What is the hardest language to learn?
- Extremely Hard: The hardest language to learn is: Polish – Seven cases, Seven genders and very difficult pronunciation. The average English speaker is fluent in their language at the age of 12, in contrast, the average Polish speaker is fluent in their language after age of 16.
- Very Hard: Finnish, Hungarian, and Estonian – The Ugric languages are hard because of the countless noun cases. However, the cases are more like English prepositions added to the end of the root word. However, anyone arguing Asian languages like Korean trump Uralic languages in complexity, really needs to hit the books and do more research.
- Simply Arduous: Ukrainian and Russian – Second language learners wrongly assume because these languages use a different script (Cyrillic) that it out ranks Polish. This is not objective, as an alphabet is only lets say 26 letters. It is really the pronunciation and how societies use the language that influences ranking. Ukrainian and Russian complex grammar and different alphabet, but easier pronunciation. (the Poles use a modified Latin alphabet which does not have a neat orthography fit to the sounds of their language). Slavic languages have sophisticated case and gender systems, also something that approximates a complex tense system with aspects of time-verb relationships.
- Challenging contender jockey for position: Arabic – Three baby cases which are like a walk in the park compared to the above, but the unusual pronunciation and flow of the language makes study laborious and requires cognitive diligence if you want to speak it.
- Fairly Hard: Chinese and Japanese – No cases, no genders, no tenses, no verb changes, short words, very easy grammar, however, writing is hard. But to speak it is very easy. Also intonations make it harder, but certainly not harder than Polish pronunciation. I know a Chinese language teacher in NYC that has even authored an the authoritative book on modern Mandarin says people meet Chinese very easy. This same teacher, if multilingual yet could not learn Polish. I am learning some Chinese, it is not the hardest language maybe even one of the easiest language to learn. Despite prideful proclamations of armchair linguists, to verbalizes Asian languages in general are not top ranked by any measure. Try to learn some Chinese and Polish your self and you will see which is the hardest language.
- Average: French – lots of tenses, but not used and moderate grammar. German-only four cases and like five exceptions, everything is logical, of course.
- Easy: Spanish and Italian – People I know pick these up no problem, even accountants and technical people rather than humanistic language people.
- Basic to hard: English, no cases or gender, you hear it everywhere, spelling can be hard and British tenses you can use the simple and continues tense instead of the perfect tenses and you will speak American English. English at the basic level is easy but to speak it like a native it’s hard because of the dynamic idiomatic nature.
- Some people cocooned in innocence, go around parroting linguistic relative difficulty ranks by looking at a list created in the ivory towers. This list might be based on the number of hours required to achieve a degree of fluency, or intermediate conversation in a language, in an academic environment of teaching, in contrast to most people in the real world. This simplistic one variable model is simply wrong. I suggest a more robust model.
The following is support for my argument.
The way you approach this is a simple equation that illustrates hypothetical rankings of variables importance.
Formula for difficulty in a language = O*(G+V+(w*.1)+(A*2.0)+S+V(1.5))
O= Openness of the society to communicate in their own language to a foreigner as opposed to English.
G = Grammar, specifically the number of exceptions in each cases
V= Verbs Conjugation complexity
P= Pronunciation and Phonology.
W=Complexity of the written language, including script and alphabet variation.
A=Average number of syllables in each word. Do not underestimate this as the working memory for the brain to hold bits of information in your brain is manifold more if you are considering a language with a long orthographical constructions.
S=Speed of the language.
V=Vocalness of the people speaking.
If you can assign an O factor as the major determinant variable then you have your answer. The openness of a society to transmit their language on a person to person, on the street level day-to-day experiences is what really makes communication hard to easy to absorb. I can attest to this after living in Europe for about a decade.
Are you a citizen of Stratos or trying to speak to you boyfriend or girlfriend?
What good is a theoretical understanding of a language, if in reality you can not practice it to fluency beyond the classroom. Lets separate the academics from real people, when trying to analysis the question.
This is not just a ranking of the hardest language to learn mind you, rather a ranking for realistic, practical people who are in the trenches of life and want to learn a new language for communication purposes. Not a ranking for academics who are living on Stratos, the city of clouds or lost in the labyrinth of the stacks in their university library.
I have not considered languages that have under one million native speakers. Even through humanistically important on equal par with all other languages, they are too remote or inaccessible for any real life learning. Patois dialects are excluded. These are important languages, just not for the average person. I also have not considered extinct or ancient languages which have even a more alien grammatical structure.
People write me and say hey Mark here is a language that has a hundred cases and sounds mostly like whistlers, and people often talk backwards, certainly this must be the most difficult. My reply how many people speak it? Similarly, you might say well there is a language spoken by some children on my block, they made it up. For me unless there are a million speakers does not pass the cut.
My reply to the FSI’s rank of the number of hours needed to learn a language -Anti-glottology at its best
There is an annoying mythology of language difficulty, that is perpetuated by Foreign Service institute. How many hours it takes to achieve various levels in a language after academic study. This is no valid. Unless you are 18-21 and a full-time student at a university and giving equal or greater weight to written language as compared to spoken, then that is bunk.
Who has the time to study in the ivory towers a language university or prepare like a diplomat except someone in some cushy government job? It is not the real world. Speaking is much more important than writing and reading.
Written language for the masses only came into significance in the last 100 years, in contrast to the 7 millions years of Homininae communication when there was first a divergence in our evolutionary tree and changes in our heterochrony gave us the capacity for prolonged language acquisition. Further the written language is in the process of a strange de-evolution with rise of texting messages and ADD. Lets be honest here, few people can study like an egghead, rather they want to just communicate.
Example of how people learn in Africa and the Middle East
When I was in North Africa (several times) I was amazed people could talk in the open market in several languages with little effort. They never opened a book or wrote in a foreign language. Language is about speaking. It is about communication not something you learn in a book. How long was it like that? The first one million years of human evolution from Primates until about 1950 when world illiteracy went from less than 1% to over 50%. So for tens of thousands of years for most humans, language was about the speaking, that is it. For a few thousand the landed elite and first estate class has some form of written language but this was not most people. Lets be real language has nothing to do with a book, only the tongue and ear. Therefore when FSI or any other person assets Chinese or Asian languages are hard, they are not if you strip away the crazy characters to a non-Asian person.
The worst thing about the modern communication
It irritates me that one person will state something on the web and it is recycled by every content mill blogger ad infinitum. People take ideas for fact without looking at them objectively. I call this the flat earth syndrome of language learning. Just because an expert says it does not mean it is true.
Aristotle believed the heart was the center of human cognition and the brain was an organ of minor importance. For centuries people took this as fact.
That does not mean the academics are wrong, and Asian languages are not more difficult for an English native speaker to achieve a level of mastery, but look at this objectively.
Modern linguistic snake oil salesman
Also when someone says on the web, you can learn a language in three hours or even three months, and they are trying to sell you something, I would say, ‘I have some swap land in Florida to sell you that will appreciate in value any day now’. I would like to personally like to call them up and test their fluency in Polish. My point is the web is a great place but discern sensation seekers and academics from someone like myself who is linguistically challenged, yet has dedicated his life abroad to learning foreign languages.
How linguistic science is different from physical science
Despite my quantification above, there is no way you can objectively measure linguistic ranking or difficulty like the hard sciences like physics or chemistry measure a phenomenon in a vacuum. Even in physics things are tested, regression are run and retested. There is debate and paradigms are challenged every few decades.
So are you telling me, that in not a social science but a humanities like Language that because some government organization for a very specific program makes a statement fifty years ago, everyone including people on the Internet take it as fact and recycle it ad nauseam?
Evolution of phraseology and variance from linguistic universals as a measure of difficulty.
Departure from universal grammar and linguistic universals and structures is that are natural constructs of the human brain could be a measure of difficulty with some objectivity, however, how you measure it I have no idea how you would do this. Typological universals and other measures are left for future research.
Why Asian languages are not hard – Palaver about Asian foreign language acquisition
No grammar to speak of, no cases, not complex plurals, short words. People argue they have tones but these are subtle pronunciation differences and in my experience I am understood when I speak Mandarin for example with poor pronunciation easier in comparison with Polish. I know author and teacher of Chinese in NYC and he says most of the people who walk in off he street learn Chinese pretty fast. He has a book called Easy Mandarin. It is only the written language that is hard.
Errors and omissions statement
Yes I know in the image I typed Finish and Hinidi, need to fix this, when I get my computer back from Amishland. I am writing an Amish language program. Also the scope of this article can not be comprehensive because the proliferation of languages, for example, I need a follow up to cover, Turkish, Greek, Armenia, Georgian etc. When writing you have to make choices to make a point rather than cover ever detail, however, these are worthy for discussion in the comment area.
Back to Polish – the trophy winner
When you speak of Phonology, sound approximation from the native language to the target Polish ranks near the top as the tongue twisting, multi-syllabic mixing of consonants and vowels are unmatched by any shorter Asian word, even with tones. I stated at the top that the average Polish learner is not fluent until the age of sixteen. It sounds like a bold statement but read on.
Yes Poles can communicate before that, but subjectively, for such an intelligent population of people (and Poles are highly intelligent and educated) proportionally I have seen an inordinate amount of Polish youngsters struggle with their own orthography, pronunciation, grammar at disproportionate levels compared to say English speakers.
Factor out any genetic differences by comparing Polish Americans who are identical genetically to Poles in Poland, yet learn English as their native language at a different rate than Polish as a native language. My daughter who is bilingual finds English much easier than Polish. There are differences in the rates humans learn languages based on the complexity of the language, and this is seen in native speaker language acquisition.
Examples and references that back up my theory of modern of linguistics that give a better understanding of how people acquire a second language:
- In social linguistic acculturation Model or SLA, was proposed by John Schumann and focused on how an individual interacts with the society. Some societies more easily transmit culture.
- Gardner’s socio-educational model – Similar to above and deals with the inter-group model of “ethnolinguistic vitality”.
- Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky developed a theory of zone of proximal development.
I want to know your feedback and research so they may benefit second language learners.
“Russian is much easier in my humble opinion.Russians tend to speak clearly,loudly and with an emphasis on certain words.Polish and Czech are truly monotonous languages in comparison with their big brother Russia’s language.”
Kajo, if you happen to be in Poland again do not say the last phrase aloud. Poles are proud of their old, rich culture and usually consider it better than the culture of the Russian cousin. Additionally both Polish and Czech language belongs to a different subgroup than Russian – Western Slavic vs Eastern Slavic – both groups had little to do with each other for the last 1000 years. Saying Polish is a small brother of Russian is not only ignorant, it can cause you troubles.
As for deciding which language is the most difficult – there are sooo many layers to a language. There’s an alphabet, there’s a relation between spoken and written language, there’s pronounciation, there’s a grammar, there is a vocabulary, syntax, eventually there are mutations of a language (as in Arabic or French which is distinctly different in suburbs and in high society both in terms of grammar and vocabulary).
Polish vocabulary, syntax and grammar are completely different than English and pronunciation is difficult – but Polish is pretty uniform, written in latin alphabet and it’s written phonetically so there are some easy sides to the language.
It’s hard enough to make it almost impossible for a foreigner to perfect it. But Asian languages and Arabic seem even more difficult being very different in all regards – apart of new vocabulary, alphabet, syntax, grammar there are certainly many new concepts non-present in indoeuropean languages one must grasp to learn it.
English and French, the two european languages I speak reasonably well seem easy in most of these aspects for members of Indoeuropean family – vocabulary is largely influenced by Latin – common trait of almost all European languages including Polish, syntax is fairy simple, grammar is not easy but not very difficult neither, alphabet is latin, pronounciation is not difficult, poor text-to-speach relation seems the most complicated part of these languages requiring a lot of practice to master.
This topic always creates a lot of debate and differing opinions. We published an article on the hardest languages to learn last year and got a lot of responses. We conducted a poll where people can vote for what they think the hardest languages to learn are. Were hoping to come to some kind of conclusion.
Well, a poll is good but it is a simple subjective opinion, rather than an objective discussion on the subject of what is the hardest language to learn. In a poll people’s opinions are partial and bias and do not require and explanation. This is why I prefer a conversation about it and then people can evaluate the facts brought to light.
Darine if you think that arabic is hardest language, say “w październikowe przedpołudnie grzegorz wyszczerzył szczebrzułkę na słonecze przedszkole” i want hear how you would say it. i think arabic is hard to write only, but grammatically and phonetically polish is the hardest
Polski? Być może. Dla mnie, Polaka, to wcale nie jest taki trudny język. Oczywiście. Ortografia czasem każdego przerasta, jednak wydaje mi się, że da się go nauczuć. Ja od kilku lat uczę się niemieckiego. Nigdy nie przykładałam się aż tak bardzo do niego i do dzisiaj nie mogę zrozumieć tych dziwnych rodzajników(der, die, das). Angielski ma okropną wymowę, ale choć uczę się go dopiero półtora roku, wydaje mi się, że dam sobie z nim radę.Nie wspominam tutaj o językach azjatyckich. Ok. Polski ma siedem przypadków, (sz.cz.dż.dź.ś.ć.ź.ż.rz.ó.u) i trzeba wiedzieć, co kiedy należy wpisać, ale zdania buduje się logicznie. Nie tak jak w np. w niemieckim, że czasownik MUSI być na drugim miejscu. Ale z drugiej strony nie ma odmian czasowników i reguł z tym zwiazanch, które można by wykuć na pamięć. Punt widzenia zależy od punktu siedzenia;) Pozdr z PL;)
Seriously, I think Dutch deserves to be mentioned at least. It is definately harder than bloody English. I myself am a native speaker so I don’t notice much of it, but it’s really, really hard to learn for a foreigner. Especially because it has no regularity, at all.
*Definitely. I’m sorry for that.
I come from Poland and I think that my language is very easy ^^ But just for us – polish people ;] For people from abroad it can be very hard, that’s true. We have got 7 cases, 7 genders but just 3 tense – past, present and future. But if I can speak polish you also can, if you want 😉
What about Lithuanian? It’s the most archaic language of the extant Indo European languages, the nearest relative is ancient Sanskrit. Welsh, Irish and Gaelic also come to mind, not so much for the difficulty of the grammarst bur for their orthography. They truly spell it ‘Rolax, but pronounce it ‘Relief’.
I am fluent in six languages and have found it easiest to learn by not trying to write at all for the first year , because one tends to meet all sorts of wrong things, for example the letter ‘R’ In English it’s pronounced almost like an ‘l’ for foreign ears, in German it it mostly pronounced gutturally as in French. Spanish and Italian it’s spelled at the tip of the tongue etc. Each is really a completely different letter, but when it’s printed it’s just an ‘R’, and the learner will now automatically mispronounce. This is the way children learn.
Try learning Mandarin.Then tell me how hard Polish is.
I am learning Mandarin and its is much easier than Polish. Mandarin is not the hardest language to learn. No cases, very little grammar. I know a guy that teaches Mandarin in NYC he says to teach foreigners it is easy. Simply foreigners are intimidated. Polish is the hardest language by far.
Little Big Pole, Arabic indeed is the hardest language in the world, it has pronounciations that doesn’t exist in any other language. You have to define the positions of the words in the sentences…A NIGHTMARE!!!
Arabic only has three baby cases with regular rules of grammar. Polish has seven complex cases. Arabic is a beautiful language, but not as hard as Arabic by far.
Arabic does have complex sounds and that is why many Arabic people are good at learning Polish. However, Polish has much more complex sounds. Arabic sounds intimidating at first, but it is not that bad. Especially the grammar.
I’m Kenyan and a native English, Maasai, Swahili and Kikuyu speaker. There’s no mention of African languages here even though we have some of the most beautiful and exotic of languages! Try learn Swahili, it’s easy, and… 30 percent of it is Arabic!
I’m currently learning Japanese,it’s fun, but the Kanji characters are tough to learn! I’ve never tried Polish but it certainly looks difficult. For those who wish to expand horizons try Swahili, Zulu or Yoruba. Beautiful African tongues!
I think it would be one of the polysynthetic languages (i.e. Sora, Chukchi) that would be the hardest to learn in all honesty. Many of the American languages indigenous in North and South America are highly complex.
this isnt true
i am form poland and i speak polish
I’m from Poland and I know that Polish is very hard to learn for Polish and abroad people . We learn Polish grammar every year at school and people always make mistakes. But Polish is easy to speaking in normal life I think. Yes, there are a lot of difficult words but you can say it If you want. In comments you wrote “W szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzczcinie” ;)I must say these are the hardes words in Poland and we don’t say somethink like this often. We have normal words like “buty, oczy, dom, przedsionek” or difficult like “łóżko, żółć, jajejcznica, temperatura” But I think in every languages are easy and difficult words and don’t think we say it all the time;)
ps: Sorry If I made mistakes. I’m learning English still 😉 I’m only 15.
Kasia, your English is quite good. See Polish people have such a hard language that even they must study it for a very long time in school.
Me I never studied English grammar, and I am an English native speaker and went to the top schools. I did not know what a perfect tense was until I got to Poland and Polish people told me this was very important. I said, it is, what is the perfect tense? English is less grammatically rigorous. Further, English native speakers have a very high tolerance for mistakes make by foreigners. This is because we are use to foreigners speaking out language and do not even hear the mistakes. However, if I as an English native speaker makes a mistake when I speak Polish, believe me Polish people feel my mistake. They are very polite but they feel it.
You have a good point. Many normal Polish words are easy, but those words you wrote can be hard for a foreigner. I think Polish is the hardest language to learn. But if you are determined you can learn it. I speak Polish ok. But I clearly have an accent and make mistakes with Polish cases. Even though I run a website Polishgrammar.com. But I have a friend who has lived in Poland for 9 years now and when he is in a disco talking to girls, and the music is real loud, they think he is Polish.
siemanko jestem Polakiem i uważam że język polski jest łatwy nie rozumiem jak można nie umieć tego języka przecież to takie proste haha lol wtf według mnie językami dużo trudniejszymi od polskiego są francuski lub niemiecki
Japanese does not even deserve to be up as hard at all. I speak fluent Japanese and it is extremely easy. Even the writing is easy (to some extent).
I agree, many people are intimidated by a language because it is not something they are use to. However, if you look at it objectively Japanese is not that hard of a language to learn.
I am an English guy who has been learning Polish for a year and I still find it very difficult, and still have 4 more cases to learn! I am sure all languages are tough. How does one write in Georgian? Amazing text! But, I have only wanted to learn one language and that is Polish, so I am not giving up! Love to Poles everywhere!
Hi Paul, I have a website, polishgrammar.com. I am a native English speaker and wrote it to help people speak Polish. I love the language.
If somebody is trying to find difficult language I advice Georgian.
Hello. I just wonder did you heard Lithuanian? Because I can see that you didn’t… Our grammar is one of the hardest in the world (it’s third in the world). Slavian languages are very similar. SO if you know Russian you can easily learn Ukrainian, Polish or other. But for Lithuanian there is only one language – Latvian and still you couldn’t communicate in Latvia Lithuanian or in Lithuania Latvian. I’m learning Russian, English, Japanese and Lithuanian and what could I say… Our language is the hardest!
Its just not grammar, it is many other things like pronunciation, length of the actual word (tests your working memory), but Lithuanian is a hard language to learn.
Would you go so far as to say that whosever language is the hardest(speak, write, whatever)… that those people are the smartest? Or maybe a less extteme theory… do they have the potential to become the smartest? I know that there are stupid people out there and everyone’s knowledge is relative. And this question may be unqualifiable. But as an OVERALL WHOLE as a group – are Polish people the smartest?
I wouldn’t say so… but… logically it would make sense that they should be.
Everyone adds up to 100% in this world. Everyone has something unique to offer and a measure of intelligence is very subjective not objective. However, in my personal experience Polish people are very smart. But if someone learns a language as a native speaker, it does not matter, they do not learn a language, it is language acquisition. However, if a language is complex then during this acquisition phase it does stretch and challenge the brain.
Dude, the hardest language is Malayalam,
just try pronouncing the name of the language.
Ha, just meet any Polish book and reading a sentence, then you will see a a hard language to learn.
Hello, my name is Eyal.
I’m from Israel.
well, 2 things.
1, Hebrew may not be even close to the hardest language, but it sure is hard. we have 2 different kinds of Letters. first u learn when u are very young, and you have like 12 different kinds of dots and signs that will make you understand and be sure how to pronounce a word correctly. most probability you will find this in 99% of books, and articles news papers etc.
the second type, is totally different, and its the ONLY way u will ever write again in your life.
so, how do you read words? you just remmeber them since you well little. thats it, so this is why in this case i think hebrew is the hardest to write, or remmeber or whatever you wanna define it, cause there is no way that you will ever be able to read and write Hebrew without memorizing 32434234 words… its just crazy. but its an amazing beautiful language, and not brutal and aggressive like arabic.
א ב ג ד ה ו ז ח ט י כ ל מ נ ס ע פ צ ק ר ש ת
this are the first Case without the dots etc.
anyway. i am currently living in WARSAW POLAND
and i study here veterinary medicine.
i had a GF for the past year.
I love Polish, its amazing and beautiful, and not like Russian that i really hate.
I am going in a few days to start this course in polish language, i know belive me, its HARD 1, but its amazing. and cant wait to talk.
i know the Basic very well, and have no problem with pronunciation but thats because i try and try, and Israelis will find it easier then american, irish japanease etc..
if there is any1 who would like to help me, or just give advices :] Im here! and i will appreciate it!!
Thanx Dziękuję תודה
Why say Arabic when Hebrew pretty much just as difficult or even more… i speak fluent English as well as Croatian… and learning Hebrew at the moment and is quite hard to pronounce words and frustrating, when as i try to pronounce polish words they come out easy and seem much more simple, i have a polish stepfather and i heard him speak in polish everyday of my life for 14years and I’ve pretty much caught on with the language and its a bit similar to Croatian… but not, and I’ve compared it to Czech and that seem way harder and a lot like polish but just very confusing as well so i most likely have to agree on Polish being the hardest or one of the top hardest!! but still shocked that Hebrew was not in there.
The only reason Polish is hard, is that there are no resources. Compare Polish with German and see what I mean. Germans have a Goethe Institute that promotes the language around the world, Poles have nothing. Germans have Deutesche Welle, Poles nichts. German learners have a learners dictionary they can use. Polish learners have to make due with translation dictionaries. There are few Polish text books and no graded readers. And on top of that you have people going on and on about what a difficult language it is.
Chris after I corrected all your grammar mistakes in your comment, OK, your talking nonsense you know that don’t you? Are you OK? Your talking such nonsense its not worth replying. There are scores of resources to learn Polish. They are all over the market, I know I write some myself. There are schools, programs, books everything, I have a whole library full of them. You just do not have the brains to know how to look. Try to learn Polish and you will see.
First of all, thank you Mark Biernat for promoting polish language, it’s pleasure to hear for me 😉
I think nobody should saying about his own language because it’s not objective. But I admit, polish can be difficult ;] Sorry if I made some mistakes ;]
best wishes, Marcin, Kraków, 2010 😉
Hello everybody! I’m Pole too and I agree that polish can be difficult for foreigners like German or English people. I just want to advance one objective argument against. When you learned Polish, every Pole will understand you. Nowadays I live in Germany and I learn German. Every German speak in a different way and every one of them thinks that his language is “Hoch Deutsch” it means ‘correct’. In respect of English – it seems to be easy, but just first, communicative, international level. Trying to speak good English among Englishmen or reading Shakespeare – this is a ‘a tough row to hoe’. In conclusion Polish is a very uniform language in comparison to German or English.
Beata, thanks for the comment but you are not speaking as a foreigner trying to learn Polish.
Because Polish is so uniform, then every Polish person expects the sound of the language to be one way and only one way. If a foreigner tries to speak the language, Polish people do not understand anything and even laugh because their ears are not used to hearing subtle differences in their own language. Me and all my foreign friends living in Poland are not understood at all unless it is perfect Polish. However, for example the American ear is conditioned to hear so funny iterations of the English language because of all the foreigners, that is a foreigner says anything, we understand it.
With the Polish language, which was a closed society because of communism, even a small variation in sound can and will though a Pole into complete confusion if a foreigner tries to speak their language.
Ask yourself this, How many hours a day do I spend speaking Polish to foreigners at a conversational level? How many hours a day do I speak speaking English to foreigners, even when I live in the USA. All day long for me and for you, maybe never. Polish is the hardest language to learn and that is one of the reasons.
What about Georgian…georgian should be one of the hardest also the thing is that only 4 million people speak it and nobody even thinks that such langauge exists,Georgian is an agglutinative language,Georgian has seven noun cases: nominative, ergative, dative, genitive, instrumental, adverbial and vocative,Georgian is a post-positional language, meaning that adpositions are placed after (rather than before) the nouns they modify and In Georgian morphophonology, syncope is a common phenomenon. Georgian also uses the Mkhedruli alphabet which is not hard (for me)to learn but I think that a lot of people will find it very challenging.
i think pronunciation is the last thing you should consider while you are comparing languages easiest to hardest. Grammer is much more important to count i belive. i have never heard anything about Polish being hard but i belive it must be true because slavic languages are difficult. i am turkish, adn turkish is very diffucult one to learn. because it is an agglutinative language. you have to learn so many suffix and each suffix must be declinated according to the word that it comes after.
Everyone says Polish is so hard to learn because of the cases, but Finnish and Icelandic have many more cases than Polish
Yes but Polish has more exceptions that rules in the grammar, and the pronunciation is impossible and the words are really long, and other reasons.
Hello everybody
I’m from Poland too and I find Polish language doesn’t have to be hard because even if you only start learn and you know a few words you can speak You don’t have to know grammar to say what you need itd. ;D
PS:And word to Chris –you hurt me, how could you said that, you don’t know anything about Poland so please don’t offend us
What about Welsh (the language of Wales, UK) – it has mutations, whereby the 1st letter of a word changes according to complex grammatical rules, eg, car (originally a Celtic word) can also be ‘gar’, ‘nghar’ and ‘char’. In addition, the pronunciation of ‘ll’ is almost unique and very difficult to reproduce. And not only do we change the endings of verbs, we also change the endings of prepositions too. There are only two genders but for the learner, it’s almost impossible to know which words are masculine and which are feminine, while some words can be either and others change gender according to context. And to top it all, each village has its own dialect!
Just FYI, choosing a single language and then adamantly maintaining that it’s the most difficult to learn of all the languages in the world would get you laughed out of a room full of linguists. Your ability to learn a language is subjective and based on numerous factors, first and foremost the language(s) you grew up speaking, which, so far as I can tell, you didn’t mention anywhere alongside your sweeping indictment of Polish. Have you considered the fact that you may have natural aptitude for tonality, and thus don’t consider Chinese to be that difficult, but you have may have a crappy rote memory, and thus have difficulty memorizing numerous case endings? For people who can’t make sense of tonality, Hmong/Vietnamese/Cantonese would probably be far harder than Polish. For people used to consonant clusters, the pronunciation of Polish probably isn’t bad at all. Just put an “In my opinion, and in my particular experience,” before the first sentence of this article so we can all stop arguing about it. In any case, it’s great that you don’t use your difficulty with Polish as an excuse not to bother, but rather as a motivation to work harder at it. Keep learning
oh come on Polski wcale nie jest aż tak trudny ;DDD
It means ”Polish language isn’t difficult so”
wystarczy że powiesz ”Ja być głodny musieć iść do dom”–it is incirrect form –everybody will undarstand you,and will know that you are foreigner so they will want help you ;DDD
correct form is “Jestem głodny i muszę iść do domu”
incorrect “Ja być głodny i musieć iść do dom”
english “I’m hungry and I must go home”
miłego czytania ;DDD
btw I love Spanish language ;DDD
It might not seem it but English has 17 tenses. Most mistake it for three. Google ‘english tenses’ and look around. You’d be surprised.
Actually, I think that heaviest is Lithuanian. It’s very beautiful, but extremly difficult language.
The Polish language have 5 tenses but in use are only 3 times: past, present and future.
I see Polish people who left a comments don`t know polish language. my Polish is fluent but English isn`t hehe.
Polish has ‘aspects’ which are different but similar to tenses and can be equally complex for a foreigner to learn.
Hello everyone..
Everyone say about the hardest language,but I want to share here that the EASIEST language to learn is Malay. Of course I’m malay and I’d learn English, Chinese,and Japanese. It has no tense, no gender,and the pronounciation is very easy.try it and visit Malaysia ok..
I think, the most structured language is Sanskrit. It can be easily used to write exact specification. And really speaking it is also a very hard language to learn ! It has 8 cases, and even the names are declined.
I would love to learn that language as it is the root of many other languages.
* W Szczebrzeszynie Chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie i Szczebrzeszyn z tego słynie
* Stół z powyłamywanymi nogami.
* Jola lojalna – say it quickly 🙂
Polish is wonderful language ^^
Case and point, if anyone can read and say this with ease I would be impressed, this is why, Polish is the hardest language to learn.
Silly list.
Also, the descriptions of Chinese and Japanese on this page are mixed together for no reason.
No cases: no, but both have noun classifiers
no genders: true
no tenses: Japanese has tenses and Chinese has verb aspect.
no verb changes: Japanese does.
short words: only Chinese. Japanese can be long.
very easy grammar: Japanese word order is almost backwards from English
however, writing is hard: yes, both
But to speak it is very easy: Japanese is easy to pronounce but Chinese isn’t particularly easy
Some other hard to pronunce Polish sentances:
“Król Karol kupił królowej Karolinie korale koloru koralowego.”
“Szedł Sasza suchą szosą w czasie suszy kiedy szosa była sucha.”
“Matka tka tak jak tkaczka tka, a tkaczka tka tak jak matka tka”
And from one of polish movies, conversation between german officer and polish guy:
“G: Name.
P: Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz.
G: Adres.
P: Chrząszczłewoszyce powiat Łekołowy.
G: …”
for those Polish people who thinks there are only 3 verb tenses, please, tell me what time is this sentence: “Od urodzenia mieszkam w Warszawie”. It is something like english past continues, just in the secondary school they don’t teach about more complicated grammar, its hard without it anyway.
English is not a tough language and it is tough subject. it only requires interest for learning,reading and writing the subject. most of the students face problem with English actually English doesn’t need any stress like other subjects.it is enough for a student if he listens the class carefully. reading English newspapers,books and developing a new method of writing skills which are of their own can improve the student in English.
@des
czas teraźniejszy (present)
that’s true, we have only three tenses, but they are some rules that allow us to talk in present about something in past, just like in this sentence you quoted.
gramma is hard – as eg. “ó” and “u”, “rz” and “ż” are spoken the same way, there are rules which is right. for example, you read “rzeka” and “żeka” the same way, but only this first is right (rzeka = river)
but in the same way english is hard for us, eg. saying in english “i wish you could talk” is in polish “szkoda że nie możesz porozmawiać” (something like “it’s a pity that you couldn’t talk”, more simple: opposite of english).
as we say in poland: “punkt widzenia zależy od punktu siedzenia” (the point of view depends from point where we are)
Konstantynopolitańczykowianeczka?
And that is one Polish word. Apply some Polish cases to it if you can and you can see why Polish is the hardest language to learn in the world.
I from Poland. For me this language is very easy. So… Hard? I don’t know… 🙂
Jestem z Polski. Dla mnie ten język jest prościutki. Więc… Trudny? Nie wiem… 🙂
Turlał goryl po Urlach kolorowe korale,
rudy góral kartofle tarł na tarce wytrwale.
Gdy spotkali się w Urlach góral tarł, goryl turlał
chociaż sensu nie było w tym wcale.
Z wyindywidualizowanego tłumu rozentuzjazmowanych indywidualistów.
Konstantynoneapolitańczykowianeczka- long words.
;D
I don’t speak English very good, because I’m Polish. I hope that you will understand me. =D See ya! 🙂
Pues yo pensaba que el idioma más difícil de aprender es el español, ya que la gramática es muy completa y tiene demasiadas excepciones. Saludos.
Spanish? OK one vote for Spanish but I think Spanish is the easiest language or close to it as there are no noun cases and very easy pronuciation.
Megszentségtelenithetetlenségességeitekben.
Every single language got these long words….
For an example, hungarian got a lots of cases…
I think Polish is one of the most hard languages, probably the most hard to learn it to speak perfectly.
Tho, all basic is easy, for every single language, the basics are pretty easy, the difference shows when you want to be “perfect”..