10 Most Difficult Languages in the World
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Most difficult language in the world: The official language of Mainland China, Taiwan, and Singapore, Mandarin is officially the hardest language in the world. Mandarin is spoken by over 1.118 billion people and is the second most spoken language in the world only second to English.
There are close to 6,900 different languages in the world of which 2,197 are spoken in Asia and 230 are spoken in Europe. Popular universities abroad and in India promote learning a third language which simply speaks of the importance of languages in a lifetime.
Students have queries and think, What is the hardest language to learn? Some languages might be harder to understand than the others. For example, Mandarin Chinese is one of hardest language in the world because of its complicated writing style and tones. Many people think Chinese and Mandarin are the same but for the fact it is not. Yes, Mandarin is a form of the Chinese language which varies with the dialects.
Arabic is another difficult language in the world due to its different dialects and unique letters. Other languages, like Japanese and Korean are in the list of the hardest languages to learn. Even some regional languages, such as Telugu are also considered as the hardest language in India. The hardest language in the world is extremely subjective and depends from one individual to another and also on the grasping abilities of the individual.
- Top 10 Hardest Languages in the World
- Most Difficult Language in the World
- What is FSI Language Difficulty?
- Is Chinese the Hardest Language in the World?
- Why Some Languages Considered Harder Than Others?
- Fastest Ways to Start Learning a Difficult Language
Top 10 Hardest Languages in the World
| Language |
Why It Is Difficult |
|---|---|
| Mandarin Chinese |
Uses tones (same word can mean different things), thousands of characters to remember |
| Arabic |
It is written right-to-left, usually leaves out short vowels (so you must guess the pronunciation). |
| Japanese |
You must know three alphabets (hiragana, katakana, kanji). |
| Korean |
Unique script (Hangul), verbs change based on mood and respect |
| Telugu |
Its script has many combined letters (conjuncts) and sentences are built Subject-Object-Verb, which is the opposite of English. |
| Cantonese |
More tones than Mandarin, grammar is different |
| Polish |
Has 7 cases (word forms), hard to pronounce words |
| Finnish |
15 different noun forms, verbs change a lot |
| Russian |
Uses Cyrillic script, grammar changes a lot with word endings |
| Icelandic |
Has grammatical genders, cases, and difficult sentence structure |
Most Difficult Language in the World
Learning languages can be hard work. There are some language which might be harder for one but easy for others.
Mandarin
The language Mandarin Chinese is the hardest language in the world. The meaning of words vary on the basis of how yoy speak (tone). The same word changes meaning based on how your voice goes up or down. Take "ma" for example. Say it one way and it means mother. Say it different and it could mean horse, hemp, or even to yell at someone. Get the tone wrong and you might say something you never meant to.
Writing it is no joke either. You have to learn thousands of different characters. Just to read a simple book, you need to know tons of these little pictures.
Why Mandarin is considered so difficult: Example
| Pinyin | Tone mark | Character | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| mā | high | 妈 | mother |
| má | rising | 麻 | hemp |
| mǎ | dipping | 马 | horse |
| mà | falling | 骂 | to scold |
Arabic
Arabic language is one of the oldest and hardest languages in the world. Many people speak it in Middle East and North Africa. It is also one of the official languages of UN. Arabic is written from right to left. It have 28 letters.
Different countries speak Arabic differently. Arabic is not only for religion. It is used in trade, culture, education and literature. Learning Arabic language can help to get jobs in Gulf countries. Many students and professionals from India learn it for better work and more opportunities abroad.
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Japanese
The official language of Japan, Japanese is considered one of the toughest languages for English speakers to learn. The Japanese language is considered one of the hardest to learn as it involves three separate writing systems (hiragana, katakana, and kanji), an opposite sentence structure to English, and a complicated hierarchy of politeness making it decidedly complex.
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Korean
Derived from Mandarin, Korean also falls under the category of one of the toughest languages to learn as it follows a unique writing system, Hangul - which consists of characters that represent 19 consonants and 21 vowels. The grammar followed in the Korean language is very different from English as it has various verb endings to indicate politeness, anxiety, mood and also subject-object-verb order. The Korean language also falls under category V in the learning difficulty.
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Telugu
Telugu is the official language of the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and the union territory of Puducherry. Telugu is often considered one of the hardest languages in the world because the language has its unique script and grammar and is a challenge to individuals unfamiliar with other Dravidian languages like Tamil, Kannada, and Malayalam.
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Cantonese (Chinese Traditional)
Spoken by close to 85.5 million people worldwide including in cities like Canton, Hong Kong and Macau, Cantonese is another tough language to muster. Learning Cantonese is considered an uphill task due to its tonal nature and complex usage of grammar. And for those wondering, Mandarin and Cantonese are not similar and are regarded as two different languages.
Polish
Widely spoken across Poland and parts of eastern Germany, northern Czech Republic and Slovakia, and western parts of Belarus and Ukraine. Polish is also regarded as one of the toughest languages to learn for the native English speaker as it uses difficult grammar that includes a system of cases and verb aspects. The Polish alphabet has been derived from the Latin script and includes certain additional letters formed using diacritics.
Finnish
Spoken mainly in Finland and parts of Sweden and Norway, the Finnish language also falls under the toughest language category as the language follows a complex grammar which includes 15 cases for nouns and a rich system of verb conjugation. Students looking to learn one of the toughest languages – Finish would need 44 weeks or 1100 class hours to reach Professional Working Proficiency as mentioned by FSI.
Also Read
Russian
The Russian language is also the toughest languages in the world. The Russian alphabet is Cyrillic. And this is very hard to understand. The main difficulty the Russian language is that it is an inflected language. This means the words change their ending depending on what they are doing in a sentence. So candidates looking to learn Russian would have to not only learn the word but also what to do with it.
Icelandic is hard language to learn
Almost 97% of people in Iceland speak Icelandic. The language is quite hard for English speakers. Its grammar is very complex: there are four cases, three genders, and many verb changes. On the FSI difficulty scale, Icelandic is in Category IV. People may need around 44 weeks or about 1100 hours of classes to be able to use Icelandic at work.
English speaking countries like the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia make it easier for people to learn English, which is why many choose to study it for international communication.
The Toughest Language in the World - Extended
The languages mentioned above are a few of the world's toughest languages. An extended list of the most difficult languages includes Danish, Hindi, Hungarian, Navajo, Somali, Turkish and Vietnamese among others.
What is FSI Language Difficulty?
Toughest language in the world: The US Foreign Service Institute (FSI) has been teaching a wide range of languages to thousands of students for over 70 years and through this research they have been able to categorize languages according to the average amount of time it takes students to reach “Professional Working Proficiency”.
| Category | Time to Learn | Hardest Language in the World |
|---|---|---|
| Category I (Languages closely related to English) |
24-30 weeks or 600-750 class hours | Afrikaans, Danish, Dutch, French, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Swedish |
| Category II (Languages similar to English) |
30 weeks | German |
| Category III (Languages with linguistic/ or cultural differences from English) |
36 weeks or 900 class hours | Indonesian, Malaysian, Swahili |
| Category IV (Languages with significant linguistic and/ or cultural differences from English) |
44 weeks or 1100 class hours | Albanian, Amharic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Bengali, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Burmese, Croatian, Czech, Estonian, Finnish, Georgian, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Khmer, Lao, Latvia, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Mongolian, Nepali, Pashto, Persian, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Sinhala, Slovak, Slovenian, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uzbek, Vietnamese, Xhosa, Zulu |
| Category V (Languages which are exceptionally difficult for English speakers) |
88 weeks or 2200 class hours | Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean |
Related Read: Top 10 Easiest Languages to Learn
Indian students looking to learn any of the above-mentioned hardest languages in the world are advised to check out the respective embassies and consulates of the countries where the language is officially spoken. They would not only offer courses on learning the language but also other tools to practice the language such as movies, literature and coursework.
Is Chinese the Hardest Language in the World?
So... is Chinese really the hardest language to learn? I keep hearing people say this. Why is it so tough though? Well, from what I have heard:
- Tone: Chinese uses tones which means the same exact word can have completely different meanings based on how your voice sounds when you say it. Like, what? How are you supposed to remember all that? No wonder speaking it feels impossible.
- Characters: They don't even use regular letters! It's all these symbols and apparently there's thousands of them. My friend tried learning and said you basically have to memorize each one individually. That sounds like torture honestly.
- Everything sounds the same but isn't: There are many words sound exactly alike but mean totally different stuff. So if you mess up the tones (which let's be real, everyone does), then you're just speaking nonsense and don't even know it.
- The way people actually talk: The grammar part isn't even the hardest thing weirdly enough. But Chinese people speak in this way that's just... Like they'll drop words that seem super important to us and it makes everything confusing for beginners. My teacher mentioned this happens a lot with "I" and "you".
So yes, based on all this, Chinese is one of the hardest languages.
Why Some Languages Considered Harder Than Others?
Language families make a huge difference. The mother tongue feels much easier. You already know many similar words and grammar rules. But when the writing system is totally different, or when the grammar works strangely, everything becomes more challenging. English speakers often find German and Dutch manageable. These languages share many roots with English. But Mandarin, Arabic, and Korean? Those typically need much more time and effort. Indian students see this pattern too. Hindi and Urdu come naturally because of shared vocabulary and sentence structure. Chinese and Japanese, however, pose much bigger challenges for them.
Fastest Ways to Start Learning a Difficult Language
I know many people try to learn new languages. Some languages look very hard in start, like Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, or Korean. But there are some small steps which can help.
- You can start with the writing system and pronunciation. If you can read and say words correct, other things become easy.
- Learning 100-200 of the hardest common language words and simple phrases will might help. This help to talk fast, like greeting people or asking small questions.
- It is important to practice listening and speaking every day.
- Use language apps or online tools. Free apps and YouTube videos help with vocabulary and pronunciation. Very good for beginners.
- Find a partner to practice. Talk with native speakers or join online groups. Talking with real people help remember and improve faster.
- Stay regular. Even 15 minutes every day better than long hours once in week. Small steady effort gives better results.
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