Top 5 Hardest Languages to Learn

Learning a new language is something that we wouldn’t describe as an easy task. There are a lot of things you need to take into consideration. Many people make the mistake of believing that they just need to learn new words and grammatic. However, we can see that language is much more than that. We are talking about knowing the way the people who speak it think.

Plus, it is a great insight into the culture and a great way for you to understand it properly. It means that you will need to step out of your comfort zone and change the way you think. The reason is quite simple, every language comes with its combinations. Not understanding them means that you simply don’t know it properly. The same can be said about any language you try to learn.

However, the level of difficulty can get even higher in some cases. Naturally, it all depends on your native tongue. For instance, if you are an English native, it’s much easier to learn German than Arabic. Thankfully, it is quite easy to enroll in some language lessons online. Now, we would like to talk about some of the toughest ones to learn.
There are many reasons for that, and we will get into some of the most important reasons for each one of these. Without further ado, let’s take a look at some of these.

1. Mandarin Chinese

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When talking about Mandarin Chinese, we are talking about some kind of paradox. It is widely perceived as the hardest language in the world to learn. At the same time, it has the most speakers, more than any other language out there. There are many different reasons why Mandarin is so hard, particularly for Europeans and Americans is that it has a unique lettering system. Widely different from Latin.

However, we need to say that writing is not the hardest part of it. Furthermore, we can see that it has a tonal nature that is nothing like we are used to. Plus, many different dialects have their regulation, which can be pretty hard to follow sometimes. When talking about these tones, it means that a certain word can have a different meaning based on how you pronounce it.

2. Arabic

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The next one we would like to talk about in Arabic. As is the case with Chinese, Arabic has a completely different alphabet from what we have ever seen. At the same time, it has a different direction of reading, from right to left, which can be pretty confusing for many. Besides, it has completely different sounds and speech patterns than any language in the world. It is similar to some languages in the Middle East, but no further than that.

One of the hardest things to learn about Arabic is to understand the vowel markings and having proper control over them. As is the case with Chinese, the way you say it determines the meaning of the word. If you take a look at some studies, Arabic is the fifth most spoken one in the world. What makes it easier from Chinese is that it has just 28 script letters, which is much less than hundreds of symbols.

3. Hungarian

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Now, we’ve come to Europe and the hardest language on the old continent. We are talking about Hungarian. Many people don’t know that is a part of the Finno-Ugric group, alongside Estonian, Finnish, and Livonian. It needs to be said that it has some of the hardest grammar you will ever see, despite it having just 26 different letters. It has a strange rule that suffixes dictate the meaning, not the order of the words.

Since it has no ties to any other languages in Europe, except Finnish, it is easily one of the stiffest ones to learn. According to some foreigners that have managed to learn Hungarian, we can hear that they thought that the locals were always joking about them because they couldn’t make sense of what they say. Instead, we can see that it is just not the same order of words we can see in other tongues.

4. Japanese

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The Japanese language is a pretty interesting one. It doesn’t have any kind of tonal differences. However, that doesn’t make it any easier to learn it. Naturally, mastering the writing system is particularly hard. Not only that, there are a couple of different lettering arrangements. Learning all of these is so difficult that even the Japanese don’t know all of them. In most cases, you will see that they mainly know two of them.

You are probably aware of the fact that Japanese are always polite, so it is always to express your respect and gratitude in every moment you need to do it. To do it right, you will need to be aware of all the hierarchical forms, which can be quite hard to understand if you don’t invest your best efforts. In the end, we would like to provide you with an interesting fact that it is the fastest one in the world.

5. Russian

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Even if you are Slavic, you will have a hard time learning Russian. Not to mention that Westerners will have an extremely hard time understanding and learning it. According to FSI, we can see that is rated as a really problematic one to learn if you are an English speaker. Sure, it is not the stiffest one in the world, but you will surely need to invest a lot of effort to overcome it.

The reason there are so many roadblocks that are completely different from what you have experienced so far. The sentences are not always straightforward and there are a lot of sub-contexts that are not always understood at first glance. Above all, learning a Cyrillic alphabet can be quite hard to understand despite the number of letters is not as high as in some other languages.

The Conclusion

Here are the toughest languages to comprehend by foreigners, especially if you are an English native. Therefore, you will need to study hard to master them.