The most difficult langooa... langue... languages?

[Kafonix]

What do you think the most difficult language is, to understand and learn.

 

I'd probably go with traditional chinese.

 

大聲笑

[VIPΣR]

Definitely Mandarin Chinese. I tried to learn it, but Jeses it is damn hard.

Edited September 23, 2014 by Undertaker13

[*MURDOC*]

I agree, tonal languages in general are very hard for anyone used to speaking traditional languages to learn and understand, and that's not even mentioning the written language.

[Coin]

I think it is largely dependent on what your native tongue is.

[Dutch Psycho]

Dutch is niet so difficult om te leren right?

[Melech]

I agree that traditional Chinese is one of the most difficult languages. Japanese is also very difficult. The most difficult thing of those languages is the alphabet. It's very complex and has too many characters.

[r0eladn]

Klingon? KAPLA

[RoadRunner71]

Basque. It’s unique, pre-indoeuropean, it isn't related to any other known language, it's a mess that nobody knows where the hell did it come from. Probably from hell itself.

[I was a Junk]

Well spoken Chinese actually seems pretty easy although I've only taken the basics so don't rely on this entirely. But grammar is incredibly simple. The writing is defintely hard though even when learning the simplified version. Arabic seems pretty hard. I heard that there can be up to 13 different words for the same verb depending on where you use it in the sentence. This is coming from a native English speaker though so it really depends on what your native tongue is.

Edited September 23, 2014 by Junko Enoshima

[Killerdude]

Definitely English, if it's not your first language

 

Words are spelled exactly the same, yet pronounced differently and have different meanings.

 

Read and Read.

Lead and Lead.

 

So many more.

[Doc Rikowski]

English is not as difficult as some other very complicated languages.

The grammar is much more easier than the grammar of Latin languages, especially the verbs.

The fact that you can use almost the same verb form for all subjects make things less complicated.

Of course the first approach to it can be hard but people eventually will learn it.

I've seen anglo-saxons have huge difficulties in learning Latin languages instead.

Especially the pronounce.

[sivispacem]

Finnish is an odd one. You expect it to be like the other Nordic languages but it isn't even remotely similar. As a native English speaker, some really f*cking weird combinations of two vowels or two consonants which don't really go together. It reads very sing-song but is actually quite monotone. Plus the number system is silly, which invariably results in people abbreviating it, which then means anyone who has learnt the "classical" numbers can't understand you.

 

Thank f*ck they all speak decent English.

[Cudwieser]

Japanese isn't too bad. Two primary texts to learn (when romanised they follow the same romanised sounds but are simply written differently. Also when Romanised The common Japanese alphabet uses fewer letters that there is in the English alphabet. This makes Japanese easier to word and pronounce IMO, than some English words. Where difficulty lies is in the tradition Japanese Text of kanji (this is why people seem to have difficulty with Chinese as Kanji is a Chinese Text. It just carries different meanings in Japanese). Japanese Grammar is better than English in my opinion, but will take a while to learn the proper particles for each meaning and then the Kanji in written Japanese.

 

On a side note, Chinese and Japanese speakers generally have a worse time getting the English Language than we do getting theirs due to the higher number of exceptions in English, the number of foreign words used and the very random spelling and complicated syntax.

 

As for unique languages that are tricky, Hungarian (Like Finnish) is apparently pretty tricky. Also one part of the Romance Languages and European Languages in general I always hated was the gender.

[Gentlebreeze]

Definitely Objective C.

[Payne Killer]

Mandarin Chinese

Mandarin Chinese

Mandarin Chinese, its difficult.

[Frank Brown]

Esperanto.

[Alexander]

To me, Mandarin Chinese, because I get really confused with the writing.

[Danz.]

Portuguese. [/thread]

[EphemeralStar]

Tagalog is a little hard with certain pronounciations ... lots of ng + nga sounds... I haven't really studied it much though, but it'd probably get easier if I did.
Japanese isn't hard at all imo - just requires you to memorize a lot of writing systems. Once you get hiragana and katakana down it's just kanji that's... annoying to say the least.
Spanish is easy, I just don't like how there's masculine and feminine for pretty much everything.- I also don't like how certain feminine things you'd use the masculine way of saying it? But it's okay - I know a few people are striving to change that.

If you want a hard language .. I'd say any indigenous language. I know my own language (blackfoot) is pretty hard. I still can't properly pronounce "I love you" I think the spelling of it is, "kitsiikakomimmo"
but the pronounciation is more like: gits-u-kak-ko-mime? I dunno -__- meanwhile you have easy words like "mataki" meaning potato lol. If only I knew more.

 

[Kiffster]

The most difficult language I had to learn was Northern Sotho. It was our third language after Afrikaans and English, but damn I struggled with it. Thank Modimo those days are long gone.

[ChrilLe]

Many foreigners claim that Danish is a pain in the butt to learn.

 

The first language I find difficult is German. It's easy to pronounce the words, but otherwise the language itself difficult IMO, and cause of that, I'd never learned it in school. 2sad4me.

 

The next language must be Spanish for me. If you have the tongue, the 'rrr' sounds you're supposed to make would be easy, but how the f*ck am I supposed to know by just looking on the words, that 'll' is pronounced like a 'j' and 'j' is pronounced like a 'h'?

 

Like Javier - Ha-vee-ær. Wtf?

 

Anyway, I do look forward to learn Spanish, it's a beautiful language that interests me a lot, like English.

Edited September 24, 2014 by ChrilLe

[Pavle]

I'm gonna go with german. It's just too difficult to learn.

[Doc Rikowski]

Portuguese. [/thread]

 

Not really if you are Italian. Although funnily enough Spanish people have a hard time learning it.

Once I knew Portuguese it was definitely easy to learn Spanish.

Now I even understand Galician cause it's a mix of the two.

But at first Portuguese was hard, not written but spoken. Sounds like Russian.

The Brazilian version sounds closer to Italian.

Portuguese people are very good at learning languages.

Among Latin people they are definitely the ones that speak better English (being the Spanish the worse).

Portuguese can speak English, Italian and Spanish almost with no accent.

[Alhalish]

Welsh.

 

[nkaujrog]

Even though I'm Hmong .. I'd say Hmong (it's tonal). LOL.

I've been yearning to learn Spanish, so that's a work in progress -- words just seem like tongue twisters sometimes.

Wears me out. Haha..

[Der Süden]

If a Dutch person tells me that Dutch is hard to learn, I laugh at him/her. English was easy to learn for me and the major northern European languages (excluding Finnish and Icelandic) seem easy too. That's probably because they (not Finnish) are Germanic languages that share similarities with my mother tongue, which is also Germanic.

 

Anyways, one of the languages that would be hard for me to learn is probably some African language with clicking sounds:

 

 

Edited September 24, 2014 by Nordniedersachse

[Kafonix]

Definitely English, if it's not your first language

 

Words are spelled exactly the same, yet pronounced differently and have different meanings.

 

Read and Read.

Lead and Lead.

 

So many more.

No! I'm from Germany and English is definitely... definetely... defineitly... NOT the most difficult language!

[killerbee25]

 

Portuguese. [/thread]

 

Not really if you are Italian. Although funnily enough Spanish people have a hard time learning it.

Once I knew Portuguese it was definitely easy to learn Spanish.

Now I even understand Galician cause it's a mix of the two.

But at first Portuguese was hard, not written but spoken. Sounds like Russian.

The Brazilian version sounds closer to Italian.

Portuguese people are very good at learning languages.

Among Latin people they are definitely the ones that speak better English (being the Spanish the worse).

Portuguese can speak English, Italian and Spanish almost with no accent.

 

I can confirm this, I've had Spanish people telling me Portuguese is difficult, but I think Spanish is just easy to learn. Also I'm pretty good at languages. Still, I've heard from a friend that Basque is difficult to learn.

Edited September 24, 2014 by killerbee25

[make total destroy]

Welsh.

 

 

It's just drunk English.

[Trinette]

Well spoken Chinese actually seems pretty easy although I've only taken the basics so don't rely on this entirely. But grammar is incredibly simple. The writing is defintely hard though even when learning the simplified version. Arabic seems pretty hard. I heard that there can be up to 13 different words for the same verb depending on where you use it in the sentence. This is coming from a native English speaker though so it really depends on what your native tongue is.

Arabic is pretty damn hard. I've been living in the city with the most dense population of Arabic people in the United States my entire life and there are only a couple dozen sentences and few hundred words I've picked up on by being around a lot of my Arabic friends and I'm still pretty much a beginner at the language. I can't pick up on anything fluent speakers are saying in a conversation unless it's a pretty significant word I've heard for years and I can't even write out or remember a single written thing.