The Hardest Language

[Racoon]

Well, I shall use this sites references to back my claim of Chinese being the hardest, if not one of, the hardest languages to write and read. (*not speak)

 

Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard

 

1. Because the writing system is ridiculous.

Beautiful, complex, mysterious -- but ridiculous.

 

2. Because the language doesn't have the common sense to use an alphabet.

 

3. Because the writing system just ain't very phonetic.

 

4. Because you can't cheat by using cognates.

 

5. Because even looking up a word in the dictionary is complicated.

One of the most unreasonably difficult things about learning Chinese is that merely learning how to look up a word in the dictionary is about the equivalent of an entire semester of secretarial school.

 

6. Then there's classical Chinese (wenyanwen).

Forget it. Way too difficult. If you think that after three or four years of study you'll be breezing through Confucius and Mencius in the way third-year French students at a comparable level are reading Diderot and Voltaire, you're sadly mistaken. Whereas modern Mandarin is merely perversely hard, classical Chinese is deliberately impossible.

 

8. Because tonal languages are weird.

 

Intonation and stress habits are incredibly ingrained and second-nature. With non-tonal languages you can basically import, mutatis mutandis, your habitual ways of emphasizing, negating, stressing, and questioning. The results may be somewhat non-native but usually understandable. Not so with Chinese, where your intonational contours must always obey the tonal constraints of the specific words you've chosen. Chinese speakers, of course, can express all of the intonational subtleties available in non-tonal languages -- it's just that they do it in a way that is somewhat alien to us speakers of non-tonal languages. When you first begin using your Chinese to talk about subjects that actually matter to you, you find that it feels somewhat like trying to have a passionate argument with your hands tied behind your back -- you are suddenly robbed of some vital expressive tools you hadn't even been aware of having.

 

9. Because east is east and west is west, and the twain have only recently met.

 

It's pretty hard to quantify a process as complex and multi-faceted as language-learning, but one simple metric is to simply estimate the time it takes to master the requisite language-learning skills. When you consider all the above-mentioned things a learner of Chinese has to acquire -- ability to use a dictionary, familiarity with two or three romanization methods, a grasp of principles involved in writing characters (both simplified and traditional) -- it adds up to an awful lot of down time while one is "learning to learn" Chinese.

 

How much harder is Chinese? Again, I'll use French as my canonical "easy language". This is a very rough and intuitive estimate, but I would say that it takes about three times as long to reach a level of comfortable fluency in speaking, reading, and writing Chinese as it takes to reach a comparable level in French. An average American could probably become reasonably fluent in two Romance languages in the time it would take them to reach the same level in Chinese.

[C1ay]

Missing the na-dene language family still ;)

[alexander]

which one do you want me to add out of it?

athabascan, eyak or tlingit?

[pgrmdave]

What surprises me is that there are still people that go "Well i never heard this language spoken, how can i vote?" Have you not heard of Google? Its like, ok, you dont want to do any minor research here to increase your IQ, then why do you waste time by posting that you dont want to do reseach and can not take a guess in a simple matter?

 

Because there are so many factors to take into account that I don't want to give the impression that a google on a language can tell me how difficult it is. Because I don't know much about languages, and because I don't know many languages (in fact I know only one), I don't think that I'm in a position to accurately judge any language on its difficulty. The best that I could do is repeat what someone else who seemed better qualified than me said. As it is, it's all Greek to me...

[C1ay]

I had previously mentioned Navajo because of it's use by the military in WWII via Navajo Code Talkers. There was no worry that anyone would pick up the language and break the code. It was actually considered cryptographic in it's use. It is also a language that is so difficult that it is now considered endangered because native born Navajo children have such a hard time learning it. It may not be the most difficult but it's certainly in the running....

[ughaibu]

It might be suitable to include a bantu language. If I remember correctly, zulu has nine pitches, four tones and three clicks each of which can be pronounced in four ways, which adds up to pronunciation providing a challenge. Bantu languages have multiple gender, zulu has twelve genders (I think).

Papua New Guinea has the most languages of any country, around 5000, so a language from there might be fun. Tok pisin, (the lingua franca), is perhaps the world's easiest language to learn.

[Ganoderma]

Racoon:

 

I agree chinese is very difficult to read/write. But they do use an alphabet. it is written, BUT these "letters" just seem to magically make a word. it is used for speaking, but still has a written form. Also to say "chinese" is a little innacurate. in the most general way there are 2 forms. simplified and traditional. Mainland uses more simplified and taiwan, hong kong, singapore use traditional. Schools (college/university) here have something called the 3 year program. in 3 years you are expected to be able to speak chinese "fluently" and be able to write and read with at least a high school skill level. I have met a few that finished the courses and it seems to work quite well. So 3 years of 2 hours a day of chinese class is what it takes here to learn traditional mandarin. i though that may be interesting for this topic.

 

i stopped at 4 months unfortunatly. I can say i was learning chinese quite nicely considering. I knew more chinese in 1 month than i did french in 7 years back in canada. goes to show how effective motivation is in learning any language...

[Qfwfq]

Fewer yet spealk a Slavic language, although it technically is an Indo-European, but so is Finnish, i will categorize Slavic as a separate language family here, because it is different from most other Indo-European languages (namely: spanish, german, norwayan (bokmal and nynorsk), french, italian, icelandic and english (also reminding that french, icelandic and norwayan/norwegian are all germanic languages))

This is one of the things you say that I really can't agree with.

 

The Finno-Ugrian is classified in the Uralic and not in the Indo-European family. Is Hindi less different from the languages you mention than the Slavic ones? The main divisions of Indo-European are Albanian, Anatolian, Armenian, Baltic, Celtic, Germanic, Hellenic, Indo-Iranian, Italic, Phrygian, Slavic, Thracian, Tokharian and six unclassified languages. OK, alright, these and Thracian, Tokharian and Phrygian are all extinct, but it still shows.

 

I'm sure there has to be people that spealk an Afro-Asiatic language here, so would someone give us some insight into Arabic?

Afro-Asiatic, Semitic (South Central).

 

I know it to have a rather complicated grammar. It's alphabet, like all the Semitic, is basically consonantal and there are some which are hard for us to distinguish from each other but they consider as different as we do t and d. Many letters differ by dots above or below a same marking. For example the simplest and most common basic mark is n with one dot above and weak t with two, b with one dot below and i with two. I can't remember if it can have three dots above but I know it can't have three below, while it can in the similar Farsi script (p, which is absent from Arabic phonetics). The next simplest mark can be a weak h with no dot, j as in English with one dot below or the scratchy kh with one above; I can't remember it having more than one dot, not sure.

 

I learned much less Arabic than Farsi (donkey's years ago!!!) because it is much harder. Farsi has an amazingly simple grammar.

[alexander]

Q you are absolutely correct, Finnish does belong to the Uralic language tree... i guess its all so common to me as a Russian lines blurred, but you are absolutely correct, my mistake...

[DFINITLYDISTRUBD]

proper english! I've yet to meet anyone that speaks it!

German is next, then french (mostly because I mix up and forget which word for which! I speak both as well as an average urban teen here speaks english)

One also must not forget that there are often several dialects of each language by region when asking or answering the question!

[alexander]

I've yet to meet anyone that speaks it!

I can indeed confirm that, at least not in a few years. In highschool I had a teacher that tried, as well as she could, speaking propper English. And however I do not agree that English is the hardest language to learn, I respect your candid thought on the subject matter non-the-less.

[Michaelangelica]

[*]How can one judge about a language one is not familiar with ? From hearsay ?

I have the same problem.

I thought Japanese or Chinese would be difficult but my daughter picked up Japanese very easily because she thinks-in-pictures. Also there is not the confusion say with French/English words that spell the same but sound different with often slightly different meanings.

The French always say that English is just a dialect of French!

 

I gave up Languages when I was 13 YO. I could not see the point.

France? That's the other side of the world. Who in the 60's had ever been there? Who could ever afford to go? No one I knew had ever been on a plane.

Latin -a 1,500 YO dead language-give me a break!- find me a live Roman and I'll give it ago.

 

So The Karma God was watching and I ended up in an import business with France and travelled there a couple of times. Loved it; adored the food the countryside, the food, the wine, the herbs, did I mention the food? I would have given my right arm quite happily to be able to speak even a little French.

 

Next the Karma God got me into horticulture. Guess what? Lots of Latin names. If only I had learnt more than my one Latin word "porkus"(sp?)

 

(My wife with lots of Latin will often eavesdrop on some Italian conversations in restaurants (esp.fights in kitchen ) etc When I tell her what she is doing she stops and can't do it again !? Her most difficult language was Old Anglo-Saxon. Strangely she was in a post office line in Germany and the Old Woman in front could not make her needs made known to the Counter-Clerk. My wife translated to everyone's astonishment(she has NO German)-the Old Woman was speaking an Anglo-Saxon type dialect!!)

 

Then Languages were badly taught when I was a kid. No language labs etc. They were grammar based. There was no conversation.

It is great to see teachers teaching 1-5 YO babies language. A young friend teaches English in Japan to 2-4 YO. Most can distinguish/read/sound-out thousands of English words flashed at them in a Milli-second.

That's were Languages and Music needs to be taught -to babies!

 

My education Professor always said that we should be paying Professor's salaries in Pre-school and Kindergarten Teachers because that's where big skills were needed and Kindergarten salaries to Professors- 'cause any fool can lecture!

 

I would think Arabic would be hard- reversing & reading what looks like squiggly lines. But some say no.

 

People tell me Indonesian is the easiest language to learn.??:)

 

I have a young friend who did Hebrew, Aramaic and Latin simultaneously at Uni. I would have been a blubbering mess. I don't know how she did it (She wants to be a priest).

I had enough trouble learning Phonetic script which terrified me; and that was when I was studying English!!

 

I would just love someone to implant one, any language in my brain surgically. I hate being English-centric in a multi-national country/world.:love:

[Qfwfq]

I would think Arabic would be hard- reversing & reading what looks like squiggly lines. But some say no.

Actually it is difficult mainly due to the grammar, although those squiggly lines have some nuances and are harder than those of Farsi. The phonetics are also not easy. You get used to an alphabet if you go about it the right way.

 

I did not find the right-to-left troublesome at all, although we are all different and when I was a kid I used to have no trouble writing da Vinci style, I can still do it with more effort. An amusing thing happened after one lesson in Farsi, just after my friend had departed. The student hangout's phone rang and I answered, it was for someone that wasn't there and I was asked to take a message, so I listened carefully and wrote it on the blackboard before forgetting it, especially as it wasn't very brief and was a few lines to write. Reading it over to check, one letter caught my eye for some reason and, staring at the single letter, I pondered whether I had mistakenly written it backward but, in a mild state of confusion, couldn't figure it out. I finally resorted to comparing it with the surrounding letters and thought no, it's fine, and trotted off to do something.

 

Half an hour or so later I came back and, glancing at the blackboard, :beer: I realized I had written the whole thing mirror image!

[eric l]

We should also keep in mind that there are different levels in "learning a language". While in Africa, I learned a bit of Swahili, just enough in fact to make myself understood in the kitchen or in the marketplace. If I made a mess of it, it was of little consequence because the people I spoke it to were only using Swahili as a common vehicular language between tribes, nobody spoke it perfectly. At that level, Swahili was much easier than Esperanto - which is intended to be easy.

I found learning Esperanto rather difficult (I did give up after a year or two) because my Esperanto was constantly "corrupted" by other languages I had learned, like English, French or German.

I think most Bantu languages (including Swahili) must be rather difficult to master to a high degree, to speak them like a native speaker, especially those South African languages with "clicksounds" which are about as unfamiliar to the European ear as the tones in those Asian languages mentioned in other postings. And with "European ear" I want to include everyone who has a European language as his or her mother tongue.

[somebody]

in terms of learning, it has to be chinese or japanese but speaking correctly it has to be arabic or any other middle easter language!

[Racoon]

I am wondering how hard sign language would be in other languages?

and Braille too? :doh:

 

I would think Chinese braille, if such a language exists, might be difficult to pick up. :D

[Michaelangelica]

I realized I had written the whole thing mirror image!

My wife can do this.

Santa's letters to our kids were always written this way

I find this skill inexplicable and incredible.

I could no more do it than fly to the moon.