While rankings vary, Arabic is consistently named the second hardest language for English speakers by many experts, often following Mandarin Chinese, due to its non-Latin script, right-to-left writing, complex grammar, numerous dialects, and unfamiliar guttural sounds. Other contenders for the top spots, depending on the source, include Japanese, Korean, and Hungarian, all challenging for unique linguistic reasons.
Top 10 Most Difficult Languages in the World
Number 3: Literary Arabic
The complex construction of words from a basic root complicates learning, and pronunciation requires a great deal of patience and perseverance as it is highly complex, with guttural sounds being the most difficult for speakers of English or French. And for what?
The top 10 easiest languages to learn, according to experts
The top 5 languages in the world by total speakers (native + non-native) are generally English, Mandarin Chinese, Hindi, Spanish, and French, though rankings vary slightly by source and year, with Arabic also consistently near the top. English leads significantly due to its global use, followed by massive native speakers in Mandarin, but Hindi, Spanish, and French round out the top tier with hundreds of millions of speakers each.
When Bolivia adopted its 2009 constitution, 37 languages were elevated to “official” status.
Powell Alexander Janulus (born 1939) is a Canadian polyglot who lives in White Rock, British Columbia, and entered the Guinness World Records in 1985 for fluency in 42 languages.
English is the number one international language (lingua franca), boasting around 1.5 billion total speakers, making it dominant in global business, technology, and tourism, even though Mandarin Chinese has more native speakers. While Mandarin is the largest by native speakers, English's vast number of second-language users cements its role as the primary global communication tool, followed by Mandarin Chinese, Hindi, and Spanish in overall speaker numbers.
Top 10 Easiest Languages for English Speakers to Learn
Fluency means you've reached 10,000+ words and have reached the highest level of mastering a language without being a native speaker. At this level, you can apply your skills to the working world and find employment in translation or interpretation fields.
Our verdict. In this category, Korean is easier. While there are more speech levels in Korean, once you have mastered the conjugation patterns, you just need to learn the rules on how to use the verbs.
Greek is the third oldest language in the world. Latin was the official language of the ancient Roman Empire and ancient Roman religion. It is currently the official language of the Roman Catholic Church and the official language of the Vatican City. Like Sanskrit, it is a classical language.
About 43 percent of the population in the world is bilingual and speak a second language. When you say a person is trilingual, it means that he or she is fluent in three languages. Thirteen percent of the global population is trilingual. A person who can speak four or more languages is multilingual.
Generally speaking, Japanese is more difficult than Chinese when it comes to grammar. Mandarin Chinese is an analytical language, like English, and each word has only one form, no matter how it's being used in a sentence. It's also a subject-verb-object language, like English.
The hardest languages for English speakers often include Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, Japanese, Korean, and complex European languages like Hungarian, Finnish, Icelandic, and Slavic tongues such as Polish, Czech, and Russian, due to vastly different writing systems (like characters or right-to-left scripts) and intricate grammar, tones, or case systems that demand significant time (around 44 weeks/1100+ hours) for professional fluency, according to Foreign Service Institute (FSI) rankings and Mango Languages.
Frisian is the closest language to English
The closest language to English is Frisian. This Germanic language is spoken by about 400,000 people in an area historically known as Frisia—now within the modern regions of Netherlands and Germany.
There's no single "hardest" language, but Mandarin Chinese is consistently ranked #1 for English speakers due to its tonal nature (four tones change word meanings) and complex logographic writing system requiring thousands of characters. Other top contenders often cited include Arabic (right-to-left script, complex sounds, grammar) and Japanese (multiple writing systems like Kanji, Hiragana, Katakana, plus honorifics). The difficulty depends heavily on your native language, with languages like Tibetan, Estonian, and Polish also challenging learners with unique grammar or cases.
French – Ideal for fashion, diplomacy, and international organizations. Mandarin Chinese – A top choice for global business and trade. Spanish – Valuable in healthcare, education, and international relations. German – Essential for engineering, automotive industries, and finance.
Toki Pona is an isolating language with only 14 phonemes and an underlying feature of minimalism.
Tamil. The record holder for the world's oldest language still in use today goes to Tamil. Around 78 million people speak Tamil, mostly in Sri Lanka (an island nation southeast of India), southern India, and Singapore. Tamil is one of 300+ languages Propio works in for translation and interpretation services.
It isn't universal. In Indo-European languages (English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Greek, Hindi, etc - basically every language on the European landmass not including China and some of India/middle east) 'no' and 'yes' words derive from fundamentally the same sources (or a few prime sources).
Nineteen-year-old Mahmood Akram from India has stunned the world by mastering 400 languages while pursuing multiple university degrees. His language journey began early, guided by his father, a linguistics expert, and by age six, he had already outpaced his mentor's knowledge.
She's said in interviews that she's tried to learn Spanish and French a few times but never did. There are videos of her saying a few words in at least Spanish, French , Japanese, German, Welsh, Gaelic, etc. during concerts or interviews but it's just memorized words.
Papua New Guinea has the most languages in the world – over 800. Indonesia isn't far behind with over 700. Languages are spread unequally throughout the world.