – Hungarian. 6 – Finnish. 7 – Xhosa. Zulu. Category V: 88 weeks (2200 hours) Languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers. Arabic. Cantonese (Chinese) Mandarin (Chinese) * Japanese. Korean. * Languages preceded by asterisks are usually more difficult for native English speakers to learn than other languages in the same category. .