Interestingly, the hardest language to learn is also the most widely spoken native language in the world. Mandarin Chinese is challenging for a number of reasons. First and foremost, the writing system is extremely difficult for English speakers (and anyone else) accustomed to the Latin alphabet.
The Chinese language has a unique structure and pronunciation system that is vastly different from English. Chinese is made up of tens of thousands of characters, each with its own meaning, and often multiple pronunciations. This makes the language extremely difficult to learn, especially for non-native speakers.
Across multiple sources, Mandarin Chinese is the number one language listed as the most challenging to learn. The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center puts Mandarin in Category IV, which is the list of the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers.
According to the Foreign Service Institute, Chinese is a level IV language—a “super-hard language” for English speakers to learn. Everything is new: the writing system, the sounds, the words, the sentence structures.
The sound system of English is very different from the sound systems of the various Chinese languages, so Chinese learners of English may have particular difficulties with pronunciation.
Other languages with non-Latin alphabets, such as Russian and Greek, are also hard for Mandarin speakers. The Cyrillic alphabet that Russian uses can be especially confusing for Chinese learners because it has letters that look similar to English letters, but are pronounced completely differently.
Chinese is One of the Hardest Languages to Learn
The Chinese language is vastly different from English, which is one reason why English speakers have a hard time learning it. Chinese has a different writing system. It has a different sound and pronunciation style. It also has different grammar.
It takes about 4-7 years (roughly 2200 to 4000 hours) to become fluent in every aspect of the language, if you spend at least an hour and a half to study every day. However, it's quite common for learners to become more fluent in some areas than others depending on how they allotted their study time.
Japanese is another most difficult language for all those who have grown up learning English, Spanish or French but at the same time might be easy for those who are well-versed in East Asian languages.
Cantonese – Most Difficult Language Overall
Some people debate whether Cantonese deserves recognition as a language in its own right or a dialect of Chinese. Either way, Cantonese poses plenty of problems for students, even if they already speak Mandarin! But why is Cantonese harder than Mandarin for English speakers?
China's first contact with the English language occurred between Chinese and English traders, and the first missionary schools to teach English were established in Macau in the 1630s. Between 1911 and 1949, English was popular, it was taught in missionary schools and thirteen Christian colleges.
Japanese is slightly easier to learn. But, Chinese is much more widely spoken. Both languages have their pros and cons. Ultimately whichever language pulls on your heartstrings the most is the winner.
Hungarian grammar seems like the road to death for an English speaker. Because Hungarian grammar rules are the most difficult to learn, this language has 26 different cases. The suffixes dictate the tense and possession and not the word order. That's is how most of the European languages deal with this problem.
Greek is derived from Mycenaean Greek which appeared around 700 years ago after which The Odyssey was written. Modern Greece that is spoken by 13.5 million people around the world has a rough origination from almost 3,500 years back. This is the second oldest language in the world which is still being used today.
Cantonese is by far the more challenging of the two languages, particularly for a beginning Chinese language learner. This is because there are more tones used in Cantonese (Cantonese uses up to nine tones, whereas Mandarin only uses four).
Widely regarded as one of the world's toughest languages to learn, Mandarin is considered by many as impossible. Anyone who's learnt this notoriously difficult language is bound to be met with gasps of surprise and admiration when speaking of their accomplishment.
Results. The maximum reading speed for Chinese characters was 259.5 ± 38.2 characters/min, which was significantly faster than that for English letters (135.7 ± 18.5 words/min, p = 2.8 × 10‐18). The critical font size for Chinese characters was larger than that for English letters (24.2 ± 2.8 arcmin vs.
Foreign Languages Spoken in China
English is the most popular foreign language in China. More than 10 million people in China speak English. The English language is prevalent in urban areas such as Hong Kong. Apart from English, Portuguese is also a popular language in China.
But of course, while spoken Chinese is easier to learn and recommended for beginners, you should not skip learning how to read or write Chinese entirely. Because if you do, you will only end up setting your language learning journey back even further.