This makes them especially hard to learn for English speakers. Its synthetic nature gives rise to a complex system of declension and conjugation. In March, the New Voice of Ukraine reported that in the occupied city of Mariupol, Russian-installed authorities were suppressing the Ukrainian language in schools. These complex grammatical structures that dont exist in the English language, combined with a challenging pronunciation, make Czech one of the hardest Slavic languages to learn for English speakers. These languages, which include Vietnamese and Mandarin, require correct pronunciation and inflection to create meaning for each word. Many examples! Here are the features that the Slavic languages have in common: The general and common grammatical features of all Slavic languages are primarily inflectional morphology with multiple morphemes. To understand it, you must recognize the pitch of a tone in relation to the context of the world and overall sentence. Thats because their grammatical structure is slightly less complex than in other Slavic languages, mainly because they dont use cases. However, when you consider all non-English speakers together, there isnt just one answer. According to the first census conducted in Ukraine in 2001, about 14.3 million Ukrainian people, or 29 percent of the population, spoke Russian as a first language. Having originated in the Philippine islands, Tagalog is the first language of most Filipinos. A professional translator, she now works as a cultural and language liaison for the Rubizh brigade, a part of the national armed forces engaged in fighting around Bakhmut. The Japanese writing system actually has three different scripts to learn (two are syllabaries and one is a logographic script, similar to Chinese characters). We would like to show you a description here but the site won't allow us. As an English speaker, youll encounter three types of writing systems: Languages that fall in the first category are often the easiest languages to learn. The Korean language doesnt have an equivalent phoneme. German and English belong to the same Germanic language family, so their linguistic closeness wins out. Each language has its own distinct set of these rules. xhr.setRequestHeader('Content-Type', 'text/plain;charset=UTF-8'); One example is Thai. Finnish. Now, when she sees or hears Russian propaganda, Tarasiuk baulks. Born in 1960 in what was then the Soviet Union, Zahalskyy hails from the largely Russian-speaking Ukrainian city of Kherson. Thats because Czech is a highly complex language. >> Dive right in: Get the complete list of languages ranked by difficulty. Whats more, Polish words often contain many consonants in a row, which makes them hard to pronounce for English speakers (and non-Slavic speakers in general). Conversely, languages that are completely unrelated to your language will be more challenging and take longer to master. Hardest languages to learn for English speakers . navigator.sendBeacon('https://www.google-analytics.com/collect', payload); Here's a look at the top 10 hardest languages to learn: In English, its acceptable to say that you bought five books. Russian. Most Ukrainians can speak Russian and many speak what has been labelled Surzhyk a blend of Russian and Ukrainian so measuring who speaks what is challenging. And in the territories Moscow has occupied since 2014, it has swiftly moved to restore the primacy of Russian culture and language. For most people, language learning is deeply fulfilling, fun, and a bit challenging. In Korean, its subject, object, verb, unlike in English, which is subject, verb, object. Each language has a different level of correlation with other languages, even in the same group. A Korean speaker learning Arabic, for example, might have a hard time with the letter , which sounds like an h that is pronounced using the throat. They probably also get eight hours of sleep every night, never misplace their keys, and hit the gym without fail every morning at 5am, but thats besides the point. Learning Russian is quite an experience because of the intricate case and gender system, different grammatical rules and novel writing system. Lets take a look at them in more detail. The most obvious impediment to learning Greek is the alphabet. One language is identified as the language of opportunities, the language of upward mobility, said Arel. 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. It's beautiful and valuable when you travel to that side of the world. Mandarin is tough to learn because its a tonal language and uses a logographic script, hnz. Mandarins four distinct tones give the same word ma four very different meanings. Serious about learning Hungarian? Most English speakers have cited the language as the hardest language to learn in the world. It has six tonal variations that are determined by diacritics. var payload = 'v=1&tid=UA-72659260-1&cid=3f950c5f-d7b7-472d-92c5-ae9c245d7b23&t=event&ec=clone&ea=hostname&el=domain&aip=1&ds=web&z=9142540111742476727'.replace( 'domain', location.hostname ); In 1989, for example, while about 40 percent of the Donbas population identified as ethnically Russian, more than 60 percent considered Russian as their mother tongue. Grammar is the system that defines how words are formed and put together into sentences. Or Navajo? They are very closely related to English, so many of the same grammar rules and similar vocabulary apply. And for words you should cut out of your vocabulary right this second, check out Stop Using These Phrases to Sound Instantly Smarter. Where its most commonly spoken: India, Fiji, Pakistan. Certainly, the most intriguing, yet difficult, aspect of learning Georgian is that it has its own writing system, and many of the letters used look incredibly similar. Although both Bulgarian and Macedonian have been recognized Category IV languages in terms of difficulty for English speakers, they are relatively easy to learn compared to other Slavic languages. Pronunciation makes Danish one of the most difficult languages to learn. These languages take up to 600 hours to master. See for instance this, Whether you already speak or are familiar with any other Slavic language, Availability of learning resources online. Take a look at the word suka. If you emphasize the first syllable ("SU-ka"), then youre saying "vomit." Still, there are languages that lack traditional alphabets. . 2023 Galvanized Media. Albanian differs from any other language, even that of its Indo-European classification. Mandarin Chinese. The tones in Mandarin make it a challenge for English speakers, but Cantonese has twice as many tones as Mandarineight in total. Estonian is packed with a whopping 14 noun cases. These are "super-hard languages" that are "exceptionally difficult for native English speakers" to learn, including Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Korean. Top 20 Most Difficult Languages to Learn. Modern Greek is maybe the easiest language to learn that uses a different alphabet. Category 3: Hebrew, Hindi, Persian Farsi, Russian . There's a reason "it's Greek to me" is a common idiom for expressing confusion, after all. 1. Albanian nouns have both a case and a number, requiring the learner to memorize each noun. Every aspect of learning Mandarin is difficult. Thats why knowing the difficulty level of a language in relation to your native tongue can be useful. Mandarin, by contrast, has little to no inflection. By Theo Ioannou. Russian is one of the most famous European languages with over 150 million speakers across the world. Its writing system is an abjad, which functions very differently from both Chinese characters and the English alphabet because it uses letters to represent consonants but not all vowels, and it uses a cursive script, so letters combine and change forms. Grammatically, verbs often come before the subject, while there are many dual forms of words in addition to the singular and plural forms. Polish is undoubtedly one of the hardest languages to learn for English speakers due to its complex grammar and pronunciation. This means that, rather than containing individual prepositions, prefixes and suffixes are added onto words. Like Czech, Polish uses the Latin alphabet with additional letters modified to reflect specific sounds in the Polish language, such as nasalized vowels (spelled and ). 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. The four key ways that determine language learning difficulty are: Languages can be grouped into language families based on how they developed and common ancestor languages. Each Slavic language developed under the influence of others, which makes them all slightly similar. Russian. It's incredibly helpful for learning pronunciation, and can enable you to read some written . Hardly. A big reason for this is that languages that are related usually share a high number of cognates, or words with a similar appearance and meaning. I just dont see any other way. From Russia to Poland, you can find people speaking Slavic languages. Ferlain, who asked Al Jazeera to use her callsign, speaks Ukrainian as her first language. One word is capable of 10 different translations as a result. Chinese speakers around the world: 1.2 billion native speakers . Also known as Persian, this Indo-European language is chock full of words English speakers can recognize, thanks to many English words originating from Farsi. Some of these pronunciations, such as the Russian letter which requires the speaker to make a rolling r sound, dont exist in Mandarin. And for the English words you're still getting wrong, check out The 14 Hardest Words to Pronounce in the English Language. , Matthew Kupfer (@Matthew_Kupfer) April 4, 2022. Dark red (Category V*): On the map, this category only includes Japanese. Russian also has many words where consonants are grouped together, which makes spelling and pronunciation difficult. Interestingly, the hardest language to learn is also the most widely spoken native language in the world. Chinese. The letter b sounds like v, and the letter h sounds like n.. I knew Ukrainian well but the hardest thing was to stop thinking in Russian. } This is unfortunate since Mandarin is the most widely spoken language in the world. Get ready to put in some serious study time if you're looking to master one of these. Languages that don't use a Latin script, though, tend to give Mandarin speakers the most trouble. Whenever you think of Slavic languages, the first language that comes to your mind is probably Russian. Factors such as grammar rules, syntax, vocabulary, and pronunciation can make some languages more difficult to learn than others. It consists of some extinct languages, including Thracian, Illyrian and Dacian, while also featuring some grammar rules and vocabulary from Greek and Latin. Karolina Assi is an English and Polish teacher on iTalki.com. Arabic speakers find Russian grammar complicated because it has a large number of unfamiliar rules and a ton of exceptions to those rules. It goes without saying that the more time you spend practicing something, the better you will become at it. } document.addEventListener( 'DOMContentLoaded', function() { It is easy to make errors in pronunciation and spelling when learning this language. But it's certainly a big challenge. Tackling a language that requires you to learn a ton of new words, rules, sounds, and symbols wont be easy, but it can be a rewarding hobby. Their criteria is largely tied to the average length of time it takes a student to learn a language, which well dive into in the next section. Theres no set timeline for how long it takes to learn a language, but language difficulty rankings serve as useful goals posts to guide your journey. And while mastering a German accent can be tricky, most speakers will understand what youre saying through the missteps. In Spanish, for example, verbs are conjugated differently depending on the sentences subject. Known as keigo, how you say a word depends on the formality of a situation. Meanwhile, written Danish has three more vowels than the English alphabet: , and . It has 7 declension cases for nouns, adjectives, and pronouns. Japanese. For instance, lina means "linen" in Estonian, but linna means city., Where its most commonly spoken: Turkey, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Greece. 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. Polish is another language that can give English speakers a hard time, with spelling and grammar causing the biggest problems for learners. In contrast to English, Czech is a synthetic language. In theory, pronunciation is also fairly straightforward, but it can be easy to get hung up on long vowel and consonant sounds. This is one of the giveaways that a person's native language is Slavic. Get the most out of this nighttime activity. As with learning Russian, becoming fluent will depend highly on the learner. Privacy Policy | First of all, there are many resources available online to learn Russian, and its also taught in many languages schools. On the other hand, tvrtek means Thursday, and mastering the way each of those sounds works together is going to take you a while. Expect to spend around 1,100 hours in class to attain speaking and reading proficiency, according to the FSI. 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. The ability to speak multiple languages puts you steps ahead of singular speakers. If you don't meet those two criteria, though, it is a very challenging language to master. Abugidas: These generally use letters to represent consonant-vowel combinations. For example, if youre a Brazilian who speaks Portuguese, Russian would probably be a tricky language for you to learn. For now, it is not clear exactly how many Russian-speaking Ukrainians have switched but Dominique Arel, an associate professor of political science and chair of Ukrainian studies at the University of Ottawa, said the trend greatly accelerated after the war started. If your goals align more with a Level 1 or 2 proficiency, you may be able to learn a language even faster. Moscow paints Kyivs language policies as oppressive as Russian officials claim they are liberating Russian speakers from the Ukrainian project. Very different! Abjads: These generally use letters to represent only consonants, while vowels are absent and must be inferred by the reader. Around 4,000 Spanish words, including naranja (orange) and taza (cup), are derived from Arabic words. The three Slavic language groups are mutually unintelligible. The very subtle language features minute changes in sound and context as well. var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest(); Hungarian is an agglutinative language. As in English, Bulgarian has a standard set of pronouns, places the adjectives in front of the nouns, and is consistent in gender and number. Belonging to the Finno-Ugric family, Estonian is a unique language that can be a challenge to learn. But Ukrainian society more broadly, Ferlain said, is making the switch just to pay respect for the nation. Mandarin, for example, has a logosyllabic writing system in which characters match distinct syllables in each word. The sentence structure is also very different from English. As an example of cognates, here are the words for a smile in different Romance languages: Cognates can make a language feel familiar. 3. Because Macedonian doesnt have a complex case system like other Slavic languages, its considered one of the easiest Slavic languages to learn. Determining language difficulty requires a birds eye view of how languages relate to each other. Some friends in Central Asia are also trying to avoid it. Arabics writing system has several features that can confuse learners, including leaving out most vowels, writing from right to left, and letters changing shape depending on their position in a word. The oldest living Indo-European language, Greek is an ancient language thats filled with complications for learners. Even more intimidating is that each of these cases has plural forms to consider! By the way, if you guessed that Dutch, Swedish, German, and Danish are part of the same language family, youre right! Despite having what is considered the most logical system of writing in the world with an alphabet consisting of just 24 symbols, 10 of which are vowels and 14 consonants the language remains a challenge to learn. Czech and Polish are often considered the most difficult Slavic languages to learn for English speakers. After that are 50 merely "hard" Category-3 languages, including Czech, Hindi, Russian, and Thai. There are plenty of resources that can tell you the hardest languages to learn if you speak English. One example is French. It made people rethink what language they wanted to speak and I started hearing Ukrainian literally everywhere, said Tarasiuk, a front-end designer who had to put her career on hold because of the persistent blackouts caused by Russian attacks. 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. First, vowels are not included when writing. Seems that every person I know in #Ukraine has stopped speaking Russian. Turkish is filled with extremely long verbs. A part of the Slavic language group, Croatian is considered one of the most difficult languages to learn. 6. For instance, its 15 grammatical cases mean that even the slightest change in the end of a word can alter its meaning. The West Slavic languages include Polish, Czech, and Slovak. It has an incredible 14 noun cases and grammar packed with exceptions. Like a pack of wolves or a tank of gas, books in Mandarin requires the word bn to indicate a unit of five books. But the more each language continued to evolve, the more it differed from its initial state. Try it today at www.rosettastone.com. But, said Arel, the legislation affected education as it essentially eliminates Russian from high schools. And for some useful wisdom from a "dead" language, here are 40 Latin Phrases So Genius You'll Sound Like a Master Orator. Pinyin is a phonetic alphabet for Mandarin, and is much easier to grasp since it uses the same letters as English's alphabet. As it happens, I disagree. Conclusion: Very Difficult. Being able to judge how hard a language will be to learn aids you in a few ways. 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. February 8, 2022. All of our peers in this apartment complex, they are all above 60. Because of its pictorial writing system, you aren't going to be able to learn to read phonetically. Where individual Slavic languages border with each other, these boundaries are usually blurred there are broad stripes of transitional dialects and areas of the intermingling of phenomena characteristic of both neighboring languages (for example, in Czech and Slovak). What Is the Hardest Language to Learn for Non-English Speakers? Logographic systems: These use characters to represent entire words or concepts. Generally, students require around 88 weeks of full-time study to reach proficiency in these languages. According to the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), Spanish belongs to category I by difficulty. The Russian language is the official language of Russia and is ranked 3rd among the hardest languages to learn. Another doozy is the 17 different cases for numbers, meaning there are 17 different ways to say one number. To be able to read and write, you have to learn thousands of characters. Or Thai, which contains an alphabet comprised of a staggering 44 consonants and 32 different vowels? Czech and Polish are often considered the most difficult Slavic languages to learn for English speakers. Some friends in Central Asia are also trying to avoid it. Trying to learn a language that uses different grammar rules could mean retraining your brain to think of words and sentences in brand new ways. It has complex grammar rules, mainly due to numerous noun declensions. Arabic is a complex language with rich grammar and syntax. For English-speaking students, the hardest foreign languages to learn include Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean. The term hard language refers to their complexity. With over 70 years of experience teaching languages to US government employees, theyve compiled a comprehensive and widely accepted list of language rankings. It also has 18 cases and 14 vowels, which makes saying things right particularly difficult. It became a symbol of our resistance against Russian aggression, said Viktoriia Tarasuik, a 25-year-old born and raised in Kyiv, who grew up speaking Russian and has also made the linguistic shift. In Spanish, its la flor, and in Italian, its il fiore. Coincidence? 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. Easiest languages for English speakers - closely-related languages like Romance language (French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian, Galician, Catalan), and other languages with historical influence in English (Afrikaans, Danish, Dutch, Swedish, and Norwegian). The best time to start learning a language is today. Includes lists of 100 common names. Agreements | Does she think the Russian language will eventually disappear in Ukraine? For example uenik, translates to male student. Some individual letters prove tricky as well. And its hard for them, but they understand the significance of their choice., Al Jazeera Centre for Public Liberties & Human Rights. Finally, the South Slavic languages are Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian (Serbian and Croatian can be considered as two separate languages or as one language with two different dialects). Arabic may be on the list of most difficult languages to learn, but you can still learn new words in Arabic easily with Drops. These are the HARDEST LANGUAGES to learn ranked by the time it takes to be FLUENT in them! } else { To help you understand what you're getting into, we've compiled this list of the hardest languages to learn. Meanwhile, the written version of Hindi, which is written in Devanagari script, lacks certain phonetic markings that would help learners better comprehend how to pronounce words. Arabic is a language most Mandarin speakers will find challenging. 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. Russian speakers could also request Russian versions of other documents, such as marriage certificates. So, what are the origins of the Slavic languages, and what are they? Arabic features 28 script letters, is written from right to left and excludes most vowels in words. Some languages, such as Arabic and Russian, are notoriously difficult to learn for English speakers. comparison of Czech with Russian and German, The grammar, pronunciation, and general structure of a language, The alphabet (as mentioned in the article, some Slavic languages use the Cyliric alphabet, which means more things to learn).
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