A funny – correlation between language difficulty and women
There is a lot of attraction to learn the Polish language because Polish women are beautiful, I am just being honest. It is almost like the more challenging the language of a particular culture the more beautiful the women. It is almost like the more difficult the language the easier you will have it in life with regard to your wife. Think about it:
- Polish, Russian and Czech women command a case based languages with pronunciation that is almost impossible. Yet they have a reputation of being wonderful wives. I would attest to this from first hand experience.
- Arabic women are exotic and for western guys are perpetually out of reach because of cultural differences. Yet if you could access this language and culture you might be like Leonardo Dicaprio in that Middle Eastern movie.
- Asian, Chinese and Japanese and Korean are slim and quiet and seem to stand in the shadows next to their men culturally. After feminism and man despairing in Western culture has gone amok, it is not bad to have an agreeable wife.
In contrast I would say the Western European languages of English, Dutch, German have nice women, but perhaps I am too familiar with American and British women to have any ‘wow factor’. Of course this position is subjective and relative, however, I am curious if other expats and world travelers would agree. And if your an American girl do not take offense this is just for fun.
So you are adventurous and seek love and stories you will be able to recant when you are old and grey, you had better hone and tone your linguistic skills more than your body. Hit your local language lab or get some mp3s more than you pumping iron at the gym.
Do not believe me do your own survey of language tutors on YouTube and tell me which ones have the cordialter instructors.
Tell me the most difficult language and I will tell you where the beautiful women are hiding
Mr. Spock would say ‘fascinating’. Polish has beautiful girls we know this but do you know what obstacles face the student ? You want to see how many forms one Polish word might take? Well here it is Polish by a long way. This language is a linguistic nightmare, it is even harder than Chinese or Japanese (which have very little grammar) or Arabic (which has only three baby cases).
Please consider the exhibit below. It is only one word, but contains many forms.
What are you kidding me? There are like over 100 forms, you can count them. This is one Polish word. It is the word ‘to read’. Every word in Polish must agree with the other words in the sentence, therefore, there are almost an infinite number of combinations in one sentence.
The pronunciation is very hard and people in this central European country speak very soft. I would say to learn the Polish language it is equivalent to learning several other European languages. This especially goes for English speakers.
The language can be studied and spoken but only if you have the right attitude. The right attitude is, you do not have to speak it perfectly to communicate, rather focus on vocabulary and you have to be patient.
There is a heated debate here regarding, “what is the hardest language” and here How hard is Polish to study?
- Please like this post on Facebook as it helps spread the conversation about languages right now if you can.
The good news about being an expat and languages
Eventually all languages will go in your brain, even the most challenging. If you are an American or a Brit and you want to live abroad, I usually recommend Poland because of the high standard of living compared to the price index, the exotic factor that it is not somewhere like Canada, which is beautiful but the same as your own country, the warmth of the people welcoming you, and the attractive girls. However, to sweet talking girls in their native language, beyond the guttural slang and swear words primitives seem to parrot, it is a little more challenging. Eloquence in speech, partially with the opposite gender takes.
Check out my other posts on this site and please I need the help, just like this post.
I completely disagree with that.
Not with that some Polish words have many forms because they do but with that “Polish language it is equivalent to learning several other European languages.”
First of all, forms mean nothing. Let’s look at a language declared as very easy: Spanish. I’ll list its forms for the same word to read – ler that you have written here for Polish:
yo lo
tú les
él/usted le
nosotros lemos
vosotros léis
ellos/ustedes len
yo lía
tú lías
él/usted lía
nosotros líamos
vosotros líais
ellos/ustedes lían
yo lí
tú liste
él/usted lió
nosotros limos
vosotros listeis
ellos/ustedes lieron
yo leré
tú lerás
él/usted lerá
nosotros leremos
vosotros leréis
ellos/ustedes lerán
yo lería
tú lerías
él/usted lería
nosotros leríamos
vosotros leríais
ellos/ustedes lerían
tú le
él/usted la
nosotros lamos
vosotros led
ellos/ustedes lan
yo la
tú las
él/usted la
nosotros lamos
vosotros láis
ellos/ustedes lan
yo liera
tú lieras
él/usted liera
nosotros liéramos
vosotros lierais
ellos/ustedes lieran
liendo
lido
I think that is not all the forms and it does not include the negative forms like the list includes for Polish (nieczytani, nieczytana – unread, unread (fem.), etc.) because if it did, that would expand the list a lot. It does not include all of the possible tenses too (ha lido, has lido, havia lido… LOTS AND LOTS OF possibilities). Spanish has a lot of words too. If you think about languages like Lithuanian, it has a lot of forms too (perhaps even more for words like “two”). Still, it’s not that ce you come to terms with it.
Even if other languages don’t have so many wordforms, they still have to express these concepts somehow and you have to memorize those ways.
I’d say that the number of forms is nowhere near a fair criterion for language difficulty and you have provided no evidence why it should be.
Second, I call BS on that “Average English speaker is fluent at about the age 12; the average Polish speaker is fluent in their language not until age 16.”
This seems a completely arbitrary claim with no source at all. To the best of my knowledge, It is not true as well because all children in the world speak well at a certain same age. If your claim was true then Polish children until 16 would have major problems speaking and and that’s simply not how it works.
Polish is not very much harder than any other language in Europe.
I’m a native Spanish speaker, but I don’t understand what does lyzazel mean….
To read (in Spanish: Leer)
The different forms are:
yo leo
tú lees
él/ella/ usted lee
nosotros leemos
vosotros leeis
ellos/ustedes leen
yo /ella / él /usted leía
tú leías
nosotros leíamos
vosotros leíais
ellos/ustedes leían
yo leí
tú leíste
él/usted /ella leyó
nosotros leímos
vosotros leísteis
ellos/ustedes leyeron
yo leeré
tú leerás
él/usted / ella leerá
nosotros leeremos
vosotros leeréis
ellos/ustedes leerán
yo leería
tú leerías
él/usted leería
nosotros leeríamos
vosotros leeríais
ellos/ustedes leerían
tú lee
usted lea
nosotros leamos
ellos/ustedes lean
leyendo
leído
All languages have many diffucult words and phrases, but you can express yourself looking for other ways to communicate the idea
Russian and Polish can be good wives LOL! Yes, they can if you know how to handle them, if you don’t – be aware that North American emancipation is a walk in the park compared to the nightmare you will go through if you are not prepared well. There won’t be any shortage of “Wow factor” but could be not the one you expect.
And you are probably Ukrainian, because you don’t like neither Polish or Russian.
First of all, I would not agree with this list. Most of this words are the forms of the verb “to read”, but some of them derive from the noun “czytanie” (czytania, czytaniu, czytaniom, czytań and same with nie-). It is not like reading in English 🙂
Then, the negative forms don’t count and the word “czytajmyż” is no longer in use (but still you can find it in old Polish literature).
But, what I really want to say, is that not the NUMBER of forms makes Polish the hardest language in Europe (maybe not in the whole world, but I agree that it is in Europe) – it is the difficulty of this forms.
Take tables with a French or a Spanish verb – 94 forms for the former and ~110 for the latter (but many of them are not in use or are created with only 1 form of this verb).
Its almost the same for the Polish verbs and nouns.
BUT when learning Spanish, for instance, you have to learn only the endings, and some irregular verbs. While in Polish you have different groups of endings and you have to know which noun goes with which. And something extra, called “oboczność” – sometimes, not only the ending in the given word change, but also a letter in the middle of the word.
for instance, there is the declination of the “river”:
sing., plural
rzeka, rzeki
rzeki, rzek
rzece, rzekom
widzę rzekę, rzeki (I see a river/rivers)
z rzeką, rzekami (with a river/rivers)
o rzece, rzekach (about a river/rivers)
rzeko!, rzeki!
other examples, whithout the whole declination:
noga – the leg can take the forms: nodze, nóg
miasto – mieście (town)
woda – wodzie – wód (water)
igła – igle – igieł (needle)
cukier – cukru – cukrze (sugar)
grudzień – grudnia (december)
gwiazda – gwieździe (star)
gra – grze – gier (game)
pies – psa – psie (dog)
Polska – Polsce (Poland)
Kraków – Krakowie
And you can see that these are basic words!
What else? In Polish not only ch and h, ó and u, rz and ż sound in the same way, but often also si and ś, ni and ń, ci and ć, ę and en and em, ą and on and om, or even b and p, especially for a foreigner.
Example: the pronounciation of dąb (correct) and domp (x) is the same 😀
This is a big problem, cause for instance może and morze both exist. Same with lud (ludu, ludy, ludem…) and lód (lodu, lody, lodami…).
I can talk and talk about this and I guess there are much more things that makes Polish so difficult. 😀
One thing more: czytałom/czytałobyś/czytałobym/czytałoś do not exist. There should be an “a” instead of the “o”. 🙂
correct – these forms do not exist because this is a neuter grammatical gender and these objects not reading (usually) 😉
…from Wikipedia: ” In some of the Slavic languages, for example, within the masculine and sometimes feminine and neuter genders, there is a further division between animate and inanimate nouns – and in Polish, also sometimes between nouns denoting humans and non-humans.”
@Micoco
“One thing more: czytałom/czytałobyś/czytałobym/czytałoś do not exist.”
These are indeed rare as most often a kid addresses itself as “him” or “her”. But the word “czytałobyś” is legit – this is how you could say to a kid “Would you read?”
Although when you know friendship of a kid the form “czytałbyś” for boys or “czytałabyś” for girls seem to be more polite / appropriate.
Anyway, these forms are correct but not really used besides word games.
Best regards,
Affidavit
Finnish comes a close second in my opinion…
Finnish is pretty hard yeah, but I’d still say Polish seems lil harder. English is really easy compared to Finnish imo.
Micoco : Where are you from ?
At the moment I live in France, but I used to live in Poland a few years.
But isnt the Chinese language more difficult than Polish?
Chinese has no tenses, cases, verb changes, articles, etc I do not think it is that hard at all. Try to learn some, with the exception of the writing you can the language up pretty easy.
those form do exist : czytałobyś, czytałobym e.g.. Dziecko, czytałobyś już gdybyś się uczyło. ( Kid, you would be able to read already if you have studied.
And I would agree that spanish and italian are very easy, whereas polish is definitely the hardest language of Europe (maybe hungarian counts too) and for sure is more complicated than chinese is claimed to be the hardest language.
I am 25 years old polish graduate, that can speak very good english, chinese and german, but sadly do not consider myself fluent in polish by what I mean writing without spelling mistakes and speaking without grammar mistakes not mention usage of “high” vocabulary 😉
And of course there might be difficult languages that I do not know 😉 but believe me it is hard even for us.
Why people have the wrong idea that Spanish is easy? I´m Spanish teacher living in Poland and always have the same situation, that people think that Spanish is easy because they can repeat some words in Spanish easily; but when grammar comes into the game it´s really madness. Believe me, Spanish grammar is really hard, I believe harder than Polish. We have so many tenses, modes and words that speak properly is not that easy as you think.
Probably, the difference is, Spanish is familiar to learn at the beginning and is changing into a nightmare by degrees. Polish appears like a vampire from beginning
I’m Polish and I’ve learned Italian grammar in three years. It’s basically similar to Spanish and please don’t say it’s a madness.
Sure, it’s funny to hear people say “Italian is easy… no tenses… or at least I know one” (dude, they actually have more or less 15 of them altogether, but Polish pronunciation+declination+conjugation+exceptions make it definitely harder.
Over the past 40 years I lived nearly a dozen countries and everywhere I go people claim their language is the hardest to speak. Almost as common is the statement, “I can speak X, Y and Z but I cannot speak my own language well”: often combined with the caveat “of course it’s easy to speak it a little, but hard to speak it well”.
There is a certain pride in difficulty and inscrutability. Europeans argue over which language has the most verb tenses, Japanese know that Keigo is difficult even for native speakers, English has the largest vocabulary, Polish is impossible to pronounce, Chinese impossible to write, but everyone agrees that Thai is easy – unless you want to use the Rhetorical, Royal, Religious or Elegant registers.
It appears we are most aware of our limitations in the language with which we are most familiar. I always enjoy listening to arguments over which language is the hardest and it amazes me that I hear the same argument in every country I have lived.
Excellent comment! Probably the best on this site, summing up the whole disccusion. I completely agree with everything you’ve said. I don’t think Polish is the hardest language to learn – not because it’s my native language, I’m fluent in Polish and it’s easier for me to say that – but because each language, as you beautifully showed, has its own specificity, intricacies etc. which make every language hard in different “areas”.
The truth is that the farthest the language is from our native one, the more difficult it would be to learn it. To master Polish is nothing for a Russian or Ukrainian speaker as well as to learn Portuguese for a Spanish speaker or Finnish for Estonian, Japanese for a Chinese. It also depends on the age at which you learn the language. English was relatively easy for me to learn as well as French when I was in my late teens – early 20th, but now I live in Canada and try to learn French again as I have not used it for over 20 years and forgot almost everything. I do understand the logic behind grammar, I can pronounce it well as I have an ear for languages (another factor that helps in learning a foreign language), but vocabulary comes and goes as the memory is not the same as 20+ years ago.
One thing more: czytałom/czytałobyś/czytałobym/czytałoś do not exist. There should be an “a” instead of the “o”. 🙂
They do exist! These are forms of the third person, neutral gender in different tenses and conditionals.
You can imagine a poetic dialogue with the Sun
A: Słońce! Dlaczego dzisiaj nie świeciłoś?
B: Nie świeciłom, bo chmury przysłoniły niebo.
Etc.
Ok, let’s say that these forms do exist, but only in old Polish. It’s no longer in use neighter in the spoken language, nor in the written. Still, I agree that we can find them in old poetic texts (I can’t imagine someone writing this dialogue in XXI century ^^).
“Dziecko, czytałobyś już gdybyś się uczyło” – nobody speaks to a child in a neutral form! Polish people would say: “Dziecko, czytałbyś już gdybyś się uczył.”
For the noun “dziecko” we use the neutral only while speaking in the third person: “Gdyby nasze dzicko się uczyło, to już umiałoby czytać.” 🙂
It’s still exists – someone gave you an example a little higher from here. It’s normal form of neutral gender verbs in supposing mode 😛
Mico: Sorry, but in my opinion, You wrong. First to sentences with world child are bad examples, cos parents now exactly theirs kids s_x and apply male or female gender. They talk to him (her)! I think, that this weird forms are exit in modern Polish, as well as they exited in XIX or XX century, and they are correct. They are just not common use (I’m 50 and never be force to use them). Wow is me, know myself about this subtlety from this thread, this very day. Another proof how complex my mother tong is 🙂
Sorry for my bad English, but I,m still learning 🙂
AA: that is what I am talking about. I agreed that these forms exist, sorry for saying the opposite at first. But Polish people no longer use them for a very long time, because there is no situation in which we could do it. The neutral form only applies to some unamitaded things, like chair and bed (to krzesło, to łóżko). And these are thing that normal people dont talk to. (“Drogie krzesło! Czemu nie byłobyś wygodne?” 😀 ).”Dziecko” – the child is the only exception (as far as I know), and, as I have said in the previous comment, even if the child is a neutral noun, we don’t talk to him/her in the neutral form.
hey guys u must not heard of Lithuanian language. and if u know lets say russian then it’s easy to understand polish even if u never heard polish before. acctualy all eastern europe has similar language. not the same but similar. i know russian and got no problems with understanding polish slovakian and check ( check was mix of some slavic and german as i found it). so u beter find out bout lithuanian language and tell me how is it for u. we live in da eastern europe and have no similarities exept latvian. but we call them brothers so…
I think the most difficult language to learn is Arabic based on deep studies due to the alphabet.
I hope someday you try to learn it.
@keenan,
Arabic is a fairly simply language with a minor inflection and an “alphabet” that has approximately 50 chars. It actually takes a month to learn the script.
I would say Japan, And then Danish…
I don’t speak neither russian nor polish,arabic or whatever but I do believe that Albanian it’s pretty hard with 36 letters where nine of them are double letters spelled together to form a sound e.x. ll,dh, sh,th,xh zh etc,there are five cases a lot of conjuction and alot of of other sttufs….it’s only one thing easy there in Albanian language words are read exactly like they ar written….
@Lyzazel, at first I thought you had made a ´typo´ but your entire example is completely wrong.
To read in Spanish is Leer, not Ler and therefore all your conjugations are incorrect!
Albanian is pretty hard!!!
Only one foreign person has reached to learn it well
Arabic has only 29 letters not 50 , and it has “STANDARD” grammatical system .. i think it is a wounderful language , and any one who learned that language got addicted to its beauty ..read an arabic poem .. and you will see that no other language is expressive as this one
What about Polish vs. other Slavic languages like Czech or Bulgarian? Anybody have any insights on how those stack up in terms of difficulty??
Primarily those suffering declension nouns that does not mean that a language It is difficult or not. it must analyze many aspects, not only declinations (this language has six cases, 14 cases Estonian and so on). I’ ve been analyzing and I arrived at a conclusion.
the 5 hardest languages to learn are: (I did not consider the oriental languages):
1: Hungarian
2: Portuguese
3: Polish
4: Finnish
5: German
look, Latin languages, Portuguese is the most complicated, there is no doubt. the language is full of tenses, if I am not mistaken are 6 tenses (the verb changes its form, besides having many irregular verbs), there are languages which we can live with only three tenses! the Finnish language has no future time (god of heaven, how they can survive).
I can say that Hungarian and Portuguese respectively are tied for first place.
that’s all I can say: I’ ve been studying Polish, it is really very difficult, but not impossible to learn, if you want to speak hungarian or portuguese.
Actually, here are the hardest language to learn…
It all depends on your native language, but these are the top four universal hardest languages;
Chinese ( Over 25,000 Letters in Alphabet )
English ( Complex Grammar )
Korean ( Fuse between Chinese and Japanese )
Japanese ( Large Alphabet )
For native American English users, the hardest without universal hard languages as stated above would be Eastern European languages.
English has easy to no grammar. Chinese basically has not grammar. 100 years ago 90% of the people in the world did not read, so you define a language by your ability to read. Language is first and foremost spoken. I think people stress written language too much when evaluating this.
Bah, your right, I keep thinking it has a complex grammar, but English is strict no?
Chinese has over 25,000 letters, and if you get one letter wrong in a conversation then the entire conversation is messed up…
Samething with Japanese…
Korean is a blend of Japanese and Chinese…
English ( More Specifically American English ), it is strict no?
I am not an expert. But I do teach English and I would say that English is flexible compared to a language like Polish which has very formal grammar rules. The reason English is flexible is so many people use the language from so many places that there is a level of acceptance when grammar and pronunciation varies from region to region. On the other hand there is only one Polish language.
English really does not have cases and verbs are all the same except in the third person, English does not have genders or aspects. The only thing it has is verb tenses, but that is really British English. If you give an American an advanced English book full of British verb tenses they can not do it. So English has almost no grammar. What it does have is many words and idioms and people use the language in such a crazy slangy idiomatic way that it is very hard for learners to really ever speak like a native unless they study.
It is easy to get to the intermediate level in English. But once you are there you get stuck there.
In Polish to speak at the intermediate level is hard, and few people do, but after that it gets easier.
I beg to differ about Japanese writing being very hard to learn. It’s made of 1945 official kanji plus hiragana and katakana syllabic alphabets which are really one alphabet in two forms. Pronounciation is devoid of accent and straighforward.
Keigo is the easiest to learn, every foreigner is able to communicate in everyday life after 6-12 months. The everyday, unofficial language is harder, many foreigners catch “female” style from their Japanese girlfriends.
For a Westerner, the cultural barrier, complicated customs – for example the choice of many forms of “me” and “you” are the most difficult.
variations for ” to read ” in hungarian
olvasni –
olvasok – olvasom
olvasol – olvasod
olvas – olvassa
olvasunk – olvassuk
olvastok – olvassátok
olvasnak – olvassák
olvastam
olvastál – olvastad
olvasott -olvasta
olvastunk – olvastuk
olvastatok – olvastátok
olvastak – olvasták
olvasnék – olvasnám
olvasnál- olvasnád
olvasna – olvasná
olvasnánk –
olvasnátok –
olvasnának – olvasnák
olvashatnék – olvashatnám
olvashatnál – olvashatnád
olvashatna – olvashatná
olvashatnánk –
olvashatnátok
olvashatnának – olvashatnák
olvashatok – olvashatom
olvashatsz – olvashatod
olvashat – olvashatja
olvashatunk – olvashatjuk
olvashattok – olvashatjátok
olvashatnak – olvashatják
olvashattam
olvashattál
olvashatott
olvashattunk
olvashattátok
olvashattak
olvasandó
olvasható
olvashatóak
olvashatatlan
olvashatatlanok
felolvasni –
felolvasok – felolvasom
felolvasol – felolvasod
felolvas – felolvassa
felolvasunk – felolvassuk
felolvastok – felolvassátok
felolvasnak – felolvassák
felolvastam
felolvastál – felolvastad
felolvasott -felolvasta
felolvastunk – felolvastuk
felolvastatok – felolvastátok
felolvastak – felolvasták
felolvasnék – felolvasnám
felolvasnál- felolvasnád
felolvasna – felolvasná
felolvasnánk –
felolvasnátok –
felolvasnának – felolvasnák
felolvashatnék – felolvashatnám
felolvashatnál – felolvashatnád
felolvashatna – felolvashatná
felolvashatnánk –
felolvashatnátok
felolvashatnának – felolvashatnák
felolvashatok – felolvashatom
felolvashatsz – felolvashatod
felolvashat – felolvashatja
felolvashatunk – felolvashatjuk
felolvashattok – felolvashatjátok
felolvashatnak – felolvashatják
felolvashattam
felolvashattál
felolvashatott
felolvashattunk
felolvashattátok
felolvashattak
felolvasandó
felolvasható
felolvashatóak
felolvashatatlan
felolvashatatlanok
kiolvasni –
kiolvasok – kiolvasom
kiolvasol – kiolvasod
kiolvas – kiolvassa
kiolvasunk – kiolvassuk
kiolvastok – kiolvassátok
kiolvasnak – kiolvassák
kiolvastam
kiolvastál – kiolvastad
kiolvasott -kiolvasta
kiolvastunk – kiolvastuk
kiolvastatok – kiolvastátok
kiolvastak – kiolvasták
kiolvasnék – kiolvasnám
kiolvasnál- kiolvasnád
kiolvasna – kiolvasná
kiolvasnánk –
kiolvasnátok –
kiolvasnának – kiolvasnák
kiolvashatnék – kiolvashatnám
kiolvashatnál – kiolvashatnád
kiolvashatna – kiolvashatná
kiolvashatnánk –
kiolvashatnátok
kiolvashatnának – kiolvashatnák
kiolvashatok – kiolvashatom
kiolvashatsz – kiolvashatod
kiolvashat – kiolvashatja
kiolvashatunk – kiolvashatjuk
kiolvashattok – kiolvashatjátok
kiolvashatnak – kiolvashatják
kiolvashattam
kiolvashattál
kiolvashatott
kiolvashattunk
kiolvashattátok
kiolvashattak
kiolvasandó
kiolvasható
kiolvashatóak
kiolvashatatlan
kiolvashatatlanok
leolvasni –
leolvasok – leolvasom
leolvasol – leolvasod
leolvas – leolvassa
leolvasunk – leolvassuk
leolvastok – leolvassátok
leolvasnak – leolvassák
leolvastam
leolvastál – leolvastad
leolvasott -leolvasta
leolvastunk – leolvastuk
leolvastatok – leolvastátok
leolvastak – leolvasták
leolvasnék – leolvasnám
leolvasnál- leolvasnád
leolvasna – leolvasná
leolvasnánk –
leolvasnátok –
leolvasnának – leolvasnák
leolvashatnék – leolvashatnám
leolvashatnál – leolvashatnád
leolvashatna – leolvashatná
leolvashatnánk –
leolvashatnátok
leolvashatnának – leolvashatnák
leolvashatok – leolvashatom
leolvashatsz – leolvashatod
leolvashat – leolvashatja
leolvashatunk – leolvashatjuk
leolvashattok – leolvashatjátok
leolvashatnak – leolvashatják
leolvashattam
leolvashattál
leolvashatott
leolvashattunk
leolvashattátok
leolvashattak
leolvasandó
leolvasható
leolvashatóak
leolvashatatlan
leolvashatatlanok
beolvas …etc etc
i didnt write down all of them coz i was tooo lazy for that ….:D
And people think English or Spanish is hard. Thank you, as I can not tell you how many people I know learning English complain it is so hard.
megy, dülöngél, lépdel, botorkál, gyalogol,
kódorog, andalog, rohan, üget, csörtet, törtet,
lohol, vágtat, tipeg, libeg, biceg, hebeg, rebeg, poroszkál, somfordál, bóklászik, halad,őgyeleg, slattyog…etc
It’s obvious. HUNGARIAN is the hardest language in the world. I’m sure.
Above this comment you can see only a few of those verbs that express the same action in Hungarian – the verb “to go”. As you can see the words are not the same just the meaning is, and they should be used in appropriate situations. For example: Hungarians wouldn’t say that “slattyogunk – we are going” in usual shoes only in slippers…
Hungarian language has the most voluminous vocabulary. A verb can have more than hundred forms (special thanks to “adriana”). Nevertheless the pronounciation is really easy according to other languages – the letters are not changing their pronounciation like in English. Hungarian language has the ability to express many informations only in one word. Here is an example:
fi – son
fia – someone’s son
fiai – someone’s sons
And now focus, the English form will sound really weird,but I’m not misleading anybody.
fiaié – someone’s sons’ something
fiaiéi – someone’s sons’ somethings
So let me correct the original question:
Which is the 2nd hardest language in the world?
That’s why most Hungarian people don’t speak more than one language
The British FCO (Foreign Office) has produced, rated in levels of difficulty, a list for the most difficult languages for their overseas staff ( native English speakers) to learn. The ratings are important as staff can spend up to 1 year studying the language in London before transfer to the their post overseas. Unfortunately , I have the seen the list on the internet but right now cannot find it ! Basically, the more exotic the language compared to English , the harder it is to learn.
The most difficult are:
Chinese, Japanese, Korean
However, I’ve heard that some operatives do struggle with Hungarian , amongst the ‘European’ languages and I have seen it being said that Basque is the most difficult, although most , if not all, staff do use Spanish to communicate in the Basque country.
Here’s another difficult language :Tuyuca neatorama.com/2010/01/02/what-is-the-most-complex-language-in-the-world/
I believe the following European languages are quite hard:
Europe:
-Polish and most other Slavic languages
– Hungarian, Finnish – grammar and also the amount of unrelated vocabulary you come across
– Romanian – due to the many features it shares with Slavic languages.
In my opinion, there is only one “European” language that is the hardest and that’s… drum-roll……BASQUE!!! An absolutely intimidating language with over thousands of declensions and tons of cases (a lot like Hungarian and Finnish in this regard.)
Unfortunately few people know arabic language .
Most of arabs don’t speak the right arabic , they speak with their accent only and the arabic accent is not like the official , and if they try to talk official they make a lot of mistakes while their talking and writing .
What I want to say is that arabic language (official) has the most difficult grammer and syntax in the world .
only people who really know arabic will agree with me .
Do you know that arabic grammer book called ( al-nahu al-wahi)(النحو الوافي) contans 2,807 pages it’s just for explaining the grammer and syntax.
and the arabic – arabic dictionary (taj al-arus)(تاج العروس)contains up tp 22,000 pages.
Do u know that arabic eloquence books contains about 600 pages.
do you know that I gave you a very small example about arabic books , I mean there are longer books and there are many other books which are sources.
But only educated people about Arabic know that .
The most difficult language for native speakers is English I guess.Because all words are borrowed from everywhere and no roots and no logical sense.
Enough with the Polish, I have studied Japanese for 7 years and it is difficult because of the writing and simply the language is completely different in the way of thinking, so the psychology of the Japanese language is different. Arabic is not really that difficult, the script can be learned in a week or so. But the irregularities when it comes to conjugating and plurals, English is inferno when it comes to the phonetics, reading rules and writing. Chinese…ok everyone talks about writing which by itself is hard to learn but the tones are the problem so it is not that easy when you know that the syllable MA pronounced in 4 different tones can mean mother, question particle, a type of plant and to curse, Spanish IMHO is a rather easy language to learn. French and german are difficult because of so many irregularities, Now, Serbian(Croatian, bosnian…it is all one and the same, as a native i know this) in my opinion is not easy. Yes, it does have 7 cases, 4 types of declensions and 4 conjugations. The problem with my language is that there are so many vocal changes which are especially easily noticed when changing a noun through the cases. However, if you devote yourself and discover the psychology of a language, it comes very easy, So, Polish is not more difficult than Russian or Swahili,Each language has sth that makes it difficult… And one more thing, don’t want to sound cocky, but in order to answer this question, one must really have tried to learn languages from several language families in order to be qualified to answer, And, in the end, it all sums up to personal view, peace 🙂
Będzie po polsku
Mówienie po polsku to jak mówienie płynnie po łacinie tylko z większą ilością przypadków – w łacinie jest 6 a w polskim 7.
Bo jest jeszcze wolacz. To samo u nas w czeskim.
I would say that Basque, Finish and Hungarian are probably among the most difficult languages in Europe to learn for native English speakers because of very different grammatical structures.
In the world, Japanese is supposedly very difficult in grammar and also in the writing system. The Japanese writing system is more complex than the Chinese one, because they combine Kanji radicals with additional Japanese symbols. In Chinese, there are only the radicals.
However, Australian Aboriginal languages are probably very difficult, too. They have sounds which most other languages de not have and have syllables that look quite confusing.
And we haven’t even touched the African click languages or Native American languages with their own specific grammar…
How difficult a language is considered is 90% subjective.
Of course one can look at such things as the number of phonemes, conjugations and declensions and other such things, and say that the more of these a language has, the more difficult it is to learn, but it is still every learner’s own, individual and specific experience that decides.
We experience a language that is linguistically related or similar to the languages we already know easy. The more similarities there are in the grammar to the languages we already know, the easier the language appears to be.
The objective number of words, phonemes, inclinations etc. is irrelevant in the personal experience, it’s the amount that is foreign to us that matters.
Also, the media supply also matters. Most of the people living in Western world would appreciate English very easy language to learn, because there’s plenty of English around us. We watch a lot of English movies and tv shows now-a-days. If I have understood correctly, German is quite strongly present in Eastern Europe. An Eastern Canadian would consider French easier to learn than Spanish, while for a Texan it would be the other way around.
One more thing to consider: I don’t feel comfortable to express my opinion on the languages I haven’t studied… I cannot say if Navajo is a difficult language to learn or not. I assume it would be harder for me to learn than Polish.
I agree with Ketutar. The more similarities in the languages we already know, the easier the language appears to be. I am trilingual and could easily learn Bulgarian, Check, Polish and other Slavic based languages. I also speak Romanian, which would be very helpful in learning the Roman languages. I studied German for a few years at the same time majoring in English. English is my third language and I’ve been speaking it the same amount as my mother tongues and I spell better than most Americans. English makes so much sense to me. It is very simple, compared to Russian or Asian language. As far as European languages go, I’d add my vote for Hungarian. When living short-term in Hungary though, I was totally lost and hated not being able to communicate even on the basic level. Granted, I wasn’t there long enough to give it a good try, but my Eastern European friends (bilingual already) who tried to make a living in Hungary the language was extremely complicated and it took them many years. It really helps to be at least bilingual, and be willing to work hard at a new language if one doesn’t have the linguistic talents. It pays one day. Years ago, while waiting in the check in line at an airline counter I heard an announcement on the loudspeaker for a Czech speaker to the lost and found. My husbanded grabbed me and dragged me there while I protested I spoke not a lick of Czech. But, surprise, I helped the guy file a claim for his lost luggage speaking Russian. We got 2 meal certificates at the airport restaurant as a thank you gift. Languages are power, y’all.
Chinese has the 4 pillars, its writing is easy to learn but pronunciation is another matter. I would never be able to speak chinese because the spoken language is based on sound.
Written Japanese is the most difficult language to learn because of its use of Kanji, Hiragana, and Katagana. As we all know Kanji characters are similar to the chinese characters of which there are 50,000.
However, what makes the Japanese language so difficult is the coupling of Kanji with Hiragana or Katagana characters. Even a learned person will use a dictionary to check for proper spelling.
The spoken Japanese is quite easy to learn and pronounce for anyone who can speak Spanish, Italian, German, Dutch, and some more — its pronunciation is not so easy for those whose mother tongue is French or English.
Polish similar to Russian, try speak in Lithuanian, its more difficult.
English is the only language that I speak. In high school I completed two courses in French but I cannot speak French. This is probably because I only applied myself to the process of learning it enough to pass the classes. As a Catholic I understand and know how to speak a handful of phrases in Latin. I consider myself to be very fluent in my English language.
It seems to me that many people believe English to be overly flexible. I myself know very few fellow English speakers that speak it well. Yes English is a very adaptable language in the aspect that when you hear these adaptations spoken you can understand what the speaker is trying to say even though it is often times extremely full of grammatical errors. I have read every comment in this thread and have found that over 95 percent of them contain at least one or more (more being the majority) examples of grammatical error.
Also it seems that some people believe there to be differences in the way English can be correctly spoken. For one example the correct way to speak English in England is the same as in America. English has a correct or “proper” form no matter who is speaking it in any part of the world. Then there is what I call the casual form of speaking English which contains slang words and use of different predominant synonyms in different places etc.. Even this casual form containing slang words can be spoken with or without grammatical error as many of these slang words are found in modern dictionaries.
I find that in the English language even though something can be said correctly there is often an even “more correct” way to say it. Then there are what I call cultural forms of speaking English. These cultural forms are often incorrect and should only be spoken to other people that are familiar with them. I have never really thought that English would be an incredibly hard language to learn. However I do think that many people find it to be a hard language to master. Also many people that think they have mastered it are mistaken. When it comes to advice on any other language I of course have no advise to give.
Posłuchajcież, to rzecz rzadka
i nie żadna gadka szmatka,
ale minishow z otoczką,
jak to strzyżyk woleoczko,
wprawdzie, jużci, poniewczasie,
superrandkę w cud-szałasie
wygooglował na Facebooku.
A tam, tere-fere kuku,
to nie były hocki-klocki,
ale wpośród przaśnej nocki
gadu-gadu tete-a-tete,
zdezawuowane wnet
(albo raczej rachu-ciachu)
w pohulankach wśród rejwachu.
Naprzód cmok, cmok wraz, nawzajem,
baju, baju nad tokajem,
gul, gul w głąb, aż nadto, w bród
Za czym tańce z damą cud.
Rżną z hołubcem obertasa:
hop-siup, tup, tup i hopsasa!
I chcąc nie chcąc, ale w mig
pieją w c-moll: Bum-cyk-cyk,
tirli, tirli, tralala!.
Taki miszmasz aż do dnia.
A o brzasku, tak do wtóru,
stuku-puku, szuru-buru
w chaszczach już to w oczeretach.
Lecz hulanka zgoła nie ta
Szast-prast sczyścił więc dwa quady
marki Mrzygłód. Bez żenady,
z półuśmiechem, lecz półdrwiąco
rzekł jej rzeźwo coś o końcu
i cmoknonsens na rozstanie.
Ciao! Już więcej ani-ani.
youtu.be/jniKtV-ny5o US ambasady in Poland try to speak polish 🙂
I must say that I read all the comments on this page with great pleasure. People with different backgrounds, from different countries, … express themselves in a very polite way. Most sites I check upon in Germany, Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands, … are full of anonymous yelling and swearing and painful and disgusting comments. Mainly because they are …anonymous.
I master 6 languages and can ask for the way to the nearest train station or drugstore in a few more. Languages are fantastic. One of my ambitions is to learn Farsi and Arabic.
One language which no one mentions here is Dutch. It’s indeed quite easy to learn – in theory. However, knowing the situation in Flanders (Belgium), it’s very difficult for a foreigner to meet the language as everyone is speaking its dialect. The country is very small, but the differences between dialects on the one hand, and between dialects and the official language on the other hand are mostly HUGE. This makes it very difficult for foreigners to learn Dutch in Flanders, and I admire them when they do manage or at least do great efforts in order to do so.
Let it be clear : I love dialects ! 🙂
Hey guys,
I just wanna give an example from Turkish which is weirdly not mentioned here:
“Cekoslovakyalilastiramadiklarimizdan misiniz?”
“Cekoslovakya-li-las-ti-ra-ma-dik-la-ri-miz-dan-mi-siniz?”
The whole thing is only one word. In English:
“Are you one of those people that we could not be able to change into someone as from Czechoslovakia?”
Maybe the word number in Turkish is less than Chinese or English, but with the infinite number and use of suffixes, limits of the language totally depends on your imagination! Therefore you can never learn this language just at school from books or tapes.
Polish:
W szczebrzeszynie chrzaszcz brzmi w trzcinie….
Grzegorz Brzeczyszczykiewicz, zamieszkaly Brzeczyszczykowice
Because article is about Polish Language, I’ll write to author in Polish. Sorry Mate, but at least you’ll practice your reading. 😛
Zasadniczo nie zgodzę się, że język polski jest jakoś wyjątkowo trudny, szczególnie w porównaniu do wyżej wymienionych- rosyjskiego, czy ukraińskiego. Postawiłbym te języki na równym “poziomie trudności”, mimo, iż wymowa polskiego, a rosyjskiego i ukraińskiego jest trochę inna, to jednak stopień złożoności języka (pod względem gramatyki, przypadków etc.) jest bardzo podobny. Mimo, że w Polsce mamy własne znaki dodatkowe do alfabetu łacińskiego, to są to tylko dodatkowe znaki, rosyjska Grażdanka (mylnie nazywana Cyrylicą) jest o wiele trudniejsza do przyswojenia, znaczki w niej czasem przypominają kosmodrom (np. literka D). :>
Generalnie autorze artykułu chyba zapominasz o językach Ugrofińskich. Język polski ma te same podstawy co inne języki Indo-Europejskie, natomiast patrząc na język Węgierski, albo Fiński myśli się o… Kosmitach, elfach, Cthulhu itd. 😛 Chciałbym móc napisać coś więcej o tych językach, ale wszelkie próby nauczenia się czegokolwiek w językach Ugrofińskich kończyły się z mojej strony fiaskiem. 🙁
Alternative title for this article: “The more friendshipist the person, the more ridiculous the article.” Not only is it quite superficial and insulting to generalize and stereotype women from certain regions, but you also try to argue (and fail) that somehow language difficulty makes certain women more “agreeable wives”? Wow. That sounds like it was pulled out of the 1800s. It’s incredibly friendshipist and imperialistic.
I am a high-school student who is a native English speaker. I was raised in a bicultural (American-Polish) home in the USA and therefore have a very solid grasp of the Polish language. I have studied 11 years of Mandarin Chinese, 7 years of Spanish, 2 years of Latin, 2 years of Ancient Greek, and am currently studying abroad in and Arabic-speaking country in the Middle East.
I can honestly say that even after years of speaking Polish I still stumble occasionally on case and have continued difficulty with its different aspects. By contrast, the difficulties of Chinese only extend as far as the memorization of characters. Sentence structure there is quite simple and similar to English and Arabic. Spanish has been by far the simplest language to learn, and I had no difficulty picking up a moderate level of fluency within only a year or two of serious instruction.
Thanks you very much for the appreciation for the polish language and the Polish women.
Merci pour ces mots d’apreciation pour la langue polonaise et les Polonaises.
Dziekuje bardzo za slowa aprobaty dla polskiego jezyka i Polek.
Gracias por estas palabras sobre la idioma polaca et las mujeres de Polonia.
I’m in agreement.
Pozdrawiam serdecznie.
Katarzyna, polka, zona i matka;)
Also German has several forms of the word “read”:
lesen, lese, ließ, liest, lest, laß, laßen, laßt, gelesen, gelesener, gelesene, gelesenes, gelesenem, gelesenen, lesend, lesender, lesende, lesendes, lesendem, lesenden, verlesen, verlese, verliest, verlest, verlaß, verlaßen, verlaß, verlaßt, verlesend, verlesender, verlesendes, verlesende, verlesendem, verlesenden, belesen, belese, beließt, belest, belaß, belaßen, belaßt, belesend, belesender, belesende, belesendes, belesendem, belesenden, erlesen, erließt, erlese, erließ, erlaß, erlaßt, erlaßen, ablesen, abzulesen, abgelesen, auslesen, auszulesen, ausgelesen, abgelesener, abgelesenes, ausgelesener, ausgerlesenes, vorlesen, vorgelesen, vorzulesen, vorgelesener, vorgelsenes, vorgelesenem, vorgelsenen and even some more.
I beliefe many languages have several forms of one verb. English is one of the few which has just 4 or so (read read (different pronounciation), reads, reading)
You left out Hungarian, a very difficult language. Hungarian women are considered to be very beautiful. A few years ago a Hungarian came in second in the Miss Universe congtest.
Hungary has a number of talented females that are attractive such as Judit and Susan Polgar Chess champions and Anna Rudolf or the world champion jump rope artist, Adrienn Banhegyi. I think brains and beauty are correlated and I think intelligence can be developed.