What is the most difficult language to learn?

[Formiko]

Cantonese.
It has 7 tones, and many Characters.

But beyond that, how hard is it really? As far as I have observed, the grammar is quite simple.

It is quite simple. Mandarin and Cantonese are virtually the same gramatically. Korean is rough. The alphabet is a breeze, but native Koreans have said that Korean is difficult. (Not sure why though. I speak enough Korean to get free food at the local deli Anyong haseyo!
kopi, chushiposhiyo!
Kamsamda! Chomaneyo!

[Narbleh]

Just my two cents... I've found French to be a big pain in the ass, not because of its grammar or pronunciation, but because of how its vocabulary works. There are just so many different things that are said differently than English, and that's what takes forever and a half to learn, and what makes the difference between natural French and foreigner French.
An example I learned today:
"I forget the last time we spoke." is NOT "J'oublie la dernière fois où nous avons parlé." but more like "J'ai oublié à quand remontait la dernière fois où nous avons parlé."

It's just a neverending string of vocabulary and expressions to learn. I guess that's how every foreign language is, though... Some are easier to get up to speed in, but they all take a lifetime to get truly good at.

On the other hand, I've been finding Finnish to be very difficult to make a basic foundation in, because to even make a basic sentence, you need to know about consonant gradation, verb types, and how to form cases, and all of that takes a rather long time to get set up properly.

Swedish is proving very difficult because of its pronunciation. The grammar is mercifully similar to English's in many ways, but when I stumble over my own tongue to actually say the words, it doesn't help much

[TaylorS]

For us English speakers the thing that can make a language hard are:

Not being Indo-European
Lots of inflectional morphology
Non-obvious and irregular grammatical gender
Having a phonology very different from those of Germanic or Romance languages
Tones
Phonemic vowel length distinctions dominate over tense-lax distinctions.
wacky Celtic-style consonant mutations.

[Sean of the Dead]

For us English speakers the thing that can make a language hard are:

Not being Indo-European
Lots of inflectional morphology
Non-obvious and irregular grammatical gender
Having a phonology very different from those of Germanic or Romance languages
Tones
Phonemic vowel length distinctions dominate over tense-lax distinctions.
wacky Celtic-style consonant mutations.

Yep, that pretty much sums it all up.

Personally, I despise tones immensely, and NEVER want to learn a language with them, as they seem so impossible to learn, to me.
Although, I don't have any problem with phonology/pronunciation; I'm pretty good at imitating sounds people make.

I would like to learn Icelandic or Faeroese, but seeing that the grammar of each is about the same complexity of German, I really don't want to have to go through all that again.
Also, with English being my native language, the more regular a language is the better.

Inflections and conjugations don't really bother me, as long as there are rules that can be learned.

[Formiko]

Inflections and conjugations don't really bother me, as long as there are rules that can be learned.

Truly, for us English speakers, any language that is NOT English is difficult.
And to add to your comment above, German doesn't have rules, it has haphazard machine gun shots. To figure the gender of a word, it's basically a 3-sided coin toss. I default to masculine nowadays because it's easier to do the cases with a masculine word.
For example, is USB-Speicher-Stick masculine? My brain is thinking all technological neoligisms should be neuter, but that would make SENSE!

[loqu]

I find German genders rather predictable. There are unpredictable words too, but they are a minority.

[Kenny]

Yeah. Also, there are some endings that define the gender in the first place. Such as "-keit", "-ung", "-schaft" and plenty of others. But I usually get the genders right not only in these cases, but also with words whose gender is supposed to be unpredictable and yet I can get it right by bare guessing/relying on my instincts.

[Mongol]

For sheer monstrous difficulty, I think it's probably hard to beat North west Caucasian languages such as Circassian, Kabardinian, and Abkhazian. From what I have read about them, any one who tries to learn any of them must be a brave soul indeed.
The number of different consonant phonemes is staggering, and no existing alphabet can represent the exact pronunciation. In Abkhazian, each consonant has 8 different positions of articulation in the mouth ! The grammar is also vastly different from what most people are accustomed to.
They must even be extremely difficult for children to learn who are born speaking these languages. Imagine what a Circassian child with speech impediments must go through !

[TaylorS]

Inflections and conjugations don't really bother me, as long as there are rules that can be learned.

Truly, for us English speakers, any language that is NOT English is difficult.
And to add to your comment above, German doesn't have rules, it has haphazard machine gun shots. To figure the gender of a word, it's basically a 3-sided coin toss. I default to masculine nowadays because it's easier to do the cases with a masculine word.
For example, is USB-Speicher-Stick masculine? My brain is thinking all technological neoligisms should be neuter, but that would make SENSE!

OMG, when I was trying to learn German the non-obviousness of grammatical gender drove me nuts. Another problem was with strong verbs, I had trouble remembering which verbs were strong and which strong verb class the verb was in, I always found myself "reverting" to simply "Germanizing" English strong verbs.

[Narbleh]

Genders also have never been a tough spot for me. By now in French, I can get the correct gender of words I know 99% of the time, and words I don't know probably 95% of the time. The only words you can't really make an educated guess about are some that end in vowel-consonant-e.

Swedish genders are also easy to remember... I don't know it well enough to correctly guess the genders of unknown words, but if I can remember if it's -er/-ar, it must be an en word

[ILuvEire]

When I took my trip with Swedish, the genders were so easy! It made my happy.

Note: Don't learn two Gendered languages. German and Italian often have contrasts that are VERY confusing. >.<

[Sean of the Dead]

When I took my trip with Swedish, the genders were so easy! It made my happy.

Note: Don't learn two Gendered languages. German and Italian often have contrasts that are VERY confusing. >.<

BUT, if they are of the same family (Germanic, Romance, etc.) they usually belong to the same gender.

[ILuvEire]

One that drives me inSANE is sun/moon.

die Sonne: f
der Mond: m
il sole: m
la luna: f

Plus there's that neuter thrown in there. It just confuses everything. >.<

[Sean of the Dead]

Yeah, but I truly hate Romance languages, so that won't bother me.

Off-topic: ILuvEire, you should update your blog more, I check cheking back but there hasn't been anything new.

OH! And when you get to Slavic month, you should do Macedonian (or Bulgarian).

[loqu]

But Romance languages have often a lot of differences in gender even with words coming from Latin.

[Lietmotiv]

Indeed,Moldavian and Romanian have 3 genders,masculine,neutral and feminine.

[obler9]

OH! And when you get to Slavic month, you should do Macedonian (or Bulgarian).

A Macedonian language does not exist: the Macedonians speak Greek since Macedonia is a greek region. If you mean the language spoken in Fyrom (Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia) that's in fact just a kind of Bulgarian.

[obler9]

Indeed,Moldavian and Romanian have 3 genders,masculine,neutral and feminine.

Actually Rumanian has not a neuter gender. The so called Rumanian "neuter" gender is not a real neuter gender but it's just a group of ambigenous nouns.

[obler9]

I can speak for Europe only...
It seems the Slavic languages are very difficult for a non-slavic speaker, but also Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian are extremely difficult for the ones who speak an indoeuropean language (that is every european except the Finnish, the Estonians, the Hungarians). I don't know anything about Basque, and I wonder how difficult it cans be....
An other very difficult language to learn is obviously Lithuanian!

At the end of the story... as regards Europe (and the national languages), I think Hungarian.

[Formiko]

I can speak for Europe only...
It seems the Slavic languages are very difficult for a non-slavic speaker, but also Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian are extremely difficult for the ones who speak an indoeuropean language (that is every european except the Finnish, the Estonians, the Hungarians). I don't know anything about Basque, and I wonder how difficult it cans be....
An other very difficult language to learn is obviously Lithuanian!

At the end of the story... as regards Europe (and the national languages), I think Hungarian.

Why obviously Lithuanian? I also think that the only difficult aspect of Hungarian is the vocabulary. Besides that, I think Hungarian is pleasantly refreshing to grasp.