The hardest language to learn

I think if you want to add Thai just you can just put it at the same level as Japanese and Chinese. Speaking is fairly easy apart from the five tones to master. Writing is a quite difficult although we have an alphabet, it is composed of around 90 characters and many combinations.

I would also think speaking Japanese is easier than Chinese or Thai as they do not have tones.

For Chinese you may also want to differentiate Mandarin (Simplified Chinese, 4 tones) with Cantonese (Traditional Chinese, 9 tones).

Théo de Belgeonne

Icelandic. Incredibly hard. Even the locals can’t speak it properly! Seriously, Check it out.

Random Slav

Serbian.. whaaaaa? Serbo-croatian perhaps

Bryan

I’m not going to sit here and argue the differences between languages and what makes them more difficult. Your entire premise is flawed. The difficulty of learning a [second] language depends entirely upon your native language and the similarities between the two. For example, Japanese is one of the hardest languages for native English speakers to learn, but it is much easier for a native Korean speaker to learn than English. If you did some real research into this subject you’d discover that the Defense Language Institute already has the following categories, defined by difficulty for native English speakers to learn:

Category I: French, Italian, Portuguese (Brazilian), Portuguese (European), and Spanish
Category II: German, Romanian
Category III: Czech, Greek, Hebrew, Persian-Farsi, Polish, Russian, Serbian/Croatian, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese
Category IV: Arabic, Chinese Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean

patrick

i am american. i know french on a basic level. it is a beautiful language. i have been trying to learn welsh. i’d be suprised if polish is harder than welsh. i am also trying to learn icelandic. to me, it is really difficult. just to say basic greetings is difficult, worse than welsh. welsh is still nasty, though. sometimes it is incomprehensible. any guttural sounds are tough on an english speaker. i don’t feel comfortable spitting when i speak.

Marek Goumineni

I would also say that English (which is now the fifth language I have learned–after Hungarian [my native tongue], Japanese, Portugese, and Swahili) is possibly the most difficult to be fluent in because of the highly dynamic nature of the cultures which use it, and its global nature.

I have had the most difficulty in speaking ‘properly’ when living in Australia, Ireland, and the United States.

Maciej Piechotka

I’m polish native speaker. It’s true that many polish people make errors while they speaking – but it’s hard to believe that any language is spoken perfectly (especially when something which is spoken by everyone is consider as an error).
As we talk abount h/ch and rz/ż (This page is served as utf-8 so I hope you have proper fonts installed) you may in 99% cases read the word correctly (the only exception are words which have been got from other languages such as yeti – I’d write, if I hadn’t knewn the world, jeti).
PS. Wyindywidualizowaliśmy się z rozentuzjazmowanego tłumu sounds like newspeach (anybody knows how to translate this into English properly – to make it sound like newspeach?).

uosiu

Hi from poland
I thinks that if a person born in poland, then he’s/she’s brain is “designed” to polish since he/she heard first words
I’m 16 and i think polish very well, I can speak english, ut I’ve got my own grammar system
I think that the easiest languages are those langs, that have the same root like your native.
As a polish man I can understand Czech (Ceska Republika ), A Bit of Slowak, Russian, Ukrainian etc.
A few weeks ago i’ve started to learn german. What makes it easier? I’ve found some words that are almost the same in english, org have root in latin. some latin words is in poland so I can guess the original meaning. That same is with other words, I can found root in some french words, I’ve learned french for two years, but effect is miserable

I think that the hardest languages are: hungarian (I can’t find roots of words in any other known me language), Finnish, and others north-europe languages…

Mam nadzieję, że zrozumieliście mój angielski pomimo mojej niezbyt dobrej gramatyki

mcv

baniol: Japanese? You mean writing? Japanese in speaking is very simple, You just have to learn words and some grammar. But of course if You want to write or read japanese text… well, You have to know at leat 1945 kanji characters + 2 syllabaries, and that’s truly difficult… at the beginning.

Pozdrowienia z Polski

Wlasnie sie dowiedzialem, ze wladam najtrudniejszym do nauczenia sie jezykiem na swiecie, a mam problem z nauczeniem sie angielskiego. Troche frustrujace
Zycze powodzenia w nauce polskiego.

ps: Nie uzylem polskich znakow, bo zapewne i tak bys ich nie zobaczyl. Do you understand, what i wrote?

Logan

No naprawdę, polski to trudny język?
A jak mamy się uczyć chińskiego ?
Polish is simple

m

http://www.sendspace.com/file/1pcob5
polish pronunciation sample: Wyindywidualizowaliśmy się z rozentuzjazmowanego tłumu. Sorry for poor quality.

efcia

im 20 and i live in Poland. what can i say about my language? it is hard, there are lots of people i know, who cant remember how to write (sometimes even basic) words correctly, no matter what age are they- 5, 15, 50. even my polish teachers had problems with pronunciation or grammar. in Poland there are even national tests from writting for adults and usually there is no one who can write all the words without a mistake! but i dont think this is the hardest language to learn.
extra information- the longest word in polsih is ‘Konstantynopolitańczykowianeczka’ and this is a girl from Konstantynopol ;P

wizkid

for me (I’m from Poland, I speak also English, German, and a bit of Latin)
the most difficult are: Chinese/Japanese/Korean, Arabic, Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, Welsh. They just don’t seem as a language I could ever learn

Bercik

“Average English speaker is fluent at about the age 12; the average Polish speaker is fluent in their language not until age 16″
This is not true. 12 years old kids can speak Polish fluently.

In fact. You can’t say with one is hardest to learn becouse it’s depend on person.
For me, languages like German, Dutch etc are the hardest. Pronunciation even simple sentence is nightmare.
We have only 3 tenses so it’s a lot easier to talk about anything without worring about right tense.

Of course Polish is not easiest one. But not the hardest either.

Greetings

Maria

here is the
“W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie i Szczebrzeszyn z tego słynie”
I’m native Polish but this sentence is always quite a problem to pronounce, in primary school I wasn’t able to say it.

baniol

A ja potrafię bardzo dobrze mówić po Polsku / I can very well speak Polish

baniol

Who can speak in Polish that:

- Stół z powyłamywanymi nogami
- W Chrzebrzeszczynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie
- Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz

PS: For Polish very hard is Japanese

x

Whole article is …boloney

” English speaker is fluent at about the age 12; the average Polish speaker is fluent in their language not until age 16.”

WTF? I’m from Poland I can assure you that’s not true. You are fluent in language much earlier… 12 for English? So the same for Polish. But I think it’s more like from 8 to 12 for both.

Viazi

I aggree, polish is hard to learn
Zgadzam się, polski jest trudny do nauczenia się.

michal

taa…sami Polacy tutaj hehe, posstraffiam fszysskich Polakufff!

matt

“Who can speak in Polish that:

- Stół z powyłamywanymi nogami
- W Chrzebrzeszczynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie
- Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz”

jeszcze dodalbym: (i’d add to this list)
- wyindywidualizowalismy sie z rozentuzjazmowanego tlumu
- krol karol kupil krolowej karolinie korale koloru koralowego
- szedl sasza sucha szosa

dddassaaadd

I laugh at statistics like that, because learning a foreign language is a very individual thing. Something, that may be hard for one man, can be very clear and simple to another. English language is easy IMO. It is one of the simpliest, so one of the most commong languages.
I consider Baltic languages a bit harder than Slavic, though they have much in common. But the pronounciation is a way tuffer case, believe me.

polish men

polish language: w szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie.
grzegorz brzęczyszczykiewicz, chrząszczydewoszyce powiat łękołody

mkb

Hi there. I’ve always thought, the chinese was the hardest language (of course writing), the second were the ugro-finishe languages, and the polish on third place. Good for me, I’m a genius:-) And when it goes to sentences in polish like “Stół z powyłamywanymi nogami” the difficulty is to speak it out. Even most polish people have troubles with it. But when a foreigner says “I speak polish”, I have always one sentence for him to understand that he doesn’t:
“- Z miastaście a dupaście.
- Dupam?
- Dupaś.”
It is polish, belive me.
regards
mkb

aph

A few sentences in Polish language:

wyrewolwerowany rewolwerowiec

rozrewolweryzowany rewolwer

Szły pchły koło wody,
Pchła pchłę pchła do wody
I ta pchła płakała,
Że ją tamta pchła popchała.

Cesarz czesał cesarzowej włosy na styl cesarski
konstantynopolitanczykowianeczka

“W Trzebiszewie trzmiel trze trzciny,
trzeszczą w Tczewie trzy trzmieliny,
a trzy byczki znad Trzebyczki
z trzaskiem trzepią trzy trzewiczki.”

-Polish is very hard to learn, but i think Hungarian is more difficult!! Is almost impossible to learn i think…

yap

What’s so hard about gender in Polish?! Don’t you have it in German, French or Italian? All these der, die, das, ein, eine, le, la, les… I think that gender makes language richer, more beautiful, help us to describe the world perfectly.

Pala

Chcesz, żeby Cię Twoja dziewczyna zabiła? Katarzyna, a nie Katażyna (Pages\About Me)

kasia

The most important thing in learning any language is motivation. If you are motivated, there is virtually nothing to discourage you from acquiring the language you chose. That’s why I would like to praise somebody I know who made enormous progress in learning English. I am eally proud of you:)
I agree that Polish is difficlut to learn, but the greater challenge, the greater satisfaction:)

argothiel

Najlepsze jest:
“Ckliwy prestidigitator Todoregalllo Verdadero do knajpki mknie po buteleczkę spirytusinku najwydestylowaniuchniejszego dla reżysera Mendozy.” )
Pozdrawiam wszystkich, którzy się uczą polskiego.

And I would like to add that Polish is very easy. )
And we’ve got very simple spelling (you read a word almost just like it is written down).

Slawek

And I speak Polish

Sirrysiek

Suprising… too suprising to be true, I suppose. Arabic seems much more complicated (I am polish and learning standard Arabic). The important questions to ask are:
1. Difficult for who? English native-speakers? Indians?
2. What are the criteria to state that something is either hard or not?

Sorrow

I agree (though I am Polish) that Polish is one of the most diffuclt languages in the world. However, why haven’t you mentioned Icelandic? Try it, it is even more complex than Polish.
And to Finnish I have to disagree a bit – its main “tough shit” is the vocabulary, which is different (its Finno-Ungaric language, not Indo-European). Everything else more or less strictly follows the rules.
Anyways, nice summary.

Marek

Język polski wcale nie jest trudny Ale patrząc po poziomie wpisów na blogach młodych polaków dochodzę do wniosku, że się po prostu nie uczą

“Morze to jest dla nih za tródnę?”

Hello from Poland

Hrw

There is a page about Polish grammar: http://free.of.pl/g/grzegorj/gram/gram00.html (written in Polish and English) which can be interesting to read.

Does Polish is hardest I can not say as I am Polish native. I had some years of Russian which I mostly forgot but at least can read Cyrilic, then some years of English which I can read/write much better then speak/understand.

But when I was in Slovakia for few days I had no problem to read their texts with understanding – of course there was some problems with dictionary.

Mnietek

Well.
The whole article should be titled ‘what is the hardest language to learn _for me_.
Learning languages is a fairly individual thing and depends highly on the language you speak as your first language.
For example, people speaking natively polish have often problems with languages like english or german because they in polish we “simply” switch endings of the word whereas in those languages you use many different prepositions.
And take all those tenses in english. Polish has only three tenses (ok, it also has past perfect but it’s very rarely used nowadays; pitty, because it’s a nice and logical form to use).
Also, people say that Japanese is hard to learn for polish people (english too, I heard). Well, maybe. I’m learning Japanese and I don’t seem to have any problems with it.
About fluency – sorry, no banana. In any given language most people use their language very carelessly and it’s not a “proper” language. It’s full of mistakes. It all depends on whether the person in question really wants to speak the language strictly acording to the rules or he/she cares not about the correctnes of his/her speaking. Believe me, I’ve seen/heard so many english speaking people speaking their “fluent” English, that I was wondering what language they speak since it couldn’t be English…
So, it’s all not that easy.

Mnietek

Oh, and don’t forget, as someone already pointed out – Polish has mostly 1-1 relation between what’s written to what is spoken (give or take the h/ch, u/ó, and rz/ż cases). English can have as much as 6 or 7 cases of different pronounciation of the same letters and up to 6 or 7 different writings for the same sound. So even those “monstrous” examples of polish words are quite “easy” to read in terms of being able to translate from written form to spoken form when you only know the basic rules of pronounciation (ok, speaking them is a different case even for polish people ;->) whereas you seem to have to learn every single word in English because you never know why it’s spoken/written that way.

Marcin

polska język jest trudna język…

Michał

Dla wszystkich co tak kochają szczebrzeszyn:

She sells see shells by the see shore

Polish Person

Actually the Polish language is missing one thing, the articles (a/the), which makes it hard for Polish people to speak grammatically correct in languages like English and German. Polish people will tend to drop them out in sentences, because they don’t have a natural feeling of when to use them. If only we had them, it would be much easier to learn and speak Germanic languages grammatically correct.

Massai

There are more tricky points in polish pronunciation …
For example:
“h” and “ch”
“hak” means “hook”.
“chór” means “choir”.
Basically, “h” and “ch” are pronounced the same (like in the word “hook” in english). But some polish people can speak in such way that you can actually hear the difference between words written with “h” and “ch”. It is not a very common skill, usually older people (born before the second world war) can pronounce like that. I cannot even describe the difference..

I agree that even without this very specific problems, polish pronunciation some times is tricky. For professionals, watching tv can be traumatic, presenters make so many mistakes…

But, if English is so easy, can somebody tell my why there is the difference in the “core” of the words:
Pronunciation
Pronounce
Why the hell there is an “o” in the second one???

PolishPerson

What did you mean by saying Polish has 7 Genders? Masculine/Feminine/Neuter and…

stilzi2

So, God thank you – I’m fluent in Polish & Hungarian My motherlanguage is Polish and I had the big occasion to learn also Hungarian. Hungarian IS hard, even very hard, but I do not believe that it’s easier to learn Chinese / Japanese or any of Arabian languages.

PL-pozdro / HUN-udv

Konrad

I’m Polish and i don’t speak and write well English but I know it and understand. I know a littlebit German and Russian and i think that people who know’s polish can easy learn any other langangue. Thanks to knowing polish and littlebit russian i can understand Czech, Sloviak, Ukrainian, Bulgarian and more of the East Europe countrys. Even i do understamd a littlebit of balkanian langangues. Thanks to knowing German i do understand to a littlebit of Swedisch, Norway or Netherland and Danmark langangues. And finally english that speak olmost everyone on the world. If enybody know Polish know a lot of langangues i he can very easy learn other langangues. No other country heave langangue so hard and streange as we do. I can read serbian letters and i do repeat serbian words, but no one can read a littlebit in polish

kmrook

EE tam myślę, że chiński jest trudniejszy ;p
I think that Chineese is more difficult to learn ;P

Bercik

I couldn’t agree more. Arabic is one of the hardest. Comparing this to learning Japanese is like candy from a baby.

Shigella

mkb:
A dialog
“- Z miastaście a dupaście.
- Dupam?
- Dupaś.”
It is polish, belive me.
regards
mkb
contains may old and rather non used forms – connection beetwen word “Dupa” and “Miasto” (nouns which mean “rear” and city) and shortened verb “jesteście, jestem, jesteś” (“to be”) and it may cause problems to modern Poles.
Polish is also hard to learn because of its irregularities – I’m educated person and sometimes even I have troubles with proper inflection.

I can only say that english pronounciation (especually of vowels) is really hard for Poles . Polish language lost long and short vowels. Also connected vowels like “something between “a” and “e” are horrible.
Also english idea of “Perfects” and “Continuous” times is taken from hell

Dawid

Hi. My name is David and I’m Polish. I know English, Latin and a bit of Russian and Arabic. I’ve always had this general feeling, that grammar makes Polish far more complicated than other languages. It was already mentioned here several times that the cases in Polish are really hard to comprehend, espetially for someone who is an English native speaker. There are also many other things.

For example the pronounciation is quite difficult (even though 99% of time – unlike in English – you pronounce word the way you spell it). Some people have given examples of realy har sentences in Polish – well, that’s not really a proof, I mean there are a lot of hard to pronounce (even for a native speaker) sentences in English as well. The thing is that even when you have basic words that include sounds like “sz” or “ż” pronouncing them is going to be a hell of a problem for an English-speaking person.

But nothing is impossible. My uncle is Syrian and came to Poland in the 80. to study medicine. He always says, that he managed to learn Polish because he fell in love with my aunt who studied pharmacy at the same university. So the bottom line is – everything is easy if you have the right motivation

By the way my uncle and my aunt moved to States about 20 years ago. Their kids speak English, Polish, Arabic and a bit of Spanish. So it’s also a good idea to start learning foreign languages as soon as it’s possible. The results can be extraordinary.

Trzymam kciuki za wszystkich uczących się polskiego. Uszy do góry

Paweł Majczyk

The sad thing is that polish people ruin every serious discussion. To be honest, most of polish fellows who state that they speak perfectly, they just don’t. That is because of typical level of the native speaker is pretty low, compared to the language standards. Definitely when it comes to writings, the eastern languages are too weird, for us. It’s the totally opposite to the i.e. french where things had come very different, but I would never try to guess the ‘difficulty’ by the number of characters in alphabet, I would rather focus on the information you need to extract from sounds, and the way you do emit those – that’s the language you need to learn. Eastern ones are just “dull”, and compared to them our, European languages, seem to have no limits, when it comes to describing anything. It’s way more harder to learn, than remembering funny patterns on paper, which require almost no skill, but the memory. I see no point in presenting hard to pronounce phrases, which are not applied in common chat – You’ll probably find tons of these in any language. As I speak native polish, I’ve talked with few people, who really do speak perfect polish. You don’t need to know whole grammar, and apply it to be known as fluent speaking, but You don’t, as most of my pre-posters probably, my friends, nor do I.

PIETIA

Deszcz pluszcze w bluszczach puszczy
w bluszczach puszczy pluszcze deszcz
chłoszcze śmiele w trzcinach trzmiele
dźga dżdżownice w prężny grzbiet
Dżdża wypluszcze się pojutrze
a nazajutrz tęczy sztuk trzy
sztukmistrz z Tczewa strząśnie z nieb
sztukmistrz z Tczewa strząśnie z nieb

W wysuszonych sczerniałych trzcinowych szuwarach sześcionogi szczwany
trzmiel bezczelnie szeleścił w szczawiu trzymając w szczękach strzęp
szczypiorku i często trzepocąc skrzydłami.

Spadł bąk na strąk, a strąk na pąk. Pękł pąk, pękł strąk, a bąk się zląkł.

Mała muszka spod Łopuszki
Chciała mieć różowe nóżki
Różdżką nóżki czarowała
Lecz wciąż nóżki czarne miała
Po cóż czary moja muszko?
Rusz że móżdżkiem a nie różdżką
Wyrzuć wreszcie różdżkę w różki
I unużaj w różu nózki.

Szczepan Szczygieł z GRZMIĄCYCH BYSTRZYC
Przed chrzcinami chciał się przystrzyc.
Sam się strzyc nie przywykł wszakże
Więc do szwagra wskoczył – Szwagrze,
Szwagrze, ostrzyż mnie choć krztynę,
Gdyż mam chrzciny za godzinę.
Nic prostszego szwagier na to:
Żono, brzytwę daj szczerbatą
W rżysko będzie strzechę Szczygła
Ta szczerbata brzytwa strzygła !!!
Usłyszawszy straszną wieść
Szczepan Szczygieł wrzasnął: Cześć !
I przez grządki poprzez proso
Niestrzyżony czmychnął w proso
~~~~~~~
Wróbelek Walerek miał mały werbelek, werbelek Walerka miał mały felerek, felerek werbelka naprawił Walerek, wróbelek Walerek na werbelku gra

Stąpa Sasza suchą szosą,
z trudem stopy Saszę niosą.
Słońce szczodrze żarem bucha,
podczas suszy szosa sucha.

Od upału strzechy trzeszczą,
suchą słomą wciąż szeleszczą.
Słońce szczodrze żarem bucha,
podczas suszy szosa sucha.

Jesion liśćmi schładza cień,
tam na Saszę czeka sen.
Słońce szczodrze żarem bucha,
podczas suszy szosa sucha.