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What is the hardest language?
44 replies
DaminehGessle said on March 9, 2004 06:46:
A while ago, my roommate made a comment on English being the hardest language ever. Well knowing that she once said Japan has the best pastry in the world and other dumb comments like that, I laughed at her. I told her to try learning Arabic for a while. Then she’d know how hard a language could get. Seriously! I can only argue English is the hardest if I’ve tried to learn all other languages. Just like saying Japanese pastry is the best when I’ve never tried Danish or French pastry.
I was watching hockey tonight. My team lost 9-2 unfortunately but what made me really mad was when she got out of her room 3 minutes before the end of the game calling people who watch hockey losers and that baseball is the best sport. She also said there is no point in watching a hopeless game. She tried to be funny by standing in front of the TV making stupid faces for a while but left when I gave her the angry look! Oh well... made me rethink all her stupid remarks! So I went online and searched for the hardest language. Couldn’t come into any conclusion! After all, I have been exposed to so many languages that I still think.... Oh well I don’t want to say what I really think!
You tell me what language you think is the hardest. Don’t say anything if English/Swedish/etc. is what you’ve been exposed to all your life.
kachina008 said on March 9, 2004 08:33:
from the languages i know, i think that would be chinese. more than 2000 characters, with a line or a dot to make the difference between the words.
P-p-p-pelle said on March 9, 2004 10:17:
Dutch: since none of the frenchspeaking idiots in belgium seems to know this language although it is spoken by a large majority of its inhabitants.
kachina008 said on March 9, 2004 11:07:
It’s all relative...I live in NL and trying to learn Dutch...it ain’t so hard :P
Ferdan said on March 9, 2004 12:27:
Chinese, and some others more (asiatic)
Because they don’t only speak with words, they do it with tones too.
If you say something with a tone, and then say the same thing with a different tone... it gets another totally different meaning.
pietROxette said on March 9, 2004 13:27:
Definitely Hungarian. Not for me, as I’m a native speaker of it, but it’s almost impossible for a foreigner to learn it. The only little chance for foreigner to be able to speak the language is to live here permanently at least for 5-10 years. Only the pronounciation is easy (what you write is what you say), but there are so many grammatical rules, loads of suffixes, verb conjugations (several of them, actually), a lot of them you can’t really explain, it’s just so. This is why you simply can’t learn this language at a language school abroad, that’s really impossible.
Esperanto was definitely the easiest language (this is why it was made) for me to learn, you can speak it without problems after two months of learning on your own. English is quite easy too, at least you can reach a level where you understand most things and you can get understood. It doesn’t have a difficult grammar, although the pronounciation and the spelling might be difficult for some. Italian was a bit harder to learn, as there is some very ugly grammar in it (congiuntivo, passato remoto - eek!), but it’s not too difficult to speak it. Swedish... although I haven’t learnt it for too long, just 2 months, but I find it easy to understand written text, a bit harder to understand spoken word- and it’s the hardest for me to speak it. The hardest part was the plural - article stuff (flicka-flickor-flickorna)...
Denstandigaresan said on March 9, 2004 13:59:
A woman on TV here, spoke a bit in her native African language... it was just a series of tones and clicks! I couldn’t even begin to roll my tongue around those clicks!
city_girl said on March 9, 2004 14:49:
i’d hav to say any language that has symbols for their words like in chinese and japanese becuz u hav to learn the language-meaning how to speak it, and the symbols becuz there is no alphabet at all. but that’s my opinion even though i’m probly right.
city_girl said on March 9, 2004 14:50:
i also agree wit den. african languages must be really hard too.
ally77 said on March 9, 2004 18:38:
I would say Chinese, Japanese and also Russian! I had a friend who studying Chinese I thought she was crazy at the time to spead 4 years studying at university but she proved herself and is now happily married living in China teaching English/Chinese. She recently took up Japanese as well!
I love how most European countries get to learn English from an early age through TV/RADIO etc.. it is such a great achievment for people to do this.
It so poor how over here in the UK most people don’t take a second language till they start secondary school at the age of 11. For me I spent 2 years studying German, 1 year studying French and then two years taking a GCSE in Spanish! by the time I left school I could barley remember German and French and my Spanish now .... well lets not go there!
One thing is for sure should I ever have children I will ensure they can speak another language from early on through no doubt private tution. It is so wonderful to beable to speak another language!
How do others rate they way languages are taught in Europe?
KixGuy said on March 9, 2004 20:40:
Well, I’ve heard that the hardest is Chinese, because of the numerous symbols they have (don’t ask me how many!). And then the second hardest is Portuguese, because of the big variety of the conjugations of verbs. I speak Portuguese and I can say it’s really hard! In English you say: “I love, you love, he/she loves, we love, you love, they love” for the verb To Love. In Portuguese, for the same verb (Amar), we say: “Eu amo, tu amas, ele/ela ama, nós amamos, vós amais, eles amam”. In English you have 2 variations (Present): love and loves (third person). In Portuguese we have 6 variations! Now, can you imagine the confusion we Portuguese talkers make? Spanish is very similar to Portuguese. They must suffer as well hehehe...
ATLTK said on March 9, 2004 21:18:
estudio español y me parece que no es tan dificil
pero vasco si creo que es muy dificil
I studdy spanish and I dont think its that hard but but I think that Basque is really hard
DaminehGessle said on March 9, 2004 21:40:
pietROxette: I totally agree with you. Same with Farsi. What you write is totally different than what you say. For example, if I want to speak as written on a paper, people wouldn’t get a word of what I say!
Arabic I find to be very hard to learn and speak. You change ’e’ to ’o’ and the meaning of the entire sentence changes.
DaminehGessle said on March 9, 2004 21:41:
Judith: I said “exposed” not “what you have been speaking”. If I’ve never made the attempt or even heard someone speak another language, how could I judge that language? That’s why I said what I said.
MiracleMan said on March 9, 2004 23:42:
Russian was a bitch to try to learn—especially pronunciation. Just to wrap my mouth around “Hello” was challenge.
I think any language where the alphabet is drastically different from the one you’re familiar with adds another level of difficulty to the process.
Aaso said on March 10, 2004 13:04:
For those who said Chines : have you ever heard Vietnamies (or whatever it called) ?? I think they even don’t say a word they just make noises and shake their hands but in Chines yo ucan hear some letters like CH and R and T and G but in Vietnamies you can hardly recognize any letter!!
For those who said Dutch : as it is my first topic these days I don’t think that its too dificult but even I can say thats too easy .. lots of words from Germans and Lots of them from Englsih!! just turn T to D and G to KH ... thats it!!!
pietROxette said on March 10, 2004 13:47:
Many languages use verb conjugation (Portuguese, Italian, etc.), however, to make it more complicated, in Hungarian, there are two types of conjugation for all words. You have to use a different conjugation if you say “I’m writing A letter” than you use for “I’m writing THE letter (to my friend)”. Of course, there are different forms of the verb - due to the conjugation - for all personal pronouns, so actually for all verbs it’s not 6, but 2x6 for all tenses! Confusing, eh?
Jud (moderator) said on March 10, 2004 18:14:
this with the “A letter” and “THE letter” exists in Swedish too, Finnish, slavic (slavian??) languages.. the Slovakian girls that studied German with me hat problems with adding the “der, die, das etc” article to the words..
But I think most difficult should be those where besides learning the words, conjugations, etc, you also have to learn the letters and how to pronounce them. There was a guy from Japan in my last course, it was fun to see him write - he tried to explain some letters but hihi no way :P He also had problems with the verbs in German cuz Japanese (I think he said) only have 1 form of verb and then they know if it’s in past/present/future etc by the other words/temporal adverbs... Like “i sing yesterday” or “i sing tomorrow” sort of..
And another mate knew some arabian - hell, she wrote my name and some sentences for me but it all looked the same :P Not to mention how to read that :D
I love languages, I wish I had the time, money and brain to study at least 10 more :(
DaminehGessle said on March 10, 2004 19:38:
Judith you mean Arabic? It’s a freaking hard language!!! Holy shoooooot! Oh god it’s tough. Oh wow jeeez no no no! When I write Farsi which is similar in writing to Arabic, people say it’s as if you are drawing something. It’s non-stop haha.
zeeshan said on March 10, 2004 22:16:
Arabic yes hard but not the hardest. You always have been a bit thick Damineh but anyway....
I read somewhere (only I don’t remember where?:s) that Chinese is the most hardest language in the world.
I tried to learn German and I found that to be a bit difficult :(
Z
Jud (moderator) said on March 10, 2004 23:43:
@ zee: German IS difficult :D
I think “standard” Chinesse is difficult itself.. and then add the hundreds of dialects it has ;)
Majdy said on March 11, 2004 04:42:
Arabic I guess. because I ONCE tried to learn that at school. after six month studying it, I learn... NOTHING :P
I think I had problem in studying languange that in “symbols” ( I don’t know what to call it). so, I think japanese and chinese will be so hard too...
Hey, how about the Aramic? the laguage that Mel Gibson use for his movie, Passion of The Christ? I bet it will be so hard too.
Roxfever said on March 11, 2004 21:38:
Of course there are many African languages so I don’t know how hard it is to learn them, but I was told that for example Swaheli (don’t know if this is the correct English spelling) is one of the easiest languages in the world, at least as far as grammar is concernd. Probably we would have some problems with the pronunciation though. But I tried, it isn’t that hard either.
Icelandic is quite a difficult language as well. We had 2 weeks time to practice saying 1 word correctly but couldn’t do it. Horrible.
infofarmer said on March 11, 2004 22:06:
Don’t blame Arabic! It’s not hard for a european to learn it. My father made a lot people talk arabic in two weeks, bringing them to perfect knowledge in just two or three years. He’s one of the best arabists in Russia, has written many books and articles about it, and his opinion is that traditional Arabic is a very logical language. The pronunciation differs from european languages, but at least it uses the same sound system (not tonal system, like in Chinese).
In fact it’s possible to judge about how much a language difficult to learn. Firstly, what time does it take to start speaking fluently; to read and write, as well as express complicated thoughts; to conceive the matter of language, its history, rules and system. The first too skills (considering every language) come in a few months of intense studying. While the last one comes after years of research and practice. If we judge by the latter, english and japanese would be the most difficult.
havoncruise said on March 13, 2004 04:49:
I don’t think anyone could actually say what language is the hardest other than assumptions.
I assume that languages that has their own writings (or alphabets) is probably hard like Arabic, Japanese, Chinese, etc.
In terms of speaking or listening, it depends on your ability to learn. For example, people who have a musical ear tend to learn faster in speaking or pronounciation, this is because they can imitate what they hear much quickly than those who doesn’t have the musical ear.
Santi said on March 14, 2004 18:19:
AS far as I know, Arabic writing is not only used by Arabic language...
wendy said on March 14, 2004 18:22:
I have no idea,i already find it hard to understand my uncle when he talks in his dialect :s :D
Mari said on March 16, 2004 22:20:
Judith, I maybe understand you wrong, but you wrote that also Finnish has this with the “A letter” and “THE letter” . Nope, Finnish doesen’t have. It’s only “letter”.
blunek said on June 12, 2004 17:56:
I would say that the hardest language is Chinese - it‘s like learning three languages in the same time :0) And also Polish :0P
RoxHard said on June 12, 2004 18:32:
I think one of the asian languages would be the hardest - maybe Japanese
LittleSpooky said on June 12, 2004 22:28:
I think that the hardest language to learn is one that you don’t work at.
Every language has it’s “difficulties”.
American (the ACTUAL language spoken in the US) has various dialects, slang and it’s constantly changing. One minute, a word means it’s awesome, the next minute, it means it’s terrible.
Every language is that way.
carbon_boy said on June 14, 2004 06:38:
I’ve changed my views: i’m swopping Mandarin Chinese for Khoi. It’s the language of the Khoi-San (Bushmen), it’s a a bunch of “hard to repeat & learn” clicks.
roxlad said on June 14, 2004 17:32:
The hardest language to learn is certainly the one that can make your boss listen to what you’re saying :-)
zeeshan said on June 14, 2004 20:36:
ehh I guess reading most of COYBOY’S post makes English look like the hardest lingo :P
Z
Angl_Tht_Rox84 said on June 15, 2004 20:33:
I don’t believe any language is really the hardest to learn. See, I am from America and over here you only get the option of learning Spanish, French and/or German in schools. Its a pain when you want to learn any other languages out there. I try to learn languages on my own, so in order to do that, you have to search for dictionaries and films along with pronounciation tapes of some sort. So far I know a bit of Spanish, French, some Romanian terminology. This is just so far, what I have learned. I want to learn Finnish, Swedish and Hungarian too, but its hard to find the resources over here, and it seems that when I try to have someone from that area help me learn there language, they refuse. Why that is I have no clue? No one has really explained that one to me
n-Somnia said on June 17, 2004 07:10:
English is pretty hard. Too many words sounding the same but spelled different (e.g. Practice/Practise), and too many words spelled the same but different meanings (e.g. “cross” the bridge/died on the “cross”).
Roxfever said on June 17, 2004 09:36:
@Angl_Tht_Rox84 , maybe because teaching a language isn’t as easy as at seems. In order to teach a language know don’t only have to know the vocabulary but also grammar. And the problem with grammar often is that you automatically know it and are able to use it correctly in you mother tongue but you can‘t explain the system to others because you are not aware of how it really works.
Jud (moderator) said on March 9, 2004 08:06:
“You tell me what language you think is the hardest. Don’t say anything if English/Swedish/etc. is what you’ve been exposed to all your life.”
I doubt you will find somebody who knows *all* the languages and is therefore entitled to comment on this..