Most Difficult Language To Learn

Posted on by in General, Opinion

Most Difficult Language To Learn - Learning any language after a certain age becomes very tough. Some scientists thinks the elements of the brain that deal with acquiring new language kind of slow or shut down after your early teens and that may be why adults find language studied so damn tough.

I used to speak almost fluent Spanish in my teens but lack of use in adult life has made me beginner level again. Attempts to pick up Arabic just by speaking with people didn’t work out either. For me some seriously hard study is likely what is needed.

So what are the toughest languages?

Most Difficult Language To Learn

Most Difficult Language To Learn

Most Difficult Language To Learn

My guesses would be somewhere along the lines of Arabic and Chinese but I would imagine the click language of the Kalahari Bush tribes isn’t exactly a piece of cake either. I don’t know how official it is but I have always imagined Klingon to be quite hard!

Luckily I don’t have to do the work. As reported in a cool article, which I will take a few quotes from below, from My Languages, the US Gov’s Foreign Service Institute has already done some comprehensive study on what are the hardest languages to learn. They looked at things like how easy youngsters pick up the language as a first language and how adults pick it up as a second.

The article says that:

“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.”

It also goes onto single out some interesting things about a few of the languages. On Chinese it says “Every word is a different symbol and it’s not phonetic so it gives you no clues as to how it is pronounced.”, Arabic “A present-tense verb has thirteen forms. There are three noun cases and two genders.” and 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. “

I don’t know how likely it is that I will ever be fluent in another language and I am sure my chances are slipping away year on year. For me all languages are tough!

So what languages do you speak? What have you found to be the toughest and are you planning on learning a new one soon?

Related: Top 10 Most Spoken World Languages

Thanks for reading - Most Difficult Language To Learn

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8 Responses to “Most Difficult Language To Learn”

  1. John @ Married With Debt

    18. Jan, 2012

    NIce post. I can say having been to Hungarian that it is one of the most difficult languages I’ve ever encountered. Even stuff written in Cyrillic seems to make more sense. Hungarian is sot of its own thing in the region.

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  2. John @ Married With Debt

    18. Jan, 2012

    Sorry, been to “Hungary” not “Hungarian.” Apparently my English isn’t so good :)

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    • Forest

      18. Jan, 2012

      Ha ha, you just have to read one of my posts to realise English is something I struggle with!

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  3. Practical Parsimony

    18. Jan, 2012

    Languages studed:
    Latin, written
    Spanish, written and spoken
    Greek, written and spoken
    Japanese, spoken
    ESL class had us all take a Swahili class. . . fun

    In a college Greek class, I used a work in Spanish, spelled it like Latin, and wrote it on the board in Greek letters. The professor was really confused. I had to explain aloud what I had written and why. . . sigh.

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    • Forest

      20. Jan, 2012

      Wow, that is stunning! I wish I had picked up languages like that.

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  4. Practical Parsimony

    21. Jan, 2012

    Having studied these, it is easier to know words in all other Romance languages–French, Romanian, Italian, Portuguese. By no means can I converse or read or hear/understand these other languages, but it is evident what some passages say….sometimes.

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  5. Susan

    23. Jan, 2012

    I’ve learned to speak, write and read Italian as an adult. Married an Italian whose parents do not speak English, I didn’t want to never know what they were talking about, so I learned the language. Also helped to live in Italy for a year…

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    • Forest

      28. Jan, 2012

      That is really cool. I hope I can get a 2nd language at some point.

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