First, it helps you determine how much of a challenge youre up for in your language journey. So far, she has traveled to 28 countries and lived in 4. For example, if youre a Brazilian who speaks Portuguese, Russian would probably be a tricky language for you to learn. Knowing how to read it doesn't even particularly help learn how to write it. The verb conjugations can be intimidating, too, with many more variants and combinations to comprehend than other Slavic languages. Among the most challenging aspects of learning Japanese is the writing system, which contains tens of thousands of characters referred to as kanji.. Moreover, each language has its own letters that have developed to denote particular phonetic phenomena. navigator.sendBeacon('https://www.google-analytics.com/collect', payload); Even a lot of authors that wrote their books in Russian or singers or poets that wrote in Russian have decided to stop spreading the language of the aggressor, added Ferlain. 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. You know that friend you have that speaks three languages fluentlyeffortlessly even? This is just one example of unique grammar rules that dont exist in other languages. Ferlain, who asked Al Jazeera to use her callsign, speaks Ukrainian as her first language. These languages take up to 600 hours to master. Have you ever wondered how hard MANDARIN is to learn? Around 4,000 Spanish words, including naranja (orange) and taza (cup), are derived from Arabic words. In March, the New Voice of Ukraine reported that in the occupied city of Mariupol, Russian-installed authorities were suppressing the Ukrainian language in schools. Great job defending the Russian language and Russian speakers, Putin! It has complex grammar rules, mainly due to numerous noun declensions. All adverbs and adjectives must have the same gender. } else { The script is almost entirely phonetic, which means that once you pick up the pronunciation of the letters, you can quickly begin reading fluently. Privacy Policy | . Thats because Czech is a highly complex language. Forget carpe diem. Get ready to put in some serious study time if you're looking to master one of these. In terms of grammar, a lexical and grammatical similarity exists between Bulgarian and Macedonian. The language also has a large number of regional dialects and the pronunciation can be particularly difficult for non-native speakers to master. 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. Its also ranked as one of the easier languages to master, as youll see in the list below. The main phonetic similarity between all Slavic languages is the presence of phonemic palatalization, known as softening. Youll need to learn an entirely new alphabet, and memorize their corresponding letter sounds. 1. Another doozy is the 17 different cases for numbers, meaning there are 17 different ways to say one number. You can see this illustrated with some simple sentences centered around the Finnish word for house, talo.. The Japanese writing system actually has three different scripts to learn (two are syllabaries and one is a logographic script, similar to Chinese characters). 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 . Russian can only be taught as a first language in primary school, and thats it, he said. Haitian Creole. Russian grammar and phonetics would sound more familiar to you, and some Polish and Russian vocabulary is related. If you don't meet those two criteria, though, it is a very challenging language to master. In English, its acceptable to say that you bought five books. 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. Credit: Greek Reporter. Having originated in the Philippine islands, Tagalog is the first language of most Filipinos. But even though they know the language, the challenge lies in changing their inner machinations, the way they think, the Zahalskyys said. It takes approximately 44 weeks (1100 hours of practice) to reach professional working proficiency in these languages. Hindi uses an abugida, which is different from the English alphabet and from hnz, a Chinese script that uses characters to represent entire words and concepts. Unlike other Slavic languages, Bulgarian has no case system. Data Privacy and Security. And yet, that one word is mind-blowingly long. Gender plays a big part as well. The language is packed with mouthfuls of consonants, making individual words total tongue twisters. Where its most commonly spoken: China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore. But did you know that there are more than 10 different Slavic languages? Still, there are languages that lack traditional alphabets. Or what abou. But the fun doesn't stop there. For English sayings you didn't realize were offensive, check out 7 Common Phrases That You Didn't Know Have Racist Origins. One example is Thai. Generally speaking, difference equals difficulty when it comes to learning a new language. The verb carries the most weight in Turkish. Hnz is hard enough that it's typical for Mandarin learners to learn a different writing system first, called pinyin. However, when you consider all non-English speakers together, there isnt just one answer. In Gaelic, though, verbs go at the beginning of a sentence, so Gaelic sentences are structured verb-subject-object (Threw I the ball). It is also the most geographically widespread language. If you're looking for official statistics, the Defense Language Institute (where they teach members of the CIA foreign languages) has organized languages into four categories, the 1st Category being the easiest, and the 4th Category being the hardest languages to learn for English speakers. However, there are some definite roadblocks to becoming fluent in Russian, among them being that spelling isn't always straightforward, it's full of vowel sounds unfamiliar to the average English speaker, and it requires learning an entirely new alphabet to master. Do Not Sell My Information | 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. Russian is the most widely spoken Slavic language, with 155 million native Russian speakers. Russian is one of the most famous European languages with over 150 million speakers across the world. German and English belong to the same Germanic language family, so their linguistic closeness wins out. While you may be able to get by in non-tonal languages while making pronunciation mistakes, tonal languages demand more care. No matter the difficulty level of your new language, Rosetta Stone makes learning easy, effective, and fun. Where its most commonly spoken: Thailand. 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. Most experts believe that to become truly fluent in Russian that is thinking and speaking in Russian requires 7-10 years of study. Polish is undoubtedly one of the hardest languages to learn for English speakers due to its complex grammar and pronunciation. Brilliant planning there, mate. Privacy Policy | xhr.setRequestHeader('Content-Type', 'text/plain;charset=UTF-8'); Russian. 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. The default vowel sound of those letters is changed by using a secondary symbol. What's New at RussianLessons.Net. } ); The West Slavic languages include Polish, Czech, and Slovak. According to Arel, any identification with Russian culture, including the Russian language, is untenable right now. 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. Its okay to not be that person. However, theres no way of accurately guessing the gender of the noun. 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. Each language has a different level of correlation with other languages, even in the same group. Shutterstock/VPales. What if youre starting from one of the other thousands of languages on Earth, though? Russian. Thats why knowing the difficulty level of a language in relation to your native tongue can be useful. However, most languages only use a few dozen of these sounds. 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. This is unfortunate since Mandarin is the most widely spoken language in the world. Once you've got that down, the grammar is not so hard, as long as you know Finnish. According to the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), Spanish belongs to category I by difficulty. The closer a language is related to yours, the easier it will be to learn. The grammar seems like it's very simple, but Japanese also uses particles, which are markers for parts of speech that do not have an English equivalent. The oldest living Indo-European language, Greek is an ancient language thats filled with complications for learners. Benefits of Chatting with Native Spanish Speakers. Along with natives and Spanish language learners, there are more than 572 million Spanish speakers worldwide. Another challenge you will come across if you start learning Arabic is a variety of dialects. Greek. This is the result of it being an agglutinative language, in which prefixes and suffixes are attached to words to determine meaning and direction. 500 Hours Need to learn complete Swedish. Russian is the most spoken native language in Europe and the 8th most-spoken language in the world. In contrast to English, Czech is a synthetic language. It's highly similar to Slovak - Czech and Slovak are mutually intelligible - and slightly similar to Polish. By Theo Ioannou. The trickiest part of Mongolian is the pronunciation. Chinese , Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, and Arabic are some of the most difficult languages to learn. Articulation can prove a challenge as well, due to the exorbitant consonant clusters. You need about 3,000 to . 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. Plus, it doesnt even take that long to get used to the new alphabet, as its pretty straightforward! It's helpful if you speak another Slavic language, but otherwise, it's going to be a challenge. These are "super-hard languages" that are "exceptionally difficult for native English speakers" to learn, including Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Korean. This means that, rather than containing individual prepositions, prefixes and suffixes are added onto words. Todd Bridges and Gary Coleman played brothers. There are also Bulgarian speakers in some of the neighboring countries. In this post, well take a look at the easiest and hardest languages to learn, the factors that determine language difficulty, and a complete ranking of the worlds most widely spoken languagesincluding how long it takes to learn each language. Top 20 Most Difficult Languages to Learn. Russian also has many words where consonants are grouped together, which makes spelling and pronunciation difficult. First and foremost, the writing system is extremely difficult for English speakers (and anyone else . Albanian nouns have both a case and a number, requiring the learner to memorize each noun. In theory, pronunciation is also fairly straightforward, but it can be easy to get hung up on long vowel and consonant sounds. It has 7 declension cases for nouns, adjectives, and pronouns. Where its most commonly spoken: North Korea, South Korea. However, it remains one of the most challenging languages to learn due to its unique alphabet and script that differ from many western languages. Mandarin, for example, has a logosyllabic writing system in which characters match distinct syllables in each word. Even then, it's very likely that you will make mistakes in pronunciation and word order. The languages youll find in the second category are moderately challenging. Mandarin is one of the few languages ranked as the most difficult to learn for English speakers by the Foreign Service Institute. Languages that dont use a Latin script, though, tend to give Mandarin speakers the most trouble. 1. Category II Languages. The two languages are also similar enough to English that the hardest languages for English speakers tend to be the hardest for Spanish and French speakers as well. Most major writing systems generally fit into one of these categories: The easiest writing systems you can learn are ones of the same type and that use the same letters or characters as your native language, while the hardest writing systems to learn are different types altogether. Linguistic distance is a measure of how related one language is to another language. The term hard language refers to their complexity. The Korean language doesnt have an equivalent phoneme. Here's a look at the top 10 hardest languages to learn: Much of Macedonian vocabulary is similar to Serbian and Bulgarian, and it uses a Cyrillic alphabet, just like Bulgarian. The way theyre used directs the meaning of the world as well. In order to become fully proficient in any Slavic language, you need to invest years of study. 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. It's beautiful and valuable when you travel to that side of the world. Even if you manage to overcome all of that, it is also a language with many, many dialects that vary widely. . For English-speaking students, the hardest foreign languages to learn include Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean. Maddie is an education writer at IXL, a sister brand of Rosetta Stone. It has an incredible 14 noun cases and grammar packed with exceptions. } When we talk about linguistic distance, were referring to the fundamental differences between languages and how or where theyve evolved from. Modern Greek is maybe the easiest language to learn that uses a different alphabet. Furthermore, it requires learning the Greek alphabet, which is not a requirement for the majority of European languages. Russian. In terms of grammar, the main feature that makes this language easier to learn than other Slavic languages is the lack of noun cases. Polish pronunciation can be a doozy for learners. 2023 Galvanized Media. Most Ukrainians can speak Russian and many speak what has been labelled Surzhyk a blend of Russian and Ukrainian so measuring who speaks what is challenging. The letter b sounds like v, and the letter h sounds like n.. Where its most commonly spoken: Albania, Kosovo. Chinese. Another difficult language is Russian. It also has a different word order; In Hindi, like Japanese, the word order of basic sentences is subject-object-verb, but in Mandarin its subject-verb-object. However, learning them can be more difficult since there are very scarce learning resources available for Bulgarian and Macedonian online. Moscow paints Kyivs language policies as oppressive as Russian officials claim they are liberating Russian speakers from the Ukrainian project. In the wars early days, their apartment block was hit twice by artillery fire from the nearby town of Bucha, where Russians are accused of many atrocities. And for words you should cut out of your vocabulary right this second, check out Stop Using These Phrases to Sound Instantly Smarter. 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. Conversely, languages that are completely unrelated to your language will be more challenging and take longer to master. Where its most commonly spoken: Iran, Afghanistan. The Russian language uses the Cyrillic alphabet, which can be challenging for English speakers to learn. Seems that every person I know in #Ukraine has stopped speaking Russian. Arabic. Pinyin is a phonetic alphabet for Mandarin, and is much easier to grasp since it uses the same letters as English's alphabet. Terms & Conditions | Japanese requires a large amount of study to learn because its writing system includes three different scripts, and the language includes different vocabulary and grammatical forms to use based on social context. Although Slavic languages are similar in terms of grammar, vocabulary, and phonetics, they are all entirely different from English. So, if you learn a certain dialect, there's a chance you might not be able to understand the locals from another region. She said many soldiers she works with who spoke Russian before the invasion are continuing to do so. One example is French. 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. Human speech as a whole uses over 800 phonemes, which are the individual sounds that act as the building blocks of spoken language. Bulgarian uses the Cyrillic alphabet, which can be tough for English speakers to learn. Official forms such as those in doctors offices, particularly in Russian-speaking areas, largely came in both Russian and Ukrainian. Finnish has a reputation for being a tricky language to learn, and with good reason. But the more each language continued to evolve, the more it differed from its initial state. These languages are deeply nuanced, with complex grammar and pronunciation rules. 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.. The takeaway here is that the farther your native language is from the language youre learning, the more challenging you may find your new language. Easier, too, to keep your eye on the prizeyour personal language goalsat all times. The Hardest Languages To Learn For English Speakers. The hardest languages for you to learn will depend on the languages you currently speak, particularly your native languages.

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