The time estimates here reflect how long it would take the average person to reach a Level 3 proficiency level, which is pretty fluent by most standards. An Austronesian language, Tagalog features a complicated grammar and sentence structure that make it hard to learn. Official forms such as those in doctors offices, particularly in Russian-speaking areas, largely came in both Russian and Ukrainian. Phonetically English is quite remote from Russian, and features insane amount of vowels, along with fricatives and aspirated consona. In addition, consonants and vowels are made up of three specific lengths: short, long and overly long. . English is taught in Chinese schools, so most Mandarin speakers are familiar with English and the Latin script that makes up the English alphabet. She's currently learning Dutch (and forever brushing up on her Spanish and French) using the Rosetta Stone app. A languages grammar also determines the order of words in sentences. But once you do, you can pronounce almost all Russian words quite accurately. if( 'moc.enilnoefiltseb' !== location.hostname.split('').reverse().join('') ) { While you may be able to get by in non-tonal languages while making pronunciation mistakes, tonal languages demand more care. Knowing language difficulty will also help you come up with a realistic timeline for learning. Whenever you think of Slavic languages, the first language that comes to your mind is probably Russian. The script is almost entirely phonetic, which means that once you pick up the pronunciation of the letters, you can quickly begin reading fluently. By Theo Ioannou. 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. Vietnamese is also difficult for Hindi speakers due to its sentence structure and tones, though its writing system is easier to learn than that of either Japanese or Mandarin because it uses a phonetic alphabet instead of characters. Mandarin Chinese is challenging for a number of reasons. 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. Japanese requires a large amount of study to learn because its writing system includes three different scripts, and the language includes different vocabulary and grammatical forms to use based on social context. Russian is a Slavic language, the 7 th most spoken language in the world by the total number of speakers, which, unfortunately, does not make the task of learning Russian much easier Russian is widely believed to be one of the most difficult languages to learn. Another intriguing yet foreign concept to many English speakers, for instance, is the emphasis on respectful speech. But he doubts the measure is too divisive because parents in the eastern and southern Ukrainian regions want to send their kids to Ukrainian school anyway. So, how long does it take to master it? For English-speaking students, the hardest foreign languages to learn include Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean. It also has a different word order; In Hindi, like Japanese, the word order of basic sentences is subject-object-verb, but in Mandarin its subject-verb-object. As with learning Russian, becoming fluent will depend highly on the learner. } 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. Alphabets: These use letters to represent a languages phonemes, which are both consonants and vowels. What if youre starting from one of the other thousands of languages on Earth, though? Boasting a whopping 300 million speakers, Russian is one of the more popular languages globally. Data Privacy and Security. Where its most commonly spoken: Thailand. Czech and Polish are often considered the most difficult Slavic languages to learn for English speakers. 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). If you emphasize the second ("su-KA"), then you have "vinegar." Human speech as a whole uses over 800 phonemes, which are the individual sounds that act as the building blocks of spoken language. However, Russian has fewer tenses than English. The archaic language is made up of extremely long words, while the specific syllables are pronounced entirely differently from typical English syllables. With Russian, they used the expression back then [in the Soviet Union] of [it being the] language that opens perspectives of life, or a language of perspectives., So the project of making Ukrainian the state language, which began with independence, was the project of making Ukrainian relevant.. Other troops might keep speaking Russian to keep a grasp on the language of the enemy, especially if they are working in reconnaissance, Ferlain said. Hardest languages to learn for English speakers . Mandarin, for example, has a logosyllabic writing system in which characters match distinct syllables in each word. Another challenge you will come across if you start learning Arabic is a variety of dialects. When it comes to the similarities between the Slavic languages, their kinship lies in the fact that they all derive from a common ancestor the Proto-Slavic language. In Spanish, for example, verbs are conjugated differently depending on the sentences subject. Estimated to be spoken by over 10 million people, Czech is the official language of the Czech Republic. 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. Now, at 63 and living in the capital, Kyiv, Zahalskyy and his wife Natasha are in the midst of the difficult but voluntary transition making the Ukrainian language their own. No matter the difficulty level of your new language, Rosetta Stone makes learning easy, effective, and fun. Maddie is an education writer at IXL, a sister brand of Rosetta Stone. The tonal language also has four tones, so one word can be pronounced four different ways, while each pronunciation has a different meaning. Also, some of its letters are tricky to pronounce, and Korean has its own version of honorific speech that requires specific forms of words depending on social context. Terms & Conditions | Bulgarian is a South Slavic language spoken mainly in Bulgaria. The trickiest part of Mongolian is the pronunciation. 2023 Galvanized Media. Arabic. The Korean language doesnt have an equivalent phoneme. Whether for gaining a deeper cultural understanding of a country or for the simple necessity of co-existing and even performing business, multilingual speakers put themselves at the forefront of new possibilities. The language is packed with mouthfuls of consonants, making individual words total tongue twisters. 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. Tarasuik disagrees, but says Russia has unintentionally reversed decades of Russification. If you were to go to Lviv right now [considered the heart of the Ukrainian-speaking part of the country] and walk into a caf there and start speaking in Russian, the waiter or waitress will change to speaking with you in Russian, Zahalskyy said. These languages are deeply nuanced, with complex grammar and pronunciation rules. Bestlifeonline.com is part of the Dotdash Meredith Publishing Family. These endings are used to express the same things propositions do in English. In 2022, the entire country witnessed the war and all the crimes the Russians committed. But the fun doesn't stop there. Even a lot of authors that wrote their books in Russian or singers or poets that wrote in Russian have decided to stop spreading the language of the aggressor, added Ferlain. The grammar can also be a little tricky, with some unusual conjugations, lots of rules, and gendered nouns. Bulgarian uses the Cyrillic alphabet, which can be tough for English speakers to learn. It also has 18 cases and 14 vowels, which makes saying things right particularly difficult. Ferlain, who asked Al Jazeera to use her callsign, speaks Ukrainian as her first language. Yeah. Pronunciation is also tricky because word stress varies based on context, and you cant rely on a few simple rules to learn proper Russian pronunciation. One example is the Chinese writing system hnz. With over 7,000 languages spoken across the globe, its difficult to rank them all. Meanwhile, written Danish has three more vowels than the English alphabet: , and . . The transition to Ukrainian began for some in 2014, when Moscow annexed Crimea and led forces into the Donbas region, which borders Russia. You need about 3,000 to . Where its most commonly spoken: Albania, Kosovo. Whats more, its important to notice that Slavic languages use not one but two main alphabets - Latin and Cyrillic. The language is also known for having very confusing conjugations. Gender plays a big part as well. Generally speaking, difference equals difficulty when it comes to learning a new language. But it's certainly a big challenge. Seems that every person I know in #Ukraine has stopped speaking Russian. Each language has a different level of correlation with other languages, even in the same group. There are 30 letters in the Bulgarian Cyrillic alphabet. 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. Much of Macedonian vocabulary is similar to Serbian and Bulgarian, and it uses a Cyrillic alphabet, just like Bulgarian. Were grouping Spanish and French (which are the worlds fourth and fifth most widely spoken languages, respectively) because they are both Romance languages, and theyre similar enough that both Spanish and French speakers will find the same languages difficult for largely the same reasons. The Slavic languages are also known for their complicated consonant clusters. It's incredibly helpful for learning pronunciation, and can enable you to read some written . It takes approximately 36 weeks (900 hours of practice) to reach professional working proficiency in these languages. A language tends to come out politically as the language of modernity. Pronunciation makes Danish one of the most difficult languages to learn. Brilliant planning there, mate. Polish. In the wars early days, their apartment block was hit twice by artillery fire from the nearby town of Bucha, where Russians are accused of many atrocities. In theory, pronunciation is also fairly straightforward, but it can be easy to get hung up on long vowel and consonant sounds. The Cyrillic alphabet that Russian uses can be especially confusing for Chinese learners because it has letters that look similar to English letters, but are pronounced completely differently. This is one of the giveaways that a person's native language is Slavic. It's a famously difficult language for English speakers to learn, with complex grammar and pronunciation. If you want to become proficient in a language, youll eventually need to learn whatever system of writing the language uses. Finally, theres Finnish, which has a broad reputation for being a difficult language to learn. There is nothing natural about the way a language develops, Arel told Al Jazeera. Farsi also reads from right to left. And the alphabet's a breeze, assuming you can read Russian. Thats mainly due to their complex grammatical structure and difficult pronunciation. For now, lets take a look at the individual components of each language that affect difficulty levels: In French, the flower translates to la fleur. The language requires the memorization of thousands of special characters. This means that, rather than containing individual prepositions, prefixes and suffixes are added onto words. As it happens, I disagree. Some friends in Central Asia are also trying to avoid it. Furthermore, learning a new language enhances your worldview, improves nonverbal communication, helps you multitask and aids in your brain adapting and responding to new circumstances. For English terms you need to finally perfect, here are 23 Words You Need to Stop Mispronouncing. Estonian is packed with a whopping 14 noun cases. navigator.sendBeacon('https://www.google-analytics.com/collect', payload); You know that friend you have that speaks three languages fluentlyeffortlessly even? 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. These languages, which include Vietnamese and Mandarin, require correct pronunciation and inflection to create meaning for each word. 3. It takes approximately 44 weeks (1100 hours of practice) to reach professional working proficiency in these languages. It takes time, discipline, and a well of motivation that youll need to refill. There's a tongue-in-cheek book titled "Learn Greek in 25 years," but you'll be surprised at how . This is just one example of unique grammar rules that dont exist in other languages. Because youre already familiar with the alphabet, you have an understanding of characters and most letter sounds. Agreements | Thats why knowing the difficulty level of a language in relation to your native tongue can be useful. It goes without saying that the more time you spend practicing something, the better you will become at it. It has an incredible 14 noun cases and grammar packed with exceptions. Towards the end of 2022, Ukrainian forces wrested back the city of Kherson, while most of the rest of the region remained in Russian hands. Syllabaries: These use symbols to represent syllables. Experts say these things bring unlucky energy. 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. But to translate that same statement into Mandarin, youll need a measure word. The languages youll find in the second category are moderately challenging. Where its most commonly spoken: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Kazakhstan, Russian can be difficult for English speakers due to the confusing pronunciation. 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. But the more each language continued to evolve, the more it differed from its initial state. The Russian language is the official language of Russia and is ranked 3rd among the hardest languages to learn. Whats more, the Macedonian verb system is slightly different from other Slavic languages, as it doesnt use the infinitive form of verbs. Because Macedonian doesnt have a complex case system like other Slavic languages, its considered one of the easiest Slavic languages to learn. 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 Foreign Service Institute classifies most Slavic languages as Category IV languages - which means that they require 44 weeks or 1100 hours of study to reach conversational level. The West Slavic languages include Polish, Czech, and Slovak. They'll be very aware if there's no shade. Now, when she sees or hears Russian propaganda, Tarasiuk baulks. Greek. The takeaway here is that the farther your native language is from the language youre learning, the more challenging you may find your new language. - instead, Russians affix endings and use inflection to indicate the same kinds of tenses and action. How to Say Hello in Spanish: Casual and Ser vs. Estar: The Definitive Guide to Learning How to Order Food in French (with Example Conversations), Say a Heartfelt I Love You in 25 Languages, How to Say Hello in Spanish: Casual and Formal Greetings. Forget carpe diem. The term "Slavic" is a catch-all adjective for all languages in the group, and it is typically used to describe anything common to all or most Slavic languages. Logographic systems: These use characters to represent entire words or concepts. 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. For instance, the Polish word for happiness is szcezcie, featuring Polish digraphs (sz, cz) and a nasal E sound. The term hard language refers to their complexity. Pinyin is a phonetic alphabet for Mandarin, and is much easier to grasp since it uses the same letters as English's alphabet. In this post, well take a look at the easiest and hardest languages to learn, the factors that determine language difficulty, and a complete ranking of the worlds most widely spoken languagesincluding how long it takes to learn each language. Modern Greek is maybe the easiest language to learn that uses a different alphabet. Despite the fact that Greek roots are found throughout the English language, Greek is among the hardest languages for English speakers to learn, according to . Its the last thing an eager language learner wants to hear, but its also incredibly valuable, making it easier to stay motivated and disciplined. Plus, it doesnt even take that long to get used to the new alphabet, as its pretty straightforward! Some friends in Central Asia are also trying to avoid it. Arabic is a language most Mandarin speakers will find challenging. At first, we thought we needed to know our national language, but with the start of this full-scale war, the feeling changed from I have to to I want to, Zahalskyy told Al Jazeera by phone. Finnish. FSI language-learning categories are numbered like hurricaneshigher number, scarier language. It has 7 declension cases for nouns, adjectives, and pronouns. The longest word in Hungarian, megszentsgtelenthetetlensgeskedseitekrt, means for your [plural] continued behavior as if you could not be desecrated in English. 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. On the one hand, each letter only has one pronunciation ever. All adverbs and adjectives must have the same gender. When it comes to everyday communication, Russian remains even amid war one of Ukraines two main languages. Country with the greatest number of speakers: Egypt. 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). Includes lists of 100 common names. And because its placed at the very end of the sentence, you cant understand the meaning of whats being said until the sentence is finished. Albanian's 36-letter alphabet should clue you in that attempting to master this language is going to be a wild ride. These are the HARDEST LANGUAGES to learn ranked by the time it takes to be FLUENT in them! Whats the hardest language to learn if English is not your first language? The letter b sounds like v, and the letter h sounds like n.. ae0fcc31ae342fd3a1346ebb1f342fcb. The most often sounds like the E in women, and to the O in rope. The has no exact equivalent in most English accents. There are also Bulgarian speakers in some of the neighboring countries. 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. Its something they tried to tell me shouldnt exist; they wanted to suppress it but couldnt.. If you don't meet those two criteria, though, it is a very challenging language to master. According to Arel, any identification with Russian culture, including the Russian language, is untenable right now. Outside the home, Oleksandr and Natasha try to talk in Ukrainian, but when the door closes behind them, sticking to it is still difficult. However, if youre up for a challenge, these are the 25 hardest languages to learn. 6. Mandarin and Japanese are liable to give Hindi speakers a lot of trouble, in large part because they both involve learning completely new systems of writing. The Japanese writing system actually has three different scripts to learn (two are syllabaries and one is a logographic script, similar to Chinese characters). Hnz is hard enough that it's typical for Mandarin learners to learn a different writing system first, called pinyin. Where its most commonly spoken: China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore. 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. And if you're serious about learning Chinese, you'll have to tackle Chinese characters. Lets take a look at them in more detail. Generally, students require around 88 weeks of full-time study to reach proficiency in these languages. Russian grammar and phonetics would sound more familiar to you, and some Polish and Russian vocabulary is related. Todd Bridges and Gary Coleman played brothers. 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. All Rights Reserved. New: Lesson 17 - The 100 Most Used Words In Russian - The 100 most used words in Russian with a huge number of examples. Youll notice that many of these languages do not use the Latin alphabet. According to the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), Spanish belongs to category I by difficulty. What Level Of Difficulty Is Mandarin. The phrase I speak Spanish would be yo hablo Espaol, while you speak Spanish would be tu hablas Espaol.. Credit: Greek Reporter. Grammatically, verbs often come before the subject, while there are many dual forms of words in addition to the singular and plural forms. The Bulgarian writing system uses a Cyrillic alphabet, similar to the Russian alphabet but with some distinct differences. Top 20 Most Difficult Languages to Learn. It takes approximately 24-30 weeks (600-750 hours of practice) to reach professional working proficiency in these languages. Macedonian is the language spoken in Macedonia, which used to be part of the former Yugoslavia. Greek in particular is a highly inflected language, which means its words often change based on grammatical categories such as tense, number, and gender. In addition, Croatia is a small country with different dialects, making it difficult to grasp just one of them if youre trying to immerse yourself in the language while there. Russian speakers could also request Russian versions of other documents, such as marriage certificates. Hungarian is an agglutinative language. Conclusion: Very Difficult. They also have a relatively easy noun system. Hindi uses an abugida, which is different from the English alphabet and from hnz, a Chinese script that uses characters to represent entire words and concepts. Most Slavic languages implement an extensive system of cases in which the endings of nouns (declination), adjectives, and prepositions change depending on the case. Other languages with non-Latin alphabets, such as Russian and Greek, are also hard for Mandarin speakers. Answer (1 of 4): Very difficult. There are three different genders for nouns and various grammar rules unfamiliar to English speakers. var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest(); Maria Stambler, a Russia-American bilingual speaker, who used to teach English, explained: "Words and phrases like `Tina Turner' and `happy birthday' are hard to pronounce because Russians . In this category, it usually takes 88 weeks or 2200 hours to reach S-3/R-3 proficiency. Mexican Spanish vs. Spain Spanish: The Must-Know Differences. 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. Data Privacy and Security, The Complete List of Language Difficulty Rankings, Get the complete list of languages ranked by difficulty, Mexican Spanish vs. Spain Spanish: The Must-Know Differences. These are people who spent a minimum of 60 years of their life speaking in Russian. Does she think the Russian language will eventually disappear in Ukraine? Oleksandr Zahalskyy spent most of his life speaking only Russian. Easier, too, to keep your eye on the prizeyour personal language goalsat all times. Furthermore, Thai has its own script with 44 consonants, 18 vowels and six diphthongs to memorize. However, when you consider all non-English speakers together, there isnt just one answer. Despite being the most widely spoken native language in the world, Mandarin Chinese tops the list of the toughest languages to learn. But did you know that there are more than 10 different Slavic languages? Maybe its PTSD, but we react negatively to the media in Russian, she said. These are "super-hard languages" that are "exceptionally difficult for native English speakers" to learn, including Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Korean.
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