In contrast to English, Czech is a synthetic language. Afrikaans is a beautiful language that is surprisingly easy to learn for native English speakers. The Slavic languages are also known for their complicated consonant clusters. The Macedonian language lost the traditional (Slavic) grammatical cases during its development, and it became an analytic language. To learn Arabic, you have to learn a new alphabet, and get used to reading from right to left. For this reason, it is worth learning all Slavic languages - each of them is unique. Arabic is a language most Mandarin speakers will find challenging. The language also has a high number of vowel sounds considered difficult for most English speakers to master. For now, lets take a look at the individual components of each language that affect difficulty levels: In French, the flower translates to la fleur. That's mainly due to their complex . Meanwhile, case endings are added to word stems as suffixes. There's a reason "it's Greek to me" is a common idiom for expressing confusion, after all. Whether youre interested in learning an easy or hard language, Rosetta Stone can help you achieve your language goals. Because Macedonian doesnt have a complex case system like other Slavic languages, its considered one of the easiest Slavic languages to learn. Meanwhile, the written version of Hindi, which is written in Devanagari script, lacks certain phonetic markings that would help learners better comprehend how to pronounce words. There are a number of ways that a language can differ from your own. Brilliant planning there, mate. 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. 500 Hours Need to learn complete Swedish. Maria Stambler, a Russia-American bilingual speaker, who used to teach English, explained: "Words and phrases like `Tina Turner' and `happy birthday' are hard to pronounce because Russians . There is nothing natural about the way a language develops, Arel told Al Jazeera. It's incredibly helpful for learning pronunciation, and can enable you to read some written . Another difficult language is Russian. Where its most commonly spoken: North Korea, South Korea. Thats mainly due to their complex grammatical structure and difficult pronunciation. It has an incredible 14 noun cases and grammar packed with exceptions. But he doubts the measure is too divisive because parents in the eastern and southern Ukrainian regions want to send their kids to Ukrainian school anyway. Todd Bridges and Gary Coleman played brothers. And while mastering a German accent can be tricky, most speakers will understand what youre saying through the missteps. The Foreign Service Institute includes time estimates alongside their difficulty rankings, but its important to note that everyones language goals are different. Russia announced similar plans for other regions it controls, though some of the proposals, like introducing the Russian currency rouble in the Kherson region, are in flux. Interestingly, the hardest language to learn is also the most widely spoken native language in the world. It isn't the grammar that will bog you down when you're trying to learn Thai, it's the writing and the pronunciation, which has five different tones and long and short vowel sounds. xhr.send(payload); Because of its pictorial writing system, you aren't going to be able to learn to read phonetically. German and English belong to the same Germanic language family, so their linguistic closeness wins out. In addition, Croatia is a small country with different dialects, making it difficult to grasp just one of them if youre trying to immerse yourself in the language while there. They studied in the Soviet Union, in Russian-speaking schools, completed university in the Russian language and now we are all transitioning to Ukrainian. Russian grammar and phonetics would sound more familiar to you, and some Polish and Russian vocabulary is related. 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. Russian is one of the most famous European languages with over 150 million speakers across the world. This Slavic language consists of two scripts (Cyrillic and Latin), seven tenses and a consonant (R) that is also sometimes a vowel. Plus, Polish often likes to break its own grammatical rules, which makes it slightly unpredictable while learning. The Complete List of Language Difficulty Rankings It's a famously difficult language for English speakers to learn, with complex grammar and pronunciation. The Greek language is very difficult for English speakers to learn, but the effort required to learn the language is worth it. Or what abou. Although Slavic languages are similar in terms of grammar, vocabulary, and phonetics, they are all entirely different from English. Its going to be a generational change, but its going to happen eventually.. Knowing language difficulty will also help you come up with a realistic timeline for learning. Also, Arabic has several sounds that must be pronounced back in the throat, sounds that dont occur in spoken Mandarin. The invasion Russia launched on February 24 last year, which started the biggest war in Europe since 1945, is seen by many Ukrainians as an attempt to wipe them out and their culture, language and way of life. This list of the most difficult languages for English speakers to learn comes from data gathered by the US State Department. In 2022, the entire country witnessed the war and all the crimes the Russians committed. So, verbs are usually given in the first person of the singular form. Furthermore, learning a new language enhances your worldview, improves nonverbal communication, helps you multitask and aids in your brain adapting and responding to new circumstances. 15 of the Hardest Languages for English Speakers to Learn - Berlitz Grammar can be a tricky one, even in your native language. Just as learning Arabic is hard for Mandarin speakers, learning Mandarin is hard for Arabic speakers. But once you do, you can pronounce almost all Russian words quite accurately. However, when you consider all non-English speakers together, there isnt just one answer. Russian: 144: 7: Vietnamese: 69: 8: Turkish: 51: 9: Polish: 40: 10: Thai: 21: 11: Serbian: 16: 12: Hebrew: 5: . The oldest living Indo-European language, Greek is an ancient language thats filled with complications for learners. 3. Bestlifeonline.com is part of the Dotdash Meredith Publishing Family. Albanian nouns have both a case and a number, requiring the learner to memorize each noun. Its something they tried to tell me shouldnt exist; they wanted to suppress it but couldnt.. In order to become fully proficient in any Slavic language, you need to invest years of study. To understand it, you must recognize the pitch of a tone in relation to the context of the world and overall sentence. The largest group within the Slavic family, by the number of speakers, are the East Slavic languages. It's not for the faint of heart. After hearing their stories, I decided to stop speaking Russian too.. Theyre all Germanic languages. Thats German for ice skating. German is often preceded by its hard-to-master accent and enthusiastically long vocabulary. 1. How to Order Food in French (with Example 102 Essential Spanish Phrases for Traveling. Credit: Greek Reporter. Most Slavic languages implement an extensive system of cases in which the endings of nouns (declination), adjectives, and prepositions change depending on the case. One word is capable of 10 different translations as a result. Despite having what is considered the most logical system of writing in the world with an alphabet consisting of just 24 symbols, 10 of which are vowels and 14 consonants the language remains a challenge to learn. Polish pronunciation can be a doozy for learners. Very different! The way theyre used directs the meaning of the world as well. Maddie is an education writer at IXL, a sister brand of Rosetta Stone. And if you're serious about learning Chinese, you'll have to tackle Chinese characters. As with learning Russian, becoming fluent will depend highly on the learner. Polish also has seven different grammatical cases that are affected by gender. To be able to read and write, you have to learn thousands of characters. Someone who speaks German, someone who speaks Farsi, and someone who speaks Vietnamese will likely have massive differences in what languages they find easy or hard to pick up, because the native languages theyre starting with are so dissimilar from one another. With over 70 years of experience teaching languages to US government employees, theyve compiled a comprehensive and widely accepted list of language rankings. It can also set you apart from other people who speak your native language, since fewer people are willing to learn difficult languages, generally. Russia is bombing eastern Ukraine, the population that allegedly [President Vladimir] Putin seeks to defend, he said. One example is Thai. If youre looking for ease of learning, finding a language with familiar or easy-to-master grammar rules can help you tone down the language difficulty level. Generally speaking, difference equals difficulty when it comes to learning a new language. Here's a look at the top 10 hardest languages to learn: But did you know that there are more than 10 different Slavic languages? Each Slavic language developed under the influence of others, which makes them all slightly similar. Mandarin and Japanese are liable to give Hindi speakers a lot of trouble, in large part because they both involve learning completely new systems of writing. ae0fcc31ae342fd3a1346ebb1f342fcb. A big reason for this is that languages that are related usually share a high number of cognates, or words with a similar appearance and meaning. For many, switching from Russian to the Ukrainian language is an act of resistance as the war continues to devastate lives and cities. Standard Chinese - 'Mandarin' - is often cited as the most difficult language for English speakers to learn. In other words, a native speaker of an East Slavic language is unlikely to understand a West Slavic language. It is pretty foreign to English speakers, but if you speak Japanese, Korean, or Finnish (which are all also on this list), you won't have such a hard time grasping it. The hardest languages for you to learn will depend on the languages you currently speak, particularly your native languages. But the fun doesn't stop there. Agreements | Arabic only has three cases nominative, genitive, and accusative while Finnish has a staggering 15 cases. The ability to speak multiple languages puts you steps ahead of singular speakers. It's highly similar to Slovak - Czech and Slovak are mutually intelligible - and slightly similar to Polish. Modern Greek is maybe the easiest language to learn that uses a different alphabet. Having originated in the Philippine islands, Tagalog is the first language of most Filipinos. Phonetically, there are more than 20 vowel sounds in the Danish language. Estonian is packed with a whopping 14 noun cases. It means that, in Czech, different grammatical aspects are condensed into one word by changing its structure. Where its most commonly spoken: Philippines. The West Slavic languages include Polish, Czech, and Slovak. Great job defending the Russian language and Russian speakers, Putin! From Russia to Poland, you can find people speaking Slavic languages. As an English speaker, youll encounter three types of writing systems: Languages that fall in the first category are often the easiest languages to learn.
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