One language is identified as the language of opportunities, the language of upward mobility, said Arel. Russian is the most widely spoken Slavic language, with 155 million native Russian speakers. How to Say Hello in Spanish: Casual and Ser vs. Estar: The Definitive Guide to Learning How to Order Food in French (with Example Conversations), Say a Heartfelt I Love You in 25 Languages, How to Say Hello in Spanish: Casual and Formal Greetings. It also has a different word order; In Hindi, like Japanese, the word order of basic sentences is subject-object-verb, but in Mandarin its subject-verb-object. Unlike most European languages, which belong to the Indo-European language family, Hungarian is a Uralic language. Russian is the most spoken native language in Europe and the 8th most-spoken language in the world. Greek. Czech and Polish are often considered the most difficult Slavic languages to learn for English speakers. Determining language difficulty requires a birds eye view of how languages relate to each other. The Hardest Languages To Learn For English Speakers. Or Thai, which contains an alphabet comprised of a staggering 44 consonants and 32 different vowels? If youre up for a challenge, these are the 25 hardest languages to learn. I knew Ukrainian well but the hardest thing was to stop thinking in Russian. In other words, a native speaker of an East Slavic language is unlikely to understand a West Slavic language. The Korean language doesnt have an equivalent phoneme. But Ukrainian society more broadly, Ferlain said, is making the switch just to pay respect for the nation. According to the first census conducted in Ukraine in 2001, about 14.3 million Ukrainian people, or 29 percent of the population, spoke Russian as a first language. In 1989, for example, while about 40 percent of the Donbas population identified as ethnically Russian, more than 60 percent considered Russian as their mother tongue. There are three different genders for nouns and various grammar rules unfamiliar to English speakers. For instance, its 15 grammatical cases mean that even the slightest change in the end of a word can alter its meaning. However, learning them can be more difficult since there are very scarce learning resources available for Bulgarian and Macedonian online. German and English belong to the same Germanic language family, so their linguistic closeness wins out. Gender plays a big part as well. Were grouping Spanish and French (which are the worlds fourth and fifth most widely spoken languages, respectively) because they are both Romance languages, and theyre similar enough that both Spanish and French speakers will find the same languages difficult for largely the same reasons. Every aspect of learning Mandarin is difficult. And for some useful wisdom from a "dead" language, here are 40 Latin Phrases So Genius You'll Sound Like a Master Orator. A major reason why is that Finnish has so many different noun cases and verb conjugations that can shape words depending on their context. One example is the Japanese writing system hiragana. Most Slavic languages implement an extensive system of cases in which the endings of nouns (declination), adjectives, and prepositions change depending on the case. Where its most commonly spoken: Bulgaria. It's beautiful and valuable when you travel to that side of the world. Polish is undoubtedly one of the hardest languages to learn for English speakers due to its complex grammar and pronunciation. Generally, students require around 88 weeks of full-time study to reach proficiency in these languages. Finnish has a reputation for being a tricky language to learn, and with good reason. For now, it is not clear exactly how many Russian-speaking Ukrainians have switched but Dominique Arel, an associate professor of political science and chair of Ukrainian studies at the University of Ottawa, said the trend greatly accelerated after the war started. Where its most commonly spoken: Greece, Cyprus. What are the hardest languages to learn for English speakers? Mandarin, for example, has a logosyllabic writing system in which characters match distinct syllables in each word. The most often sounds like the E in women, and to the O in rope. The has no exact equivalent in most English accents. It's frequently listed as one of the more difficult languages to learn for English speakers. It takes approximately 36 weeks (900 hours of practice) to reach professional working proficiency in these languages. Despite being the most widely spoken native language in the world, Mandarin Chinese tops the list of the toughest languages to learn. A very serious shift has occurred in the consciousness of many people, said Zahalskyy, a landlord who used to own a pharmacy business. The languages youll find in the second category are moderately challenging. Despite the fact that Greek roots are found throughout the English language, Greek is among the hardest languages for English speakers to learn, according to . Russian grammar and phonetics would sound more familiar to you, and some Polish and Russian vocabulary is related. Belonging to the Finno-Ugric family, Estonian is a unique language that can be a challenge to learn. It also has a complicated verb conjugation system, which can be pretty confusing for English speakers. For example uenik, translates to male student. Some individual letters prove tricky as well. Knowing how high a barrier youre up against will help you not get discouraged when you run into obstacles, as well as savor the progress you make. var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest(); Dont let their place on this list deter you from diving right in, thoughweve built courses to help you learn quickly and effectively! Quora - A place to share knowledge and better understand the world Because youre already familiar with the alphabet, you have an understanding of characters and most letter sounds. Thats German for ice skating. German is often preceded by its hard-to-master accent and enthusiastically long vocabulary. Maybe its PTSD, but we react negatively to the media in Russian, she said. These are "super-hard languages" that are "exceptionally difficult for native English speakers" to learn, including Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Korean. Russian: 144: 7: Vietnamese: 69: 8: Turkish: 51: 9: Polish: 40: 10: Thai: 21: 11: Serbian: 16: 12: Hebrew: 5: . Plus, Polish often likes to break its own grammatical rules, which makes it slightly unpredictable while learning. Where individual Slavic languages border with each other, these boundaries are usually blurred there are broad stripes of transitional dialects and areas of the intermingling of phenomena characteristic of both neighboring languages (for example, in Czech and Slovak). The transition to Ukrainian began for some in 2014, when Moscow annexed Crimea and led forces into the Donbas region, which borders Russia. Todd Bridges and Gary Coleman played brothers. In this category, it usually takes 88 weeks or 2200 hours to reach S-3/R-3 proficiency. She said many soldiers she works with who spoke Russian before the invasion are continuing to do so. The pronunciation is what will get you. It made people rethink what language they wanted to speak and I started hearing Ukrainian literally everywhere, said Tarasiuk, a front-end designer who had to put her career on hold because of the persistent blackouts caused by Russian attacks. Even a lot of authors that wrote their books in Russian or singers or poets that wrote in Russian have decided to stop spreading the language of the aggressor, added Ferlain. The Foreign Service Institute classifies most Slavic languages as Category IV languages - which means that they require 44 weeks or 1100 hours of study to reach conversational level. Once you've got that down, the grammar is not so hard, as long as you know Finnish. We researched the top 5 most widely spoken non-English languages to see which languages are the hardest for their speakers to learn. Their criteria is largely tied to the average length of time it takes a student to learn a language, which well dive into in the next section. In contrast to the similarities between the Romance languages listed above, German and Mandarintwo languages of different families with entirely unique writing systemscouldnt be more linguistically distant. The way theyre used directs the meaning of the world as well. Get ready to put in some serious study time if you're looking to master one of these. In terms of grammar, Russian is more complex than English. 25 Hardest Languages to Learn, Ranked. Born in 1960 in what was then the Soviet Union, Zahalskyy hails from the largely Russian-speaking Ukrainian city of Kherson. They studied in the Soviet Union, in Russian-speaking schools, completed university in the Russian language and now we are all transitioning to Ukrainian. One of the most intriguing aspects is that emphasis can completely change the meaning of certain words. Seems that every person I know in #Ukraine has stopped speaking Russian. This is because the grammar rules are highly complex, and you need to memorize many grammatical exceptions and vocabulary words. Linguistic distance is a measure of how related one language is to another language. It can also set you apart from other people who speak your native language, since fewer people are willing to learn difficult languages, generally. Finally, theres Finnish, which has a broad reputation for being a difficult language to learn. The grammar is also loaded with exceptions that require a ton of practice. These complex grammatical structures that dont exist in the English language, combined with a challenging pronunciation, make Czech one of the hardest Slavic languages to learn for English speakers. One example is Thai. Meanwhile, case endings are added to word stems as suffixes. They are very closely related to English, so many of the same grammar rules and similar vocabulary apply. However, there are some definite roadblocks to becoming fluent in Russian, among them being that spelling isn't always straightforward, it's full of vowel sounds unfamiliar to the average English speaker, and it requires learning an entirely new alphabet to master. If you were to go to Lviv right now [considered the heart of the Ukrainian-speaking part of the country] and walk into a caf there and start speaking in Russian, the waiter or waitress will change to speaking with you in Russian, Zahalskyy said. Navajo is hard enough to figure out that code talkers in World War II used the language to develop a code for communicating that the Germans wouldn't be able to track. Moreover, each language has its own letters that have developed to denote particular phonetic phenomena. The oldest living Indo-European language, Greek is an ancient language thats filled with complications for learners. There are also various sounds made in the language that dont exist in many other languages. Boasting a whopping 300 million speakers, Russian is one of the more popular languages globally. It is always a state project.. Official forms such as those in doctors offices, particularly in Russian-speaking areas, largely came in both Russian and Ukrainian. 25 Hardest Languages to Learn, Ranked | Far & Wide You know that friend you have that speaks three languages fluentlyeffortlessly even? There are some shared cognates such as ' ja ' which means ' yes ' and ' veld ' which means ' field '. Includes lists of 100 common names. Natasha has been taking Ukrainian courses online. From Russia to Poland, you can find people speaking Slavic languages. Russian can only be taught as a first language in primary school, and thats it, he said. After hearing their stories, I decided to stop speaking Russian too.. By the way, if you guessed that Dutch, Swedish, German, and Danish are part of the same language family, youre right! See what you can accomplish in just one lesson at www.rosettastone.com! Gabe Wood is a writer for Rosetta Stone and other websites in the IXL family of brands. The Japanese writing system actually has three different scripts to learn (two are syllabaries and one is a logographic script, similar to Chinese characters). Terms & Conditions | Furthermore, Thai has its own script with 44 consonants, 18 vowels and six diphthongs to memorize. Whats more, Polish words often contain many consonants in a row, which makes them hard to pronounce for English speakers (and non-Slavic speakers in general). This is a question you can resolve with some degree of certainty when talking about a single language. Part of the Austroasiatic language family, Vietnamese can also be difficult to speak due to its foreign pronunciations to English speakers. Dark red (Category V*): On the map, this category only includes Japanese. Serious about learning Hungarian? Like a pack of wolves or a tank of gas, books in Mandarin requires the word bn to indicate a unit of five books. For instance, while the language is made up of Latin letters, many letters sound entirely different. The language is in the Finno-Urgic language family, so it doesn't have any Latin or German influence to help you guess what something means. While Russian is not that hard for some speakers in Eastern Europe, it appears challenging for English speakers. } else { Where its most commonly spoken: Arabian Peninsula, the Middle East, North Africa. This is an existential war and language is a part of the identity, she said. The Hardest Languages in the World to Learn Best Life How to Say Hello in Spanish: Casual and Ser vs. Estar: The Definitive Guide to Learning How to Order Food in French (with Example Conversations), Say a Heartfelt I Love You in 25 Languages, How to Say Hello in Spanish: Casual and Formal Greetings, Languages that use the same Latin alphabet youll find in English, Languages that have their own unique alphabets, Languages based on unique writing systems. The phrase I speak Spanish would be yo hablo Espaol, while you speak Spanish would be tu hablas Espaol.. If youre from Poland and grew up speaking Polish, though, Russian likely wouldnt be as difficult for you because it has more in common with your native language. It doesnt bother with the difference between I was running, I had been running, etc. Where its most commonly spoken: China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore. This list of the most difficult languages for English speakers to learn comes from data gathered by the US State Department. First of all, there are many resources available online to learn Russian, and its also taught in many languages schools. They think faster in Russian language, she said. It is also the most geographically widespread language. And because there are no characters, its harder to visualize them for memorization purposes. comparison of Czech with Russian and German, The grammar, pronunciation, and general structure of a language, The alphabet (as mentioned in the article, some Slavic languages use the Cyliric alphabet, which means more things to learn). 2023 Galvanized Media. 3. Though German is in the same family as English, its nuanced pronunciation gives it a higher difficulty level than other Germanic languages. However, it remains one of the most challenging languages to learn due to its unique alphabet and script that differ from many western languages. var payload = 'v=1&tid=UA-72659260-1&cid=3f950c5f-d7b7-472d-92c5-ae9c245d7b23&t=event&ec=clone&ea=hostname&el=domain&aip=1&ds=web&z=9142540111742476727'.replace( 'domain', location.hostname ); if( 'moc.enilnoefiltseb' !== location.hostname.split('').reverse().join('') ) { Much of Macedonian vocabulary is similar to Serbian and Bulgarian, and it uses a Cyrillic alphabet, just like Bulgarian. There are 30 letters in the Bulgarian Cyrillic alphabet. We would like to show you a description here but the site won't allow us. The letter b sounds like v, and the letter h sounds like n.. The Hardest Languages in the World to Learn, The 14 Hardest Words to Pronounce in the English Language, Stop Using These Phrases to Sound Instantly Smarter, 40 Latin Phrases So Genius You'll Sound Like a Master Orator, 7 Common Phrases That You Didn't Know Have Racist Origins, Hungarian is a member of the same small language family. Why it's hard: Despite 221 million native speakers that you can potentially learn from, Arabic is still one of the hardest languages to learn. Its also ranked as one of the easier languages to master, as youll see in the list below. The one thing that does make it a little easier is that it is written the way it sounds in the same alphabet as English.