Answer (1 of 4): Very difficult. Benefits of Chatting with Native Spanish Speakers. Phonetically English is quite remote from Russian, and features insane amount of vowels, along with fricatives and aspirated consona. For instance, its 15 grammatical cases mean that even the slightest change in the end of a word can alter its meaning. These complex grammatical structures that dont exist in the English language, combined with a challenging pronunciation, make Czech one of the hardest Slavic languages to learn for English speakers. 1. These languages take up to 600 hours to master. Conclusion: Very Difficult. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, not everyone who spoke Russian was ethnically Russian; for some Ukrainians and other minority populations such as the Crimean Tatars, Russian was also the first language. Japanese is often considered to be one of the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers due to its complex writing system, which includes three scripts: hiragana, katakana, and . There are three different genders for nouns and various grammar rules unfamiliar to English speakers. The main problem lies in the writing system. Russian. Polish is closely related to Czech and to Slovak. A Korean speaker learning Arabic, for example, might have a hard time with the letter , which sounds like an h that is pronounced using the throat. Official forms such as those in doctors offices, particularly in Russian-speaking areas, largely came in both Russian and Ukrainian. The language requires the memorization of thousands of special characters. Furthermore, it requires learning the Greek alphabet, which is not a requirement for the majority of European languages. Bulgarian is a South Slavic language spoken mainly in Bulgaria. Much of Macedonian vocabulary is similar to Serbian and Bulgarian, and it uses a Cyrillic alphabet, just like Bulgarian. Generally, students require around 88 weeks of full-time study to reach proficiency in these languages. Its going to be a generational change, but its going to happen eventually.. In this category, it usually takes 88 weeks or 2200 hours to reach S-3/R-3 proficiency. Karolina Assi is an English and Polish teacher on iTalki.com. Certainly, the most intriguing, yet difficult, aspect of learning Georgian is that it has its own writing system, and many of the letters used look incredibly similar. Determining language difficulty requires a birds eye view of how languages relate to each other. These endings are used to express the same things propositions do in English. Youll notice that many of these languages do not use the Latin alphabet. On the other hand, Polish doesnt distinguish as many tenses as English does - theres only past, present, and future combined with a perfective and imperfective verb aspect. And for words you should cut out of your vocabulary right this second, check out Stop Using These Phrases to Sound Instantly Smarter. One example is Thai. Whether for gaining a deeper cultural understanding of a country or for the simple necessity of co-existing and even performing business, multilingual speakers put themselves at the forefront of new possibilities. If you have ever heard a Russian person speak English, you might have spotted this mistake: "I put the pizza in oven". Russian. Now, at 63 and living in the capital, Kyiv, Zahalskyy and his wife Natasha are in the midst of the difficult but voluntary transition making the Ukrainian language their own. navigator.sendBeacon('https://www.google-analytics.com/collect', payload); Most experts believe that to become truly fluent in Russian that is thinking and speaking in Russian requires 7-10 years of study. The largest group within the Slavic family, by the number of speakers, are the East Slavic languages. For more on the Czech language, see this comparison of Czech with Russian and German. For English-speaking students, the hardest foreign languages to learn include Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean. To understand it, you must recognize the pitch of a tone in relation to the context of the world and overall sentence. So, you might be able to get by in Jordan, but have a hard time in Kuwait. Some of these pronunciations, such as the Russian letter which requires the speaker to make a rolling r sound, dont exist in Mandarin. Other troops might keep speaking Russian to keep a grasp on the language of the enemy, especially if they are working in reconnaissance, Ferlain said. Modern Greek is maybe the easiest language to learn that uses a different alphabet. We have also become interested in Ukrainian history, Ukrainian culture before, there was a large gap, he said. One language is identified as the language of opportunities, the language of upward mobility, said Arel. By the way, if you guessed that Dutch, Swedish, German, and Danish are part of the same language family, youre right! The Russian language is the official language of Russia and is ranked 3rd among the hardest languages to learn. The takeaway here is that the farther your native language is from the language youre learning, the more challenging you may find your new language. The Slavic languages have many words in common, although some of the similarities can be confusing. In contrast to English, Czech is a synthetic language. Furthermore, Thai has its own script with 44 consonants, 18 vowels and six diphthongs to memorize. For most people, language learning is deeply fulfilling, fun, and a bit challenging. Arabic. Conversely, languages that are completely unrelated to your language will be more challenging and take longer to master. Additionally, some languages such as Mandarin, Thai, and Punjabi are tonal languages, where tone and pronunciation work together to communicate meaning. English is taught in Chinese schools, so most Mandarin speakers are familiar with English and the Latin script that makes up the English alphabet. Most Ukrainians can speak Russian and many speak what has been labelled Surzhyk a blend of Russian and Ukrainian so measuring who speaks what is challenging. Syllabaries: These use symbols to represent syllables. So, if you learn a certain dialect, there's a chance you might not be able to understand the locals from another region. However, Russian has fewer tenses than English. Estonian is packed with a whopping 14 noun cases. If you don't meet those two criteria, though, it is a very challenging language to master. It's frequently listed as one of the more difficult languages to learn for English speakers. Agreements | The Greek language is very difficult for English speakers to learn, but the effort required to learn the language is worth it. Because of its pictorial writing system, you aren't going to be able to learn to read phonetically. Polish is undoubtedly one of the hardest languages to learn for English speakers due to its complex grammar and pronunciation. It takes approximately 24-30 weeks (600-750 hours of practice) to reach professional working proficiency in these languages. These languages are deeply nuanced, with complex grammar and pronunciation rules. Learning Russian is quite an experience because of the intricate case and gender system, different grammatical rules and novel writing system. For instance, in Italian, sentences are structured subject-verb-object (such as I threw the ball). Where its most commonly spoken: Denmark, Greenland, Faroe Islands. Polish pronunciation can be a doozy for learners. How to Say Hello in Spanish: Casual and Ser vs. Estar: The Definitive Guide to Learning How to Order Food in French (with Example Conversations), Say a Heartfelt I Love You in 25 Languages, How to Say Hello in Spanish: Casual and Formal Greetings, Languages that use the same Latin alphabet youll find in English, Languages that have their own unique alphabets, Languages based on unique writing systems. To learn Arabic, you have to learn a new alphabet, and get used to reading from right to left. With four cases and three genders assigned to their words, as well as many letters unfamiliar to English speakers, Icelandic is no walk in the park to learn. Most major writing systems generally fit into one of these categories: The easiest writing systems you can learn are ones of the same type and that use the same letters or characters as your native language, while the hardest writing systems to learn are different types altogether. Declension in Czech is its own special nightmare, but you won't even need to worry about that until you get past the seemingly insurmountable hurdle that is pronouncing the words correctly. On the one hand, each letter only has one pronunciation ever. In terms of learning to read, Korean has a relatively straightforward alphabet that doesn't take too long to learn, unlike the characters used in Chinese and Japanese writing systems, so you can start sounding out words pretty quickly. It's a famously difficult language for English speakers to learn, with complex grammar and pronunciation. Most of the cities that have been reduced to rubble, such as Mariupol, Severodonetsk, Mykolaiv and Bakhmut, were largely Russian-speaking, Arel said. It has six declension cases, which dont exist in English and can be challenging for English speakers to comprehend. It takes approximately 88 weeks (2200 hours of practice) to reach professional working proficiency in these languages. Human speech as a whole uses over 800 phonemes, which are the individual sounds that act as the building blocks of spoken language. Part of what makes it one of the easiest Slavic languages to learn for English speakers is its simple vocabulary, which makes it pretty simple to speak and comprehend. In Gaelic, though, verbs go at the beginning of a sentence, so Gaelic sentences are structured verb-subject-object (Threw I the ball). However, its universally acknowledged that Slavic languages dont belong to the easiest languages to learn, especially for English speakers. Serious about learning Hungarian? After 2022, the number of those who identify as Russian-speaking has probably decreased. Data Privacy and Security, The Complete List of Language Difficulty Rankings, Get the complete list of languages ranked by difficulty, Mexican Spanish vs. Spain Spanish: The Must-Know Differences. Like a pack of wolves or a tank of gas, books in Mandarin requires the word bn to indicate a unit of five books. But Ukrainian society more broadly, Ferlain said, is making the switch just to pay respect for the nation. Croatian has seven cases, while English only has three. By Theo Ioannou. Get the most out of this nighttime activity. With tools like TruAccent, which gives you feedback on your pronunciation while you practice speaking out loud, you can have the support you need to learn at your own pace. Great job defending the Russian language and Russian speakers, Putin! Korean and Arabic may not be as hard, but theyre still challenging. Polish also has seven different grammatical cases that are affected by gender. Hungarian is a member of the same small language family as Finnish, so the average English speaker won't be finding much familiarity in its vocabulary. Languages that dont use a Latin script, though, tend to give Mandarin speakers the most trouble. Plus, it doesnt even take that long to get used to the new alphabet, as its pretty straightforward! There's a tongue-in-cheek book titled "Learn Greek in 25 years," but you'll be surprised at how . This system of honorific speech is called keigo. The letter b sounds like v, and the letter h sounds like n.. Chinese , Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, and Arabic are some of the most difficult languages to learn. You know that friend you have that speaks three languages fluentlyeffortlessly even? While practicing with language learning apps is useful, chatting with Spanish native speakers is crucial if you want to improve your language skills. The term hard language refers to their complexity. 3) The Russian language does not have articles, so you cannot make mistakes there. One example is Arabic. This makes them especially hard to learn for English speakers. Despite the fact that Greek roots are found throughout the English language, Greek is among the hardest languages for English speakers to learn, according to . Whats the hardest language to learn if English is not your first language? But even though they know the language, the challenge lies in changing their inner machinations, the way they think, the Zahalskyys said. The most often sounds like the E in women, and to the O in rope. The has no exact equivalent in most English accents. Part of the Austroasiatic language family, Vietnamese can also be difficult to speak due to its foreign pronunciations to English speakers. Because Macedonian doesnt have a complex case system like other Slavic languages, its considered one of the easiest Slavic languages to learn. Learning a language is a marathon, not a sprint. Pronouncing Czech words is a nightmare for English speakers. Someone who speaks German, someone who speaks Farsi, and someone who speaks Vietnamese will likely have massive differences in what languages they find easy or hard to pick up, because the native languages theyre starting with are so dissimilar from one another. For this reason, it is worth learning all Slavic languages - each of them is unique. The pronunciation is what will get you. On the flip side, you may be looking for a language thats as easy to learn as possible, and being able to judge which languages are most similar to your own will help you find one. The hardest languages to learn are those that are very different from your native language in terms of vocabulary, grammar features, pronunciation, and spelling.For an English speaker, the hardest languages generally belong to a different language family (i.e., non-Germanic or non-Indo-European).However, there are also languages in the same family as English that are difficult for other . The Hardest Languages in the World to Learn, The 14 Hardest Words to Pronounce in the English Language, Stop Using These Phrases to Sound Instantly Smarter, 40 Latin Phrases So Genius You'll Sound Like a Master Orator, 7 Common Phrases That You Didn't Know Have Racist Origins, Hungarian is a member of the same small language family. Polish. And pronunciation requires some practice because there are sounds that don't have an equivalent in English. Still, there are languages that lack traditional alphabets. Hungarian. If youre up for a challenge, these are the 25 hardest languages to learn. Where its most commonly spoken: Iran, Afghanistan. The three Slavic language groups are mutually unintelligible. Pinyin is a phonetic alphabet for Mandarin, and is much easier to grasp since it uses the same letters as English's alphabet. Ferlain, who asked Al Jazeera to use her callsign, speaks Ukrainian as her first language. What Level Of Difficulty Is Mandarin. Having originated in the Philippine islands, Tagalog is the first language of most Filipinos. For example: There are plenty of resources that can tell you the hardest languages to learn if you speak English. Just as learning Arabic is hard for Mandarin speakers, learning Mandarin is hard for Arabic speakers. The longest word in Hungarian, megszentsgtelenthetetlensgeskedseitekrt, means for your [plural] continued behavior as if you could not be desecrated in English. According to the first census conducted in Ukraine in 2001, about 14.3 million Ukrainian people, or 29 percent of the population, spoke Russian as a first language. As in English, Bulgarian has a standard set of pronouns, places the adjectives in front of the nouns, and is consistent in gender and number. Finnish. One example is French. See for instance this, Whether you already speak or are familiar with any other Slavic language, Availability of learning resources online. Agreements | The closer a language is related to yours, the easier it will be to learn. Maybe its PTSD, but we react negatively to the media in Russian, she said. From Chinese sentence structure to memorizing foreign symbols, this language demands the most out of beginners. It is spoken as a native language by 13 million people, most of whom live in Hungary. English is taught in Chinese schools, so most Mandarin speakers are familiar with English and the Latin script that makes up the English alphabet. The language is also known for having very confusing conjugations. Albanian's 36-letter alphabet should clue you in that attempting to master this language is going to be a wild ride. The Hardest Languages To Learn For English Speakers. Mandarin Chinese. From Russia to Poland, you can find people speaking Slavic languages. This Slavic language consists of two scripts (Cyrillic and Latin), seven tenses and a consonant (R) that is also sometimes a vowel. Its writing system is an abjad, which functions very differently from both Chinese characters and the English alphabet because it uses letters to represent consonants but not all vowels, and it uses a cursive script, so letters combine and change forms. Often, one word in Hungarian equals a whole sentence. Great job defending the Russian language and Russian speakers, Putin! We researched the top 5 most widely spoken non-English languages to see which languages are the hardest for their speakers to learn. To help you understand what you're getting into, we've compiled this list of the hardest languages to learn. The tonal language also has four tones, so one word can be pronounced four different ways, while each pronunciation has a different meaning. Category 3: Hebrew, Hindi, Persian Farsi, Russian . Maria Stambler, a Russia-American bilingual speaker, who used to teach English, explained: "Words and phrases like `Tina Turner' and `happy birthday' are hard to pronounce because Russians . Vietnamese is also difficult for Hindi speakers due to its sentence structure and tones, though its writing system is easier to learn than that of either Japanese or Mandarin because it uses a phonetic alphabet instead of characters. Being able to judge how hard a language will be to learn aids you in a few ways. Each language has a different level of correlation with other languages, even in the same group. It has Dutch at its core but it is also intertwined with other dialects and indigenous languages from Africa. This list of the most difficult languages for English speakers to learn comes from data gathered by the US State Department. That's mainly due to their complex . What's New at RussianLessons.Net. Everyone kept speaking Russian, everyone kept watching Russian television, except probably for the Western regions of Ukraine, Zahalskyy told Al Jazeera. It is also the most geographically widespread language. Arabic only has three cases nominative, genitive, and accusative while Finnish has a staggering 15 cases. Expect to spend around 1,100 hours in class to attain speaking and reading proficiency, according to the FSI. In contrast to the similarities between the Romance languages listed above, German and Mandarintwo languages of different families with entirely unique writing systemscouldnt be more linguistically distant. Trying to learn a language that uses different grammar rules could mean retraining your brain to think of words and sentences in brand new ways. The best time to start learning a language is today. Why it's hard: Despite 221 million native speakers that you can potentially learn from, Arabic is still one of the hardest languages to learn. But the more each language continued to evolve, the more it differed from its initial state. Now, when she sees or hears Russian propaganda, Tarasiuk baulks. document.addEventListener( 'DOMContentLoaded', function() { 1. It has six tonal variations that are determined by diacritics. Beginning language learners may want to start with an easier language, such as Spanish, German or Italian. She is a polyglot and a digital nomad. Hardest languages to learn for English speakers . In terms of grammar, a lexical and grammatical similarity exists between Bulgarian and Macedonian. They studied in the Soviet Union, in Russian-speaking schools, completed university in the Russian language and now we are all transitioning to Ukrainian. These languages, which include Vietnamese and Mandarin, require correct pronunciation and inflection to create meaning for each word. So, what are the origins of the Slavic languages, and what are they? In the wars early days, their apartment block was hit twice by artillery fire from the nearby town of Bucha, where Russians are accused of many atrocities. Furthermore, learning a new language enhances your worldview, improves nonverbal communication, helps you multitask and aids in your brain adapting and responding to new circumstances. She said many soldiers she works with who spoke Russian before the invasion are continuing to do so. Russian. The ability to speak multiple languages puts you steps ahead of singular speakers. Plus, Polish often likes to break its own grammatical rules, which makes it slightly unpredictable while learning. } ); The transition to Ukrainian began for some in 2014, when Moscow annexed Crimea and led forces into the Donbas region, which borders Russia. In 2022, the entire country witnessed the war and all the crimes the Russians committed.
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