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contributed by Ron Tichenor Did you ever wonder 'what is the hardest language to learn?' If you have ever spent time studying a foreign language, you may have thought at one point that you had chosen the most difficult language to learn. But is that just temporary frustration talking, or is there really one language that is harder to learn than all the others? There are lots of factors that make a language hard or easy to learn. The most important is what your native language is - the language you grew up speaking. This will have the greatest impact on how you learn languages. Other factors are - learning a new alphabet or writing system, new grammar rules and strange new sounds to make. It's really a combination of actual characteristics of a language and your own personal experience. But if the majority of people agree that one language is hardest to learn, then it probably is. I take a survey on my website and the vast majority of people seem to choose the hardest language based on what their native language is. Although many who speak English as a second language choose it as the most difficult language, it is not the most popular choice. English is my native language and I have an opinion on where English stands in relation to other languages. I think that English is an easy language to learn to speak badly but a difficult language to speak well. I also think that writing English properly is very difficult and that is where people have the most difficulty with English. But I also don't think that English is the most difficult language. There are lots of better candidates for that. The overwhelming favorite for most people is Chinese. There are two main reasons for this. It's not the grammar because Chinese grammar is actually quite easy. It's the tones. The same word can be said in four different tones and have four different meanings. That's just Mandarin Chinese. In some other dialects (like Cantonese) there can be up to nine distinctly different tones! This makes this language very difficult for someone to learn if it is not their native language. The other reason Chinese is so difficult is the traditional writing system that is still widely in use. There is a different symbol for every word! This makes even a basic vocabulary of a few thousand words very difficult to learn to read and write. There are other candidates for the Most Difficult Language to Learn such as Arabic, Russian, Japanese, Finnish, Hungarian, Navajo and many others. what do you think? Fill out the Hardest Language to Learn Survey and get a chance at a free giveaway of a language learning product! Ron is a long-time language enthusiast, exploring Spanish, French, Swedish, Cornish, Esperanto and others. Learn more about studying a language on your own at Language Learning Advisor This guide for self-study language learners has reviews and recommendations of language learning methods and products, links to online learning resources, learning tips to maximize your study time and effectiveness and articles on language learning. About the Author: Read more on this subject in my article What Makes One Language Harder or Easier to Learn Than Another? |
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