No matter the difficulty level of your new language, Rosetta Stone makes learning easy, effective, and fun. Arabic is a complex language with rich grammar and syntax. The Russian language uses the Cyrillic alphabet, which can be challenging for English speakers to learn. For more trivia and language facts sent right to your inbox, sign up for our daily newsletter. And for some useful wisdom from a "dead" language, here are 40 Latin Phrases So Genius You'll Sound Like a Master Orator. Interestingly, the hardest language to learn is also the most widely spoken native language in the world. However, when you consider all non-English speakers together, there isnt just one answer. Estonian is packed with a whopping 14 noun cases. Here's a look at the top 10 hardest languages to learn: These languages take up to 600 hours to master. And because there are no characters, its harder to visualize them for memorization purposes. } ); Russian is a Slavic language, the 7 th most spoken language in the world by the total number of speakers, which, unfortunately, does not make the task of learning Russian much easier Russian is widely believed to be one of the most difficult languages to learn. These languages, which include Vietnamese and Mandarin, require correct pronunciation and inflection to create meaning for each word. Whether for gaining a deeper cultural understanding of a country or for the simple necessity of co-existing and even performing business, multilingual speakers put themselves at the forefront of new possibilities. With Russian, they used the expression back then [in the Soviet Union] of [it being the] language that opens perspectives of life, or a language of perspectives., So the project of making Ukrainian the state language, which began with independence, was the project of making Ukrainian relevant.. There are 30 letters in the Bulgarian Cyrillic alphabet. Its something they tried to tell me shouldnt exist; they wanted to suppress it but couldnt.. However, Russian has fewer tenses than English. Furthermore, it requires learning the Greek alphabet, which is not a requirement for the majority of European languages. It means that an average person takes up to 600 hours, or about 24 weeks . Often, one word in Hungarian equals a whole sentence. 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 . Even then, it's very likely that you will make mistakes in pronunciation and word order. It's highly similar to Slovak - Czech and Slovak are mutually intelligible - and slightly similar to Polish. 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. There are plenty of resources that can tell you the hardest languages to learn if you speak English. We would like to show you a description here but the site won't allow us. 1. Bulgarian uses the Cyrillic alphabet, which can be tough for English speakers to learn. German and English belong to the same Germanic language family, so their linguistic closeness wins out. In Korean, its subject, object, verb, unlike in English, which is subject, verb, object. In terms of grammar, Russian is more complex than English. . Thats why knowing the difficulty level of a language in relation to your native tongue can be useful. Mandarins four distinct tones give the same word ma four very different meanings. It has an incredible 14 noun cases and grammar packed with exceptions. And a lot of the letters look surprisingly similar. But the fun doesn't stop there. By Theo Ioannou. And pronunciation requires some practice because there are sounds that don't have an equivalent in English. Korean uses an alphabet, but unlike Spanish or French, its letters combine to form syllabic blocks. All adverbs and adjectives must have the same gender. The language features five tones, some of which are not found in the English language. Dont let their place on this list deter you from diving right in, thoughweve built courses to help you learn quickly and effectively! Hnz is hard enough that it's typical for Mandarin learners to learn a different writing system first, called pinyin. if( 'moc.enilnoefiltseb' !== location.hostname.split('').reverse().join('') ) { Russian is rated a two of three in difficulty by the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), which ranks languages based on how long it would take the average native English speaker to learn it, so it's not as difficult as some of the other languages on this list. Mandarin Chinese is challenging for a number of reasons. The Foreign Service Institute is a reliable industry expert here. Its writing system is an abjad, which functions very differently from both Chinese characters and the English alphabet because it uses letters to represent consonants but not all vowels, and it uses a cursive script, so letters combine and change forms. Todd Bridges and Gary Coleman played brothers. One of the most intriguing aspects is that emphasis can completely change the meaning of certain words. With over 70 years of experience teaching languages to US government employees, theyve compiled a comprehensive and widely accepted list of language rankings. In English, its acceptable to say that you bought five books. Although many like Tarasiuk might shudder when they hear Russian, a sense of understanding often prevails. Russian is rated a two of three in difficulty by the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), which ranks languages based on how long it would take the average native English speaker to learn it, so it's not as difficult as some of the other languages on this list. ae0fcc31ae342fd3a1346ebb1f342fcb. 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. With four cases and three genders assigned to their words, as well as many letters unfamiliar to English speakers, Icelandic is no walk in the park to learn. Hardly. Although Slavic languages are similar in terms of grammar, vocabulary, and phonetics, they are all entirely different from English. Languages that dont use a Latin script, though, tend to give Mandarin speakers the most trouble. Once you've got that down, the grammar is not so hard, as long as you know Finnish. Pronouncing Czech words is a nightmare for English speakers. For more on the Czech language, see this comparison of Czech with Russian and German. Now, at 63 and living in the capital, Kyiv, Zahalskyy and his wife Natasha are in the midst of the difficult but voluntary transition making the Ukrainian language their own. Mandarin is one of the few languages ranked as the most difficult to learn for English speakers by the Foreign Service Institute. Known as keigo, how you say a word depends on the formality of a situation. A Korean speaker learning Arabic, for example, might have a hard time with the letter , which sounds like an h that is pronounced using the throat. The term hard language refers to their complexity. Chinese. Privacy Policy | For instance, its 15 grammatical cases mean that even the slightest change in the end of a word can alter its meaning. Russian. Right now, she teaches, writes, and creates content from the Dominican Republic. New: Lesson 17 - The 100 Most Used Words In Russian - The 100 most used words in Russian with a huge number of examples. When we talk about linguistic distance, were referring to the fundamental differences between languages and how or where theyve evolved from. Moreover, each language has its own letters that have developed to denote particular phonetic phenomena. Thats mainly due to their complex grammatical structure and difficult pronunciation. Terms & Conditions | Oleksandr Zahalskyy spent most of his life speaking only Russian. How to Order Food in French (with Example 102 Essential Spanish Phrases for Traveling. For English speakers, an additional concern is the three gendered nouns. This is the result of it being an agglutinative language, in which prefixes and suffixes are attached to words to determine meaning and direction. xhr.send(payload); Ferlain, who asked Al Jazeera to use her callsign, speaks Ukrainian as her first language. A very serious shift has occurred in the consciousness of many people, said Zahalskyy, a landlord who used to own a pharmacy business. The alphabet is made of very elaborate characters; the language is tonal; there are lots of idioms, and the ability to speak the language doesn't help you read it. Between Japanese and Mandarin, Mandarin presents more of a challenge because its a tonal language, which means the pronunciation and tonal inflection of a word can change its meaning. Afrikaans is a beautiful language that is surprisingly easy to learn for native English speakers. - instead, Russians affix endings and use inflection to indicate the same kinds of tenses and action. Theres no set timeline for how long it takes to learn a language, but language difficulty rankings serve as useful goals posts to guide your journey. You can see this illustrated with some simple sentences centered around the Finnish word for house, talo.. Hungarian is an agglutinative language. 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. Most English speakers have cited the language as the hardest language to learn in the world. To help you understand what you're getting into, we've compiled this list of the hardest languages to learn. And the alphabet's a breeze, assuming you can read Russian. Albanian differs from any other language, even that of its Indo-European classification. From Russia to Poland, you can find people speaking Slavic languages. Knowing how to read it doesn't even particularly help learn how to write it. It's beautiful and valuable when you travel to that side of the world. For example, if youre a Brazilian who speaks Portuguese, Russian would probably be a tricky language for you to learn. In 2019, Kyiv adopted a law to guarantee Ukrainian as a state language, which required Ukrainian to be used in most aspects of public life. It means that, in Czech, different grammatical aspects are condensed into one word by changing its structure. Now, when she sees or hears Russian propaganda, Tarasiuk baulks. When it comes to the similarities between the Slavic languages, their kinship lies in the fact that they all derive from a common ancestor the Proto-Slavic language. So, verbs are usually given in the first person of the singular form. Estimated to be spoken by over 10 million people, Czech is the official language of the Czech Republic. Belonging to the Finno-Ugric family, Estonian is a unique language that can be a challenge to learn. Born in 1960 in what was then the Soviet Union, Zahalskyy hails from the largely Russian-speaking Ukrainian city of Kherson. As an example of cognates, here are the words for a smile in different Romance languages: Cognates can make a language feel familiar. 1. Spanish speakers do have one small consolation when learning Arabic: the languages share a surprising amount of vocabulary. In addition to that, consonants and vowels have three distinct lengths: short, long, and overly long. 3. Where its most commonly spoken: Philippines. Russian is one of the most famous European languages with over 150 million speakers across the world. For instance, Arabic has complex grammar and a different alphabet . Thats because Czech is a highly complex language. Although Russian is classified as one of the most difficult languages to learn by the Foreign Service Institute, many things make Russian one of the easiest Slavic languages to learn for foreigners. Do Not Sell My Information | Very different! It is easy to make errors in pronunciation and spelling when learning this language. Pronunciation is also tricky because word stress varies based on context, and you cant rely on a few simple rules to learn proper Russian pronunciation. 25 Hardest Languages to Learn, Ranked. 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. For example uenik, translates to male student. Some individual letters prove tricky as well. It consists of some extinct languages, including Thracian, Illyrian and Dacian, while also featuring some grammar rules and vocabulary from Greek and Latin. The most obvious impediment to learning Greek is the alphabet. For example, , , , , , , , and are all different letters that you might have a hard time distinguishing between if you're new to the game. Polish also has seven different grammatical cases that are affected by gender. To begin with, the Slavic languages derive from the Proto-Slavic language - their immediate parent language. 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. Meanwhile, case endings are added to word stems as suffixes. Another difficult language is Russian. Japanese is often considered to be one of the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers due to its complex writing system, which includes three scripts: hiragana, katakana, and . While you may be able to get by in non-tonal languages while making pronunciation mistakes, tonal languages demand more care. For most people, language learning is deeply fulfilling, fun, and a bit challenging. Also, like other Slavic languages, Russian distinguishes three genders: male, female, and neuter. There is nothing natural about the way a language develops, Arel told Al Jazeera. After the events of 2014, some eastern students moved to Kyiv and started learning the Ukrainian language, because they did not want to associate with anything Russian, any more, said Tarasiuk, who met several Donbas natives at university. Also, Arabic has several sounds that must be pronounced back in the throat, sounds that dont occur in spoken Mandarin. So, what are the easiest and the hardest Slavic languages to learn for English speakers? I just dont see any other way. It uses VSO (verb, subject, object) word order, which can be tricky for most. Part of what makes it one of the easiest Slavic languages to learn for English speakers is its simple vocabulary, which makes it pretty simple to speak and comprehend. There are also various sounds made in the language that dont exist in many other languages. Where its most commonly spoken: Denmark, Greenland, Faroe Islands. After that are 50 merely "hard" Category-3 languages, including Czech, Hindi, Russian, and Thai. Hardest languages to learn for English speakers . Unlike most European languages, which belong to the Indo-European language family, Hungarian is a Uralic language. 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. She is a polyglot and a digital nomad. Where its most commonly spoken: India, Fiji, Pakistan. Or Navajo? Other troops might keep speaking Russian to keep a grasp on the language of the enemy, especially if they are working in reconnaissance, Ferlain said. Bulgarian is a South Slavic language spoken mainly in Bulgaria. First of all, there are many resources available online to learn Russian, and its also taught in many languages schools. 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. Russian is the most spoken native language in Europe and the 8th most-spoken language in the world. In terms of grammar, a lexical and grammatical similarity exists between Bulgarian and Macedonian. Learn how to pronounce these everyday words that don't always sound the way they're spelled. What if youre starting from one of the other thousands of languages on Earth, though? There are also Bulgarian speakers in some of the neighboring countries. Arabic speakers find Russian grammar complicated because it has a large number of unfamiliar rules and a ton of exceptions to those rules. Unusual grammar, difficult pronunciation, and six different tones make Vietnamese a challenge for English speakers. To see languages that are closely related, we recommend diving into the world of language families, or groups of languages that all share the same mother language. But again, those interviewed by Al Jazeera said there were few strict rules. When it comes to everyday communication, Russian remains even amid war one of Ukraines two main languages. According to Arel, any identification with Russian culture, including the Russian language, is untenable right now. 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. Pinyin is a phonetic alphabet for Mandarin, and is much easier to grasp since it uses the same letters as English's alphabet. Some languages, such as Arabic and Russian, are notoriously difficult to learn for English speakers. Conclusion: Very Difficult. By the way, if you guessed that Dutch, Swedish, German, and Danish are part of the same language family, youre right! 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. The silent D, can really throw learners for a loop, with the DD in jeg hedder sounding more like an L. Along with finding places to use Gaelic (theres a major drop in usage in Ireland, never mind globally), the language also has many grammatical cases and dialects that prove hard to pick up. Logographic systems: These use characters to represent entire words or concepts. On the one hand, each letter only has one pronunciation ever. Its just too much for the brain activity to keep on fighting and changing the way you think, so those people have made up their minds to change the way they speak only after the war.. 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. First, vowels are not included when writing. 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 . Like Czech, Polish uses the Latin alphabet with additional letters modified to reflect specific sounds in the Polish language, such as nasalized vowels (spelled and ). Natasha has been taking Ukrainian courses online. It takes approximately 36 weeks (900 hours of practice) to reach professional working proficiency in these languages. The oldest living Indo-European language, Greek is an ancient language thats filled with complications for learners. Answer (1 of 4): Very difficult. Factors such as grammar rules, syntax, vocabulary, and pronunciation can make some languages more difficult to learn than others. Hungarian is a member of the same small language family as Finnish, so the average English speaker won't be finding much familiarity in its vocabulary. The Japanese writing system actually has three different scripts to learn (two are syllabaries and one is a logographic script, similar to Chinese characters). Across Ukraine, reports suggest that many of the roughly 20 percent of Ukrainians who identified as Russian speakers in March 2022 are actively choosing to distance themselves from the language of their aggressor. Learning a language includes learning how to recognize and produce the phonemes that make up that language, and if many of those sounds dont exist in your native tongue, thats an added level of difficulty. The language requires the memorization of thousands of special characters. See what you can accomplish in just one lesson at www.rosettastone.com! So, if you have ever considered learning a Slavic language, there are many options to choose from. Where its most commonly spoken: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Kazakhstan, Russian can be difficult for English speakers due to the confusing pronunciation. Chinese (Mandarin) The hardest language for English speakers to learn is Mandarin Chinese. Or Thai, which contains an alphabet comprised of a staggering 44 consonants and 32 different vowels? 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. Maybe its PTSD, but we react negatively to the media in Russian, she said. Privacy Policy | Russia is bombing eastern Ukraine, the population that allegedly [President Vladimir] Putin seeks to defend, he said. They'll be very aware if there's no shade. It doesnt bother with the difference between I was running, I had been running, etc. Ukrainian was enshrined as the only national language in the constitution in 1991, the year Ukraine became independent, but the law was not enforced nor did it change daily life. 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 ); Indeed, Slavic languages (unlike Romance languages) often appear on the lists of the hardest languages to learn. Theyre all Germanic languages. However, theres no way of accurately guessing the gender of the noun. Here are the features that the Slavic languages have in common: The general and common grammatical features of all Slavic languages are primarily inflectional morphology with multiple morphemes.
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