Instructions

In terms of proximity, the most difficult language in the world can be called Basque, which does not belong to any language group. Basque has 24 cases and is considered the oldest in Europe. This language uses suffixes, infixes and prefixes to form new words. Here, case endings are used to indicate connections between words. Basque has a very complex system of marking subject, indirect and direct objects. Today, approximately 700,000 people speak and write Basque.

Scientists from the American Institute of Foreign Languages ​​have created a unique list of the most difficult languages ​​to learn (for native English speakers). The most difficult languages ​​for them were: Bengali, Burmese, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Finnish, Hebrew, Hungarian, Czech, Khmer, Lao, Nepali, Polish, Thai, Tamil, Vietnamese, Arabic, Chinese, Korean and Japanese.

In terms of writing, the most difficult languages ​​are considered to be Chinese, Korean and Japanese. For example, the newest Chinese language, compiled in 1994, contains 85,568 characters. In Japan, children go to school for 12 years. To successfully pass the exam, a Japanese student must learn 1850 characters.

Russian is considered one of the most difficult languages ​​in the world, but it will be quite accessible for a Serb, Pole or Ukrainian to learn, but for a Turk or Japanese, Russian will seem very difficult.

The number of languages ​​spoken by the peoples of Dagestan cannot be accurately counted. The Tabasaran language was included in the Guinness Book of Records as containing the largest number of cases - from 44 to 52. The Tabasaran language has 54 and 10 parts of speech.

The Eskimo language also became a record holder. There are 63 present tense forms. Native speakers of the Eskimo language think very figuratively. For example, the word “Internet” is expressed by the unpronounceable term “ikiaqqivik,” which literally means “travel through layers.”

Israeli scientists conducted an interesting experiment among speakers of Hebrew, Arabic and English. The results turned out to be very interesting. Native speakers of Hebrew and English were able to easily read words using only one hemisphere of the brain independently of the other. Native speakers actively used both hemispheres of the brain at the same time when reading. Scientists' conclusion: when reading Arabic writing, the work of the cognitive systems of the brain is activated. So, if you want to develop your mind, then learning Arabic can help you do this.

Video on the topic

Please note

Oddly enough, Chinese grammar is one of the simplest in the world.

Sources:

• Which language is the most difficult - the eternal battles of linguists
• 10 most difficult languages

Tip 2: Which language is the most difficult and which is the easiest to learn?

Studying foreign languages ​​opens up new career prospects, gives you the opportunity to watch films and read books in the original, understand the meaning of songs, and simply trains your memory. However, not all languages ​​are learned with equal ease - among them there are some that are very simple and those that are extremely difficult to learn.

One of the most difficult languages ​​is Chinese. Each word is designated in it by a separate symbol, which, once you know it, you will still have no idea how to pronounce it. Another challenge is the huge number of homophones - words that are pronounced the same, but are spelled differently and mean different concepts. The tonal system in Chinese also does not make things easier for the learner. In addition to the general intonation of the sentence, each syllable is also pronounced with a different tonality, which determines the meaning of the word.

The Japanese language is not much inferior to Chinese in its complexity. Knowing the symbols also does not give an idea of ​​their pronunciation. Japanese has three writing systems: kanji, which uses Chinese characters, hiragana, which is used to write grammatical particles and suffixes, and katakana, which represents loanwords.

It is estimated that students learning Japanese spend three times as much time studying as those learning English or French.

Arabic also poses a lot of difficulties. Vowels are not used when writing, but consonants have four spelling options depending on their position in the word. Nouns and verbs have to be studied in singular, dual and plural. The nouns themselves have three cases and two genders, and the verb in a sentence is placed before the predicate.

The dialects of Arabic are also of greater complexity, as they can vary as much as modern European languages ​​differ from each other.

The easiest languages

Despite the fact that the English language has a lot of nuances (for example, words are often read differently from how they are written, and a lot of verbs are conjugated incorrectly), it has a simple grammar. In addition, in everyday life, people often encounter English in songs, films, names of brands and products on supermarket shelves. Getting to know this language better will not be so difficult.

Spanish is also quite easy to learn. The pronunciation is very similar to English, however, unlike the language of the UK and the USA, in Spanish the spelling of words coincides with their pronunciation. The sentence structure in this language is also easy to learn.

For a Russian-speaking person, learning other languages ​​of the Slavic group will not be very difficult, and the closer they are to their native language, the easier the learning will be. You can learn Ukrainian and Belarusian the fastest; Bulgarian and Czech are somewhat more difficult. Polish is not considered a simple language - it has seven cases, and its grammar is replete with exceptions to the rules.

Today there are about 6,000 languages ​​in the world. Some are simple, some are more complex. And there are those that for foreigners are more like a cryptographic code than a language of communication. Here are the 10 most difficult languages ​​to learn.

10. Tuyuka

“Think before you speak,” we were often told as children. But in the Tuyuca language, spoken by Indians living in the Amazon basin, they always think about what they are talking about. After all, in the Tuyuka language there are special verb endings that allow the listener to understand how the speaker knows what he is talking about. And there is no way to do without them: the language demands it! So when you say something like “a woman is washing clothes,” you must add, “I know because I saw it myself.” In addition, this language has from 50 to 140 classes of nouns. The Tuyuka language is agglutinative, which means that one word can mean an entire phrase. And two whole words meaning the pronoun “we” - inclusive and exclusive.

The Abkhaz language has only three vowel sounds - a, ы and aa. The remaining vowels, denoted in writing by separate letters - e, o, i, u, are obtained from a combination of other vowels and consonants. The Abkhaz language compensates for its vocal poverty with an abundance of consonants: in the literary language there are 58 of them, and in the Bzyb dialect as many as 67. By the way, the Abkhaz alphabet based on the Cyrillic alphabet was created in 1862, and three years later the Abkhaz primer was released. The manner of Abkhazians starting a word with the letter “a” has been joked about many times. But this prefix, or in common parlance a prefix, performs the same function in the Abkhaz language as the definite article in English. It is placed before all nouns, and according to the rules of the Abkhaz language, it is added to borrowed words too. So “the death of the air squadron” is not a joke.

Some Khoisan languages ​​are endangered, and many have already become extinct. But still, approximately 370 thousand people speak these very unusual dialects. The fact is that in the languages ​​spoken in southern Africa around the Kalahari Desert, there are so-called clicks or clicking consonants. The term “Khoisan” itself was constructed from words in the Khoisan Nama language: “Khoi” in it means person, and “San” means “Bushman”. Initially, this term was used to designate the physical-racial type of these peoples, and only much later the American linguist Joseph Greenberg applied the term to the macrofamily of languages ​​that use clicking sounds. Recently, genetic scientists confirmed the ancient isolation of the Khoisan people from the rest of humanity and discovered that the tribes living north and south of the Kalahari have been isolated from each other for at least 30 thousand years.

7. Finnish

Anyone who has tried to learn all fifteen Finnish cases and more than a hundred conjugations and personal forms of the verb will agree that the Finnish language is difficult. Finns don't just burn their hearts with verbs - they inflect the verb like a noun! Add to this the alternation of consonants, an abundance of suffixes and mysterious postpositions, and verb control that is difficult for a foreigner - and it seems like it’s time to fall into despair. But don’t rush: the Finnish language has a lot of comfort for a diligent student. Words are heard, written, and read exactly the same - there are no unpronounceable letters here. The stress always falls on the first syllable, and the category of gender is completely absent, which is quite capable of warming the soul of a supporter of equality. Finnish has several past tenses, but no future tense at all. Experts on national character claim that this is because Finns are accustomed to answering for the words spoken, and if a Finn has promised, he will definitely do it.

6. Chinese

The newest dictionary of the Chinese language, Zhonghua Zihai, compiled in 1994, contains - are you sitting? — 85,568 hieroglyphs. It would be more correct, however, to speak not about the Chinese language, but about the Chinese branch of languages, which unites many dialects, but there are still no easy ones among them. Take the hieroglyphs: as a consolation, we can immediately say that not all of the more than 85 thousand are actively used in the modern language: the lion’s share of them is found only in the commemorative literature of various Chinese dynasties and is no longer used in practice. For example, the hieroglyph "se", meaning "chatty", which consists of 64 strokes. However, today’s hieroglyphs are not so simple: for example, the hieroglyph “nan”, which means “stuffy nose”, is represented by 36 lines. Unlike happy Europeans who learn a few dozen letters, a resident of the Middle Kingdom, in order to even begin to read, must memorize, at worst, at least 1,500 hieroglyphs. But you also have to learn how to draw each hieroglyph. Oh, you are heavy, Chinese letter!

The champion in verb forms is, of course, the language of the American Indians Chippewa, or, as they are more often called, Ojibwe. Linguists call the Chippewa language the southwestern dialect of the Ojibway language itself. So, in this language there are as many as 6 thousand verb forms! But even with all the complexity of this language, you, of course, know a couple of words from it: these are, for example, the words “wigwam” or “totem”. Henry Longfellow's epic poem is based on the legends of the Ojibwe people. The American classic used myths, place names and even words from the Ojibwe language, but like any outsider he was not able to take everything into account. So the mistake is right there on the cover: the legendary Ojibwe hero is called Nanobozho, because Hiawatha is a character from Iroquois mythology.

4. Eskimo

Are you familiar with the word “igloo”, which means the Eskimos’ winter home, built from blocks of snow or ice? Then congratulations: you know a word from the Eskimo language. It also rightfully takes its place of honor among the most difficult languages ​​in the world: the Guinness Book of Records claims that it has 63 present tense forms, and simple nouns in it have 252 inflections. The term “inflection” in linguistics refers to different types of changes in words or roots. Let’s just correct the Guinness Book: modern linguists do not distinguish the Eskimo language. We are, apparently, talking about the entire Eskimo branch of the Eskimo-Aleut languages. But the world record registrar is not mistaken about the main thing: all Eskimo languages ​​are extremely complex: for example, up to 12 grammatical categories can be expressed in one verbal form using suffixes. Speakers of this language think figuratively: the word “Internet” in it is expressed by the term “ikiaqqivik”, which means “journey through layers.”

The number of languages ​​spoken by the indigenous peoples of Dagestan cannot be accurately counted. We can only say that 14 of them have writing. The most complex of them and, according to the Guinness Book of Records, one of the most complex in the world is Tabasaran. The language of the Lezgin branch of the Nakh-Dagestan family of languages ​​holds the world record for the number of cases - there are from 44 to 52 of them in the Tabasaran language! It has 54 letters and 10 parts of speech, and there are no prepositions, but postpositions are used instead. So that life does not seem like honey to a student of the Tabasaran language, there are as many as three dialects in the language. But the Tabasaran dictionary contains a lot of borrowings. The mountain residents borrowed ancient household, military and craft terminology from the Farsi language. The Tabasarans borrowed religious and scientific terms from Arabic. And the Russian language shared modern socio-political, scientific and technical vocabulary with Tabasaran. Just don't forget. that all these words change in more than 50 cases!

2. Navajo

The idea of ​​using complex languages ​​to transmit encrypted messages came to the Americans back in World War I: then the Choctaw Indians served in the US Army. During World War II they took advantage of this experience. And in addition to the complex Basque language, they began to transmit messages in the Navajo language. Fortunately, there were enough native speakers of this complex language, who also spoke English, but there was no written language in the language, and therefore no dictionaries at all. “Windtalkers,” that is, “speakers with the wind,” as the Navajo code talkers called themselves, were even forced to invent new words that were previously absent in their language. For example, the plane was called “ne-ahs-ya”, that is, “owl”, the submarine was called “besh-lo”, literally “iron fish”. And the Navajo signalmen called Hitler “posa-tai-wo,” that is, “crazy white man.” In addition to vowels and consonants, this language has four more tones - high, low, rising and falling. Particularly complex in the Navajo language are verb forms, which consist of a stem to which derivational and inflectional prefixes are added. The fascist himself will break his head!

1. Basque

In this unique, unlike any other European language, very ancient concepts have been preserved. For example, the word “knife” literally means “a stone that cuts,” and “ceiling” means “the roof of a cave.” We are talking about a language that its speakers call Euskara, and we call the Basque language. It is a so-called isolated language: it does not belong to any known language family. Now it is spoken and written by approximately 700 thousand people, living mostly on a 50-kilometer-wide coastal strip from the Spanish city of Bilbao to the city of Bayonne in France. The Basque language is classified as an agglutinative language - this is what linguists call languages ​​that use suffixes and prefixes to form new words, each of them carrying only one meaning. The Basque language dictionary contains about half a million words - approximately the same as in our great and mighty one. This is explained by the large number of synonyms and dialect variants. The obscurity and complexity of the Basque language played a positive role: during the Second World War, it was used by radio operators in the US Army.

Learning new languages ​​opens up a huge number of additional opportunities and prospects. Some languages ​​are easier to learn, while others require some effort.

And there are those that only a very purposeful, patient and diligent person can master. Is that who you are? Well, then here are 25 languages ​​that are ready to challenge you and test your nerves!

25. Tagalog

The Austronesian language Tagalog is spoken by about a quarter of the Filipino population. Due to complex grammatical rules and unconventional sentence structure, it is quite difficult to master.

24. Navajo

It is one of the Southern Athabaskan languages. Navajo is native to the southwestern United States. Between 120 and 170 thousand people speak it. Navajo has nothing in common with either the Romano-Germanic or Latin languages. The lack of common ground makes it difficult to study. Navajo writing is typically written in the Latin alphabet.

23. Norwegian

The national language of Norway is one of the main ones in the Nordic Council. Norwegian belongs to the North Germanic group of languages ​​and is mutually intelligible with Swedish, Danish and other Scandinavian dialects (such as Icelandic or Faroese, for example).

22. Persian

Refers to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is used mainly in Afghanistan and Iran, Tajikistan and other countries under Persian influence. In total, about 110 million people use it worldwide.

21. Indonesian

For many centuries, it has been considered the main business language throughout the entire Indonesian archipelago. Indonesian is one of the most widely spoken languages ​​in the world. Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in the world.

20. Dutch

This West Germanic language is spoken by people in the Netherlands, Suriname and Belgium, some areas of Europe and the USA. Today, Dutch has official status in Curacao, Aruba, and Sint Maarten. The language is closely related to English and German, but Dutch does not use the umlauts of the latter as grammatical markers.

19. Slovenian

Belongs to the group of South Slavic languages. Slovenian is spoken by more than 2.5 million people around the world, most of whom still live in Slovenia. This language is one of 24 official working languages ​​recognized throughout the European Union.

18. Afrikaans

Afrikaans is spoken by natives of Namibia, South Africa, Botswana, and Zimbabwe. It is considered an offshoot of several different Dutch dialects. So Afrikaans can rightfully be considered a daughter of the Dutch language.

17. Danish

Official language of Denmark. More than 6 million people communicate on it. Danish belongs to the North Germanic group of languages ​​and is descended from Old Norse. It is used by 15 - 20% of the population of Greenland. Danish is mutually intelligible with Swedish and Norwegian.

16. Basque

The language of the Basque Country, stretching from northeast Spain to southwest France. It is spoken by about 27% of the total population of the Basque territories.

15. Welsh

One of the branches of the Celtic languages, used in Wales. Welsh is also called Cambrian.

14. Urdu

Better known as Modern Standard Urdu, which is associated with the Muslim population of Hindustan. Urdu is the national language of Pakistan. It is mutually intelligible with traditional Hindi, with which it even has similar grammar.

13. Hebrew

Hebrew belongs to the group of Afro-Asian languages. It was first used by the ancient Jews and Israelites in the 10th century BC. e. Despite their advanced age, they still communicate in Yiddish. It is official in Israel.

12. Korean

The official language of North and South Korea. More than 80 million people communicate on it. It is not easy for an amateur to decipher the grammatical structure and understand all the rules for constructing sentences. Koreans, as a rule, do not have problems with this.

The main language of adherents of Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism. It is a dialect of the ancient Indo-Aryan language. Sanskrit is included in the list of 22 scheduled languages ​​of India.

10. Croatian

One of the official languages ​​of the European Union. Croatian is derived from Serbo-Croatian and is based on the East Herzegovinian dialect, which is the basis for both Serbian and Bosnian.

9. Hungarian

One of the official languages ​​of the European Union. Members of Hungarian communities in Slovakia, Ukraine, Serbia, and Romania communicate on it. Belongs to the family of Uralic languages.

8. Gaelic

Also known as Scottish Gaelic. It is a Celtic language spoken by many natives of Scotland.

7. Japanese

This East Asian language is the national language of Japan. It is used by more than 125 million people worldwide. Japanese is similar to Chinese in many ways and is considered one of the most difficult languages ​​to learn.

6. Albanian

An Indo-European language spoken by residents of Kosovo, Bulgaria, and Macedonia. Albanian has much in common with German and Greek, but its vocabulary is much more extensive and varied.

5. Icelandic

Belongs to the Indo-European group of languages. It developed under conditions of minimal contact with other languages ​​and dialects.

4. Thai

Better known as Siamese. Belongs to the Thai-Canadian group of languages. Almost half of Thai vocabulary comes from Pali, ancient Khmer or Sanskrit. Thai has a complex written alphabet.

3. Vietnamese

Officially recognized in Vietnam. The Vietnamese language has borrowed a lot from Chinese.

2. Arabic

It is a descendant of the ancient Arabic language. Learning Arabic does not mean being able to communicate fluently with native speakers. The fact is that the Arabic language has a lot of dialects, and they differ from each other almost as much as different languages! Because of this, it can be difficult for a person from Morocco, for example, to understand an interlocutor from Egypt, although they communicate in the same language.

1. Chinese

It is spoken by a fifth of the world's population, although it is considered the most difficult language to learn.

Of course, it is impossible to say for sure which language is the most difficult. From an everyday point of view, the most difficult language is the one that is least similar in grammar and phonetics to your native one. However, linguists can use certain characteristics to indicate the complexity of a particular language. Let's look at the rating published on the website mylanguages.org

What is the hardest language to learn?

Most non-native languages ​​are difficult. But you must remember that some language may be difficult for you for certain reasons. In the comments after the article you can add your opinion and make your own rating :)

Rating of the ten most difficult languages

The most difficult languages Arabic, Chinese and Japanese are considered. At least, that’s what the Institute of State Diplomatic Service writes. US Department. Also among the most difficult are Finnish, Hungarian and Estonian. This is due to the huge number of cases. Pronunciation is also more difficult in them than even in Asian languages, since the languages ​​of this group have a huge set of completely unpronounceable consonants.

So, the list:

1. Chinese. There were many reasons to add this language to the list. Chinese is a hieroglyphic language. Each word of the language is indicated by a separate symbol - and not phonetic (sound), so you cannot understand the sound of the word by writing it. The tonal system doesn't help much because Chinese only has four tones. There are also a huge number of homophones in Chinese. For example, the word "shi" is associated with three dozen different morphemes. There is even a poem in classical Chinese that consists of 192 words of Shi spoken in different keys, but still makes sense. You can easily find it on Google :)
2. Arab. First in difficulty of writing. Many letters have up to four spelling options, depending on their position in the word. Vowels are not included in the letter, but may be indicated. Sounds are complex, but words are even more complex. The verb in Arabic usually comes before the predicate and object. The verb has three numbers, so nouns and verbs must be taught in singular, dual and plural. The present tense has 13 forms. The noun has three cases and two genders. Another problem is dialects. In Morocco, Arabic is as different from Arabic in Egypt and from literary Arabic as French is from Spanish and Latin. (By the way, this is also true for Chinese, but it still comes first)
3. Tuyuka- the language of the eastern Amazon. Its sound system is not overly complex: simple consonants and a few nasal vowels. But here is agglutination!!! For example, the word "hóabãsiriga" means "I don't know how to write." It has two words for “we”, inclusive and exclusive. The classes of nouns (gender) in the languages ​​of the Tuyuca family number from 50 to 140. And the most surprising thing about this language is that you need to use special verb endings that make it clear how the speaker knows what he is talking about. For example, “Diga ape-wi” means “the boy played football (I know because I saw it).” In English we may or may not talk about it, but in Tuyuka these endings are obligatory. Such languages ​​force their speakers to think carefully about how they learned what they are talking about.
4. Hungarian. Firstly, Hungarian has 35 cases or forms of nouns. This alone puts Hungarian on the list of the most difficult languages ​​to learn. Hungarian has a lot of expressive idioms, a lot of suffixes. The large number of vowels and the way they are pronounced (deep in the throat) make this language difficult to pronounce. You will need more effort to learn and maintain this language at a decent level than many other languages. It must be said that the Hungarian language belongs to the Finno-Ugric language group and in Europe its relatives (albeit distant) are the Finnish and Estonian languages. And Estonian is also (bingo!) in our ranking :)
5. Japanese. This language is difficult primarily because the writing is different from the pronunciation. That is, you cannot learn to speak this language by learning to read it - and vice versa. Moreover, there are three different writing systems. The Kanji system uses Chinese characters. Students must learn from 10 to 15 thousand hieroglyphs (cramming, no mnemonic techniques will help). Additionally, written Japanese uses two syllabaries: katakana for loanwords and hiragana for writing suffixes and grammatical particles. The US State Department allocates three times more time to Japanese students than to students studying Spanish or French.
6. Navajo. This amazing language also claims a place on the list of the most difficult languages. During World War II, the language was used as a code to send messages over the radio (radio operators were bilingual Navajo speakers). The advantage of this method was that information could be encrypted very quickly. The Japanese couldn't figure out this code. Navajo was chosen not only because it is very difficult, but also because there were no published dictionaries or grammars of this language, but there were native speakers of the language. This language does almost everything differently from English. For example, in English, in a verb, we highlight only the third person singular (in the present tense) with a suffix. And in Navajo, all persons are distinguished by prefixes in the verb.
7. Estonian. Estonian has a very strict case system. Case is a grammatical class that affects the behavior of words in a sentence. Estonian has 12 cases, which is twice as many as many Slavic languages. In addition, there are many exceptions to the rules; many words can mean several different concepts.
8. Basque is also one of the top ten most difficult languages ​​according to the British Foreign Office. It has 24 cases. It is impossible to associate British with any Indo-European language. It may be the oldest language in Europe. It belongs to agglutinative languages, that is, it uses suffixes, prefixes and infixes to form new words. It is a synthetic language rather than an analytical one. In other words, the language uses case endings to indicate connections between words. It changes not only the ending of the verb, but also the beginning. In addition to the usual moods of Indo-European languages, Basque has some other moods (for example, potential). The language has a complex system of marking the subject, direct and indirect objects - all of which are part of the verb.
9. Polish. The language has 7 cases, and its grammar has more exceptions than rules. For example, German has 4 cases and they are all logical. Learning Polish cases will require more time and effort to learn (and discover) the logic and rules, and you may have to learn the entire language first. However, for Ukrainians the Polish language is not as scary as for residents of Western Europe, so this is the case when the rating can be adjusted :)
10. Icelandic very difficult to learn due to its archaic vocabulary and complex grammar. It preserves all the ancient declensions of nouns and verb conjugations. Many Icelandic phonemes do not have exact equivalents in English. You can only learn them by listening to original recordings or talking to Icelanders.

And to summarize, we must say that even the most complex language can be made native if you do not learn it, but immerse yourself in the language environment. This is exactly the approach we use in our studio. Come to us and let the most difficult languages ​​become your friends and helpers!

Language is a sign system consisting of sounds and words. Each nation has its own unique sign system due to its phonetic, grammatical, morphological and linguistic features. Moreover, there are no simple languages. Each of them has its own difficulties, which are immediately revealed during the study process. Below are the most complex languages ​​on the planet, the rating of which includes ten sign systems.

# 10 #

Finnish

Finnish It is considered one of the most difficult sign systems in the world and deservedly so. It has up to 16 cases and several hundred verb forms and conjugations.

Here, graphic signs convey the phonetics of the word in full (everything is pronounced as it is written). This simplifies the language a bit. Finnish grammar contains several past tense forms and no future tense forms at all.

# 9 #

Icelandic

Icelandic is one of the most difficult languages ​​to pronounce. Its sign system is considered to be associated with one of the oldest languages ​​in the world. It contains linguistic units that are used only by native speakers themselves.

Phonetics is a big challenge for learning the Icelandic language. Only native speakers can accurately convey it.

# 8 #

Hungarian

Hungarian It is one of the top ten most difficult languages ​​to learn in the world. It has 35 case forms and a lot of vowel sounds, which are quite difficult due to their long pronunciation.

The sign system of the Hungarian language has a complex grammar. It contains an innumerable number of suffixes and fixed expressions that are characteristic only of this language. The vocabulary system of this language is distinguished by the presence of only two tense forms of the verb: past and present.