what are the hardest languages to learn from english
Some people honey a expert challenge. We recently gave you the list of easiest languages for English speakers to learn, but maybe you prefer life on difficult mode. We checked in with language good Benjamin Davies from our Didactics squad to determine the half-dozen hardest languages to acquire for English speakers. They may take a bit longer to primary, but they're definitely worth the challenge!
The Hardest Languages To Learn For English Speakers
i. Mandarin Chinese
Interestingly, the hardest language to larn is also the most widely spoken native language in the world. Mandarin Chinese is challenging for a number of reasons. Offset and foremost, the writing arrangement is extremely difficult for English language speakers (and anyone else) accustomed to the Latin alphabet. In addition to the usual challenges that come with learning any language from scratch, people studying Mandarin must also memorize thousands of special characters, different anything seen in Latin-based languages.
But writing isn't the merely hard part of learning Standard mandarin. The tonal nature of the language makes speaking it very hard equally well. There are several Chinese dialects, including Cantonese — spoken primarily in southeastern China, equally well as in Hong Kong and other parts of Southeast Asia — which accept different written characters and pronunciations, and are too very difficult to learn. Mandarin Chinese (the most common dialect) has 4 tones, so one word can be pronounced four unlike ways, and each pronunciation has a unlike meaning. For case, the word ma tin can mean "mother," "horse," "rough" or "scold" — depending on how you say it.
2. Arabic
Next on the list of the hardest languages to larn for English speakers is Arabic, which is also in the peak five almost spoken world languages. For starters, there are dozens of varieties of the Arabic language — by and large classified by the region or country in which they're spoken — that can be radically different from one another. And then the first stride is to choose which dialect you want to pursue, but that'southward the easy part.
Standard arabic is another language with a non-Latin alphabet. Its 28 script letters are easier for English language speakers to embrace than the thousands of Chinese characters, but information technology'south yet an adjustment to become familiar with a new writing system. The thing that makes reading and writing in Arabic especially challenging for beginners is the exclusion of most vowels in words. Ths mks rdng th lngg vry dffclt. Standard arabic is also written from right to left instead of left to right, which takes some getting used to.
There are too characteristics of spoken Standard arabic that get in hard to learn. Some of the sounds used don't exist in other languages or are simply unfamiliar to English language speakers, including sounds made in the back of your pharynx. The grammar is challenging likewise; verbs tend to come before the bailiwick, and y'all have to learn a dual form of words in improver to the atypical and plural forms.
3. Smoothen
From this point forward, the hardest languages to larn get less hard merely are still quite challenging. Polish got the number three spot on our list.
Spelling and grammer are a couple of areas in which Smooth can give English language speakers a hard fourth dimension. Words are loaded with consonants, which makes them hard to spell and pronounce. For case, szczęście ways "happiness" and bezwzględny ways "ruthless." Ruthless, indeed. In terms of grammar, there are seven cases: it's like German language on steroids.
On the bright side, Smoothen uses a Latin alphabet, so the letters are much more familiar to English speakers than those used in Chinese, Standard arabic and other not-Latin languages. In addition, being able to speak Polish as a second language puts you in a coveted group, considering Poland'south developing status every bit a major economy in Europe.
4. Russian
Ranking quaternary on our list of hardest languages to acquire, Russian uses a Cyrillic alphabet — fabricated upwardly of messages both familiar and unfamiliar to united states. Merely speaker beware: some of the Cyrillic letters may look familiar but make a different sound than the Latin letter they resemble. For example, "B" in the Cyrillic alphabet makes a "Five" sound.
Grammatically, Russian is not every bit difficult as Polish but pretty darn close. Polish has seven cases, while Russian has six. Also, Russians omit the verb "to be" in the present tense, which can throw beginners for a loop when they try to grade basic sentences. In Russian, "I am a educatee" would just translate to "I student." Similar Polish, Russian uses a lot of consonants amassed together, which makes spelling and pronunciation a challenge.
Despite its difficulty, Russian might exist worth the extra attempt to learn. Information technology'south an extremely politically and culturally relevant language, opening the door to numerous career and leisure opportunities.
5. Turkish
Here's a new word for you: adhesive. Turkish is an agglutinative linguistic communication, which basically means prefixes and suffixes are attached to words to determine their significant and bespeak direction, rather than using separate prepositions. This results in extremely long verbs, like konuşmayı reddediyorlar ("they refuse to talk").
Turkish also features a concept English speakers may discover confusing: vowel harmony, where vowels are changed or endings with vowels are added to make a discussion flow more smoothly. A large number of unfamiliar vocabulary words, of Arabic origin, add to the difficulty of what we'd consider to be i of the hardest languages to larn.
The good news for Turkish learners is that there are relatively few grammer exceptions in comparing to other languages, spelling is straightforward to main, and it's a absurd way to explore a rare agglutinative linguistic communication (linguistics nerds assemble!).
half dozen. Danish
Which of these is not like the others? Yes, we accept crowned Danish as the to the lowest degree hard of the hardest languages to learn. If you read our article on the easiest languages, you may call back that the Germanic languages from Scandinavia largely dominated that list. In fact, Norwegian and Swedish took the top 2 spots. And like those languages, Danish has relatively unproblematic grammar concepts and shares plenty of cognates with English.
So why is Danish on this list of hardest languages to learn? Pronunciation. Words sound cypher similar the mode they are spelled, which tin be quite off-putting for a beginner. For example, mit navn er ("my name is") is pronounced "meet now'due north air." Mastering Danish pronunciation takes a good deal of practice, making it a significantly harder linguistic communication to learn than its Germanic counterparts.
Source: https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/6-hardest-languages-for-english-speakers-to-learn
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