What is the hardest language to learn?

Across multiple sources, Mandarin Chinese is the number one language listed as the most challenging to learn. The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center puts Mandarin in Category IV, which is the list of the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers.


What is the top 5 hardest language to learn?

Let's explore the 10 hardest languages for English speakers to learn, and the challenges they deliver:
  1. Mandarin. Mandarin is spoken by 70% of the Chinese population, and is the most spoken language in the world. ...
  2. Arabic. ...
  3. 3. Japanese. ...
  4. Hungarian. ...
  5. Korean. ...
  6. Finnish. ...
  7. Basque. ...
  8. Navajo.


What is the 7 hardest language to learn?

7 Most Difficult Languages to Learn for Native English Speakers
  • 1 – Chinese (Mandarin)
  • 2 – Arabic.
  • 3 – Japanese.
  • 4 – Korean.
  • 5 – Hungarian.
  • 6 – Finnish.
  • 7 – Xhosa.


What is the 1st hardest language to learn?

1. Mandarin. As mentioned before, Mandarin is unanimously considered the most difficult language to master in the world! Spoken by over a billion people in the world, the language can be extremely difficult for people whose native languages use the Latin writing system.

What is the easiest language to learn?

15 of the easiest languages to learn for English speakers - ranked
  • Frisian. Frisian is thought to be one of the languages most closely related to English, and therefore also the easiest for English-speakers to pick up. ...
  • Dutch. ...
  • Norwegian. ...
  • Spanish. ...
  • Portuguese. ...
  • Italian. ...
  • French. ...
  • Swedish.


Comparison: Hardest Languages To Learn



What are the 3 easiest languages?

Read more about language courses here.
  • NORWEGIAN. Grammar, syntax and word order are all similar to English thanks to shared North Germanic roots. ...
  • SWEDISH. ...
  • DANISH. ...
  • SPANISH. ...
  • PORTUGUESE. ...
  • ITALIAN. ...
  • FRENCH. ...
  • ROMANIAN.


What are the 3 hardest languages to learn in order?

Generally, if you're an English speaker with no exposure to other languages, here are some of the most challenging and difficult languages to learn: Mandarin Chinese. Arabic. Vietnamese.

What is oldest language in the world?

Sumerian can be considered the first language in the world, according to Mondly. The oldest proof of written Sumerian was found on the Kish tablet in today's Iraq, dating back to approximately 3500 BC.


What is the most spoken language?

These are the most spoken languages in the world
  • English – 1,121 million speakers. ...
  • Mandarin Chinese – 1,107 million speakers. ...
  • Hindi – 698 million speakers. ...
  • Spanish – 512 million speakers. ...
  • French – 284 million speakers. ...
  • Arabic – 273 million speakers. ...
  • Bengali – 265 million inhabitants. ...
  • Russian – 258 million speakers.


What is the 2 hardest language to speak?

The Hardest Languages To Learn For English Speakers
  1. Mandarin Chinese. Interestingly, the hardest language to learn is also the most widely spoken native language in the world. ...
  2. Arabic. ...
  3. Polish. ...
  4. Russian. ...
  5. Turkish. ...
  6. Danish.


What is the 3 hardest language in the world?

8 Hardest Languages to Learn In The World For English Speakers
  1. Mandarin. Number of native speakers: 1.2 billion. ...
  2. Icelandic. Number of native speakers: 330,000. ...
  3. 3. Japanese. Number of native speakers: 122 million. ...
  4. Hungarian. Number of native speakers: 13 million. ...
  5. Korean. ...
  6. Arabic. ...
  7. Finnish. ...
  8. Polish.


Is it easier to learn Korean or Japanese?

Unlike other East-Asian languages, Korean isn't a tonal language. This means, that the meaning of the word doesn't change, regardless of what your accent is like. This makes learning Korean much easier than Japanese.

What's harder to learn English or Spanish?

Spanish has 25 phonemes; it's generally agreed that English has 44 phonemes. (Phonemes are speech sounds.) So it's generally harder for a Spanish speaker to pronounce English well. It means learning entirely new sounds.

What are 20 the easiest languages to learn?

The Easiest Languages to Learn for Native English Speakers
  1. Spanish (3/30) Number of native speakers: 480 million. ...
  2. Dutch (3/30) Number of native speakers: 24 million. ...
  3. German (6/30) Number of native speakers: 95 million. ...
  4. Italian (7/30) ...
  5. Afrikaans (7/30) ...
  6. Esperanto (7/30) ...
  7. Portuguese (9/30) ...
  8. French (9/30)


Is English the easiest language to learn?

Studying 'easier' languages can help you improve your language skills, without placing too much stress on your shoulders. But, finding the easiest language to learn is hard, as most languages are easier than English, which has a large number of words and a lot of complex grammar rules.

What language did Jesus speak?

Most religious scholars and historians agree with Pope Francis that the historical Jesus principally spoke a Galilean dialect of Aramaic. Through trade, invasions and conquest, the Aramaic language had spread far afield by the 7th century B.C., and would become the lingua franca in much of the Middle East.

What language did Adam and Eve speak?

The Adamic language, according to Jewish tradition (as recorded in the midrashim) and some Christians, is the language spoken by Adam (and possibly Eve) in the Garden of Eden.


What is the youngest language?

Derived from Dutch, the Afrikaans language boasts 7.2 million native speakers.

What is the least hardest language?

And The Easiest Language To Learn Is…
  1. Norwegian. This may come as a surprise, but we have ranked Norwegian as the easiest language to learn for English speakers. ...
  2. Swedish. ...
  3. Spanish. ...
  4. Dutch. ...
  5. Portuguese. ...
  6. Indonesian. ...
  7. Italian. ...
  8. French.


What language has the most words?

If we were to base our answer solely on the strict number of dictionary entries, English is among the largest languages by word count. It has more than 200,000 words in the Oxford English Dictionary, including 171,476 words in use and 47,156 obsolete words.


Why is Japanese so hard to learn?

The Japanese language is considered one of the most difficult to learn by many English speakers. With three separate writing systems, an opposite sentence structure to English, and a complicated hierarchy of politeness, it's decidedly complex.

What is the top 10 easiest language to learn?

10 Easiest Languages for English Speakers to Learn
  1. Afrikaans. Like English, Afrikaans is in the West Germanic language family, once thought of as a Dutch dialect. ...
  2. French. Ah, the language of love. ...
  3. Spanish. ...
  4. Dutch. ...
  5. Norwegian. ...
  6. Portuguese. ...
  7. Swedish. ...
  8. Italian.


Which language has hardest grammar?

The grammar of Hungarian is significantly different from that of Indo-European languages such as English. The language has no grammatical gender and it uses suffixes instead of prepositions which makes Hungarian one of the most difficult languages in the world.


What is the closest language to English?

The closest language to English is one called Frisian, which is a Germanic language spoken by a small population of about 480,000 people. There are three separate dialects of the language, and it's only spoken at the southern fringes of the North Sea in the Netherlands and Germany.