What is the most difficult language to learn?

[Natalie]

What do you think of learning languages? I think Russian is the most complicated language to learn.

[nighean-neonach]

Depends almost completely on your individual perspective (native language(s), prior experience with foreign languages, attitude and discipline, quality and availability of study materials, etc.)

For an English speaker, most Indo-European languages should be easier to learn than most non-Indo-European ones. On the other hand, many people find a language with a foreign script more difficult. Most people will confirm, anyway, that a language is indeed more difficult to learn if you are convinced that it is difficult right from the start

And this topic has been discussed here several times, by the way.

[Steisi]

Why is this in the English forum?

[Nukalurk]

Ah, since she is a Russian native speaker...is this another thread where native speakers try to boast about the complexity of their language in order to feel superior?

[Sol Invictus]

Ah, since she is a Russian native speaker...is this another thread where native speakers try to boast about the complexity of their language in order to feel superior?

Russian isn't that hard, but most people, who use latin (or any other) alphabet, have hard time reading it, which, of course, mkes leaning it more difficult.

I once saw a film (I think it was somewhere on web) about some prodigy, who could learn everything very fast - he participied in an experiment to find out how he manges to do it and they made him learn Icelandic stating that it was incredibly hard and even native speakers sometimes have problems with it

[kalemiye]

I took a course on Akkadian and the grammar was very close to that of Arabic and because of my prior knowledge of Arabic it seemed easy to me, but when I started learnigng the cuneiform script and the way it was used (a cuneiform letter could be either a logogram or a syllable or lord knows what), it made me not want to continue with it.

So yeah, as nighean-neonach said, the difficulty of a language relies on many things, depending on what you are good at, it'd be easier or more difficult to learn.

[JackFrost]

Moved where it should be.


I'm not even going to mention again that all languages are equally easy/hard. It's all relative like beauty.

[Formiko]

Moved where it should be.


I'm not even going to mention again that all languages are equally easy/hard. It's all relative like beauty.

I'd have to disagree..most Native American Indians can make a grown man cry (especially Cherokee)..and Georgian is known cause cerebral spasms

Российская легко!
(или Русский легок.)

[nighean-neonach]

I'd have to disagree..most Native American Indians can make a grown man cry (especially Cherokee)..and Georgian is known cause cerebral spasms

Even with those, I'd say it depends a lot on the attitude and on the resources used. These languages are typically mostly studied in an academic context, by people who do not intend to speak them fluently in a natural context, so there is little well-organised study material available.

[Zorba]

Moreover, you're talking about an English speaker learning Cherokee or Georgian, which are difficult for an English speaker not so much because of their "innate" difficulty but rather because they are non-Indo-European, structurally very different, have poor resources, and it's difficult to immerse yourself in the society (without going to live in Georgia, which most people don't do).

I gave up Georgian not so much because of the difficulty of the grammar, but rather the fact that to me (a native English speaker) the phonology was so different and the vocabulary was a nightmare to learn. This was compounded by the fact that there are virtually no decent textbooks for learning the language and a lack of other resources (dictionaries, accessible reading / listening material etc.) All of these factors are external to the language itself.

[Bjarn]

It's all relative like beauty.

Hehehe I like that analogy.
Just thought I'd say that.

For me, the hardest languages are the ones with either a) totally different syntax or b) least interesting to me.
The hardest thing for me to handle with language I think is syntax.

[sa wulfs]

The hardest language is always the one I'm currently learning.

I think I stole that line from someone, but regardless, it's still true.

[JackFrost]

Moved where it should be.


I'm not even going to mention again that all languages are equally easy/hard. It's all relative like beauty.

I'd have to disagree..most Native American Indians can make a grown man cry (especially Cherokee)..and Georgian is known cause cerebral spasms

Российская легко!
(или Русский легок.)

Maybe for an English speaker, yes, but you cannot make that overgeneralizing term because it's not the case for everyone.

I'll repeat myself: All languages are equally hard. From the linguistic point of view.

[Makrasiroutioun]

What makes Georgian so hard is that, apart from the alien vocabulary and utterly different grammatical features such as split ergativity, it is both very agglutinative AND highly irregular. So it deviates from the typical highly regular agglutinative language such as Finnish and the Turkic languages.

I put Georgian on hold until I can befriend a native. Most of the good material is in Russian!

All languages are equal, so most people say. Though I still can't wrap my head around these comparisons:

Basque vs. any Romance language
Navajo vs. Afrikaans
Tsez vs. Tok Pisin
Mohawk vs. any creole
Korean vs. Swahili

[Ennys]

I think modern Irish is very difficult, because it has a weird spelling, a pronounciation which I have to learn by heart because I never guess it from the spelling, and some sounds I cannot reproduce, plus the broad-slender variants between which I can not always hear the difference
Broad dh, anyone?


And finnish must be very difficult, from what I have heard, because of its many inflections...

[Glowim]

Moved where it should be.


I'm not even going to mention again that all languages are equally easy/hard. It's all relative like beauty.

I'd have to disagree..most Native American Indians can make a grown man cry (especially Cherokee)..and Georgian is known cause cerebral spasms

Российская легко!
(или Русский легок.)

Maybe for an English speaker, yes, but you cannot make that overgeneralizing term because it's not the case for everyone.

I'll repeat myself: All languages are equally hard. From the linguistic point of view.

After all this reading, I continue to disagree with you (sorry..!). Obviously it depends on what is your mothertongue and which languages you already know (and on the textbook you use, and everything all of you said..). But it depends also on grammar syntax. For example, I'm italian mothertongue, and, you know, french is not so diffenent for words and grammar rules from italian. But I found very easier english than french, beacuse syntax is very simpler (for examples, for verbs..). And more distant from italian than french is.
So, in my opinion there are actually some objective elments to say if a language is harder than another.

[DelBoy]

I think modern Irish is very difficult, because it has a weird spelling, a pronounciation which I have to learn by heart because I never guess it from the spelling, and some sounds I cannot reproduce, plus the broad-slender variants between which I can not always hear the difference

Irish spelling is actually quite regular in terms of pronunciation, so once you learn the rules, you should always be able to pronounce a word from reading it.

Broad dh, anyone?

Éasca péasca - depending on it's position in the word, either a 'breathy' G sound (voiced velar fricative?), a /j/ or it's not pronounced

[nighean-neonach]

And finnish must be very difficult, from what I have heard, because of its many inflections...

Oh heavens, why do people always make such a fuss about inflections Memorizing a few endings is not that wild, and with a bit of logical thinking the use of the most common cases is not too frightening either.

[Steisi]

Yeah, I'm always desperately trying to say Finnish isn't cryptic, it's just a different way of thinking.

But they've already decided it's hard and used it as an excuse not to bother, so of course they're not going to get anywhere with it. (I don't mean Ennys here, I mean eg. Erasmus students which come here )

[kalemiye]

Yeah, I'm always desperately trying to say Finnish isn't cryptic, it's just a different way of thinking.

But they've already decided it's hard and used it as an excuse not to bother, so of course they're not going to get anywhere with it. (I don't mean Ennys here, I mean eg. Erasmus students which come here )

I don't get why Erasmus students don't want to learn the host country's language! I mean, no matter how useless it might seem, it's part of the culture of the country!