There are many languages in the world, and the difficulty of learning them depends on factors such as the learner’s native language and individual aptitude. Basque and Hungarian are considered the most difficult, while Chinese and Korean are easier for Western speakers. English is also difficult due to pronunciation and irregular verbs.
There are over 2650 languages in the world plus over 7000 dialects. Deciding which language is the hardest to learn may not be as simple as you might think. Different languages present different challenges, and what constitutes a difficult language depends greatly on the individual studying it.
Your native language is a major deciding factor when it comes to difficulty. For example, Italian speakers seem to learn Spanish and Portuguese quite easily despite the complex grammatical structures of the Spanish language. On the same basis, Chinese speakers are likely to pick up Japanese faster than people whose first language uses the Roman alphabet. In fact, Chinese doesn’t have a grammar system per se, making it easier to learn than many Western languages once you’ve memorized the basic characters.
Individual aptitude is another factor. Some people have a natural talent for learning new languages, while others struggle with the basics. Factors such as the environment, the materials used, motivation and even the environment also play an important role in the difficulty of learning a language.
Apart from this, the British Foreign Office recently conducted a linguistic study and concluded that the most difficult language to learn is Basque, spoken in parts of Spain and France, closely followed by Hungarian, which has 35 noun cases or forms. On the other hand, the German and Russian languages use a punctuation system that is said to be among the most difficult in the world. Languages that use characters may seem difficult to read and write to users of the Latin alphabet, but they are not always that difficult. Experts agree that Chinese and Korean can be picked up quite easily by speakers of Western languages; Vietnamese and Japanese, on the other hand, are much more complex.
While many native speakers seem to forget this, English is actually quite difficult to learn due to pronunciation problems and irregular verbs; in English, many words are spelled the same but sound different depending on the meaning. This makes the English language difficult to understand even for people whose native language is a related language.
Protect your devices with Threat Protection by NordVPN
