We'll cover the hardest languages for the english speaking people in this list. We've also covered the easiest languages to learn for English speakers. Give it a read. The 3 hardest languages to learn include Mandarin, Arabic, and Russian.
One reason Mandarin is seen as the most challenging language to learn is because its writing system uses characters that might be difficult to grasp for those accustomed to writing with the Latin alphabet, Babbel says.
First off, the script used to write Hindi, Devanagari, is considered particularly hard to get a hang of. The script is also what's called an abugida, meaning that the individual characters represent a consonant and vowel combination, rather than a single vowel or consonant.
4. Hungarian. Spoken by over 13 million worldwide, Hungarian is unlike many other European languages, including English. Hungarian grammar rules are difficult.
Of these, Spanish and Italian are the easiest for native English speakers to learn, followed by Portuguese and finally French.
Naturally, homophones exist in other languages as well, but in Japanese, it's far more common. The second factor apart from homophones, where things literally sound the same, is that the syllables and consonant combinations are so few that it's hard to recall vocabulary when they sound so similar.
Generally speaking, English is also considered to be a challenging language, though not quite as complex as some. Compared to some languages, English has a large vocabulary, tricky grammar, and challenging pronunciation.
Sumerian can be considered the first language in the world, according to Mondly. The oldest proof of written Sumerian was found on the Kish tablet in today's Iraq, dating back to approximately 3500 BC.
Top 10 Hardest Languages To Learn – Finnish
After the Hungarian grammar, the Finnish language has the most challenging grammar. It sounds and looks a bit similar to English because of its pronunciation and lettering. But the grammar makes it far more complicated than the English language.
The closest language to English is one called Frisian, which is a Germanic language spoken by a small population of about 480,000 people. There are three separate dialects of the language, and it's only spoken at the southern fringes of the North Sea in the Netherlands and Germany.
The Closest Languages To English: Frisian
Frisian is actually a group of 3 languages spoken in parts of the Netherlands, Denmark, and Germany. English, Scots, and the Frisian languages are the only living members of the Anglo-Frisian language group.
Category I languages are the easiest for English speakers, who can reach reading and speaking proficiency within about half a year of intense study. There is a mix Romance and Germanic languages in this classification, including Dutch, Swedish, French, Spanish, and Italian.
Most of the challenges when learning the Mandarin language stem from characters and how they are not phonetic. We would recommend for non Mandarin speakers to learn first by reading pinyin since it is phonetic and then, as you progress, focus on associating characters with their pinyin.
In dictionaries, j, q, and z are found the least, but some of the words are rarely used. And if you value the opinion of cryptologists (people who study secret codes and communication), x, q, and z make the fewest appearances in the writing scene.
The language with the most letters is Khmer (Cambodian), with 74 (including some without any current use).
Category: Power of the Letter P. The alphabet P is a pretty powerful alphabet among the English alphabets. According to the post “which English letter is the starting letter for the maximum words?”, the alphabet P is only 2nd with about 24,472 words, among all the 26 letters in English.