59 Responses for "The world’s most difficult languages"

1. Keith Jenkins May 26th, 2009 at 3:44 pm 1

   Thank you for this very insightful article. I was brought up with English and studied Malay (I grew up in Malaysia). Mandarin was offered at school as well but I just couldn’t get my head around it!
   When I moved to the Netherlands, it wasn’t too difficult learning Dutch (both English & Dutch are Germanic languages and hence closely related…that said, the pronunciation of Dutch words are sometimes wacky for foreigners, & tongue-twisting!). I had (and still have) trouble with the Latin languages, especially French! Spanish & Italian are somewhat easier, though not by a lot!

2. Liz May 26th, 2009 at 7:55 pm 2

   Hi Keith. Glad you enjoyed it!

   Thanks for sharing your experiences. You confirm that Chinese is harder than Malay then?

   I only had the information for these languages but I guess Dutch is in the first group with the other European languages - like you say the pronunciation can be tricky, but the grammer is quite simple isn’t it?

   At school I found French a lot easier than German, and so from there it was relatively easy to learn Spanish and Italian. I haven’t tried any of the others though!

3. Andy May 27th, 2009 at 3:28 am 3

   I often get asked this question (I live in Taiwan and use Chinese for business). In this part of the world, many assume it’s Chinese. I think your first point in the above post is absolutely correct: difficulties are contextual. What languages you already speak may facilitate what languages you want to learn.

   But another important point to consider is that it’s also situational; that is to say, it depends on your opportunities in that language. Chinese may be difficult, but there are free lessons, books, TV, worldwide radio, restaurants, and even job opportunities (incentives). If you tried to study a lesser-studied Bantu language, like Lingala or Zulu, how would you start and who would you speak with in the beginning?

   To me the true difficulty in language learning is deeply rooted in access to that language.

4. Liz May 27th, 2009 at 1:23 pm 4

   Andy - That’s a really good point. In my experience the easiest way to learn a language is to go and spend time in a country where it is spoken. I have a lot of respect for people who manage to learn a foreign language to a good level without leaving their home country because I think this is very difficult.

   Your comment reminds me of a post I read recently on Aspiring Polyglot blog. Kelly is challenging herself to learn 26 languages A to Z, and the A language was Albanian. She said her main obstacle was not being able to find enough teaching materials. And Albanian is well-documented compared to some other languages.

   Have you tried to learn Japanese or Korean by the way? I’d be interested to know if you find them easier to pick up through knowing Chinese.

5. Ann Lombardi May 30th, 2009 at 6:01 am 5

   Hi! Interesting article. Though Korean uses lots of Chinese characters in newspapers, everyday Korean signs are easier to read than you think. The pure Korean alphabet is all phonetic and we were able to learn to read it after a couple of hours of study. (helps with travel mobility on subways, shops, etc.)

   For me, Polish is incredibly hard. I’d bet that just the pronunciation could stump linguists even with the most gifted, flexible of ears and tongues!

6. Liz May 30th, 2009 at 8:27 pm 6

   Hi Ann and thanks for visiting! That’s interesting about Korean. Did you find other aspects of the language difficult?

7. Tom June 3rd, 2009 at 10:37 am 7

   I’m Thai. i’ve learned English for 3 years; it’s quite difficult for me. it took me 1 year to be able to understand what people are talking. English seems common to me as it’s spoken in every part of the world. However, now i’m learning Spanish. The conjugations make the language hard. If one speaks English, Spanish becomes easy because words are familiar. Before I started learning Spanish i took a look at Chinese. Chinese seems friendly to me, and I thought I could learn Chinese with in a year because Thai and Korean are based on the tones as Chinese. Now, i wanna focus on Spanish first.

8. Liz June 3rd, 2009 at 2:13 pm 8

   Hi Tom. It’s great to hear about your experiences with different languages. It makes a lot of difference which language you speak first doesn’t it? I’m sure a lot of people will say you are lucky to find Chinese friendly.

   Good luck with learning Spanish!

9. Andy June 12th, 2009 at 4:23 pm 9

   Hi Liz, just noticed you asked a question earlier (on 5/27) about the relative difficulties of learning either Japanese or Korean compared to Chinese.

   Background: I lived in Korea for 1 year and in Japan for 3 years and studied languages intensively while working as an educator, so I’ve had a bit of experience with all 3 of these languages mentioned.

   I think all I can say is that each language is inherently hard for English native speakers, perhaps impossible if you don’t put the time in. That being said, I think I had the order right when I learned them: Korean first, then Chinese, and finally Japanese.

   Korean words are normally written phonetically, but about half are related to Chinese characters. When I began studying Chinese, I could easily attach meanings to the Chinese characters because of the Korean phonetic foundation.

   As you likely know, Japanese also uses Sino-based characters in almost every sentence, but often (about half the time) gives them Japanese pronunciations instead of guessable Sino-based pronounciations. It helped that I could use my Chinese to understand what a sentence roughly meant even if I hadn’t yet learned its pronounciation at the time.

   I believe that learning these 3 languages in a different order might have mitigated some of the shortcuts I used.

   Apologies this was so long-winded. ?????????

10. Liz June 12th, 2009 at 5:34 pm 10

    Interesting insights - thanks a lot Andy!

11. Dawn June 17th, 2009 at 12:28 pm 11

    I am bilingual,native speaker of both Chinese and English,(not so native in English I think,being growing up in China)but I truly think English is harder than Chinese. Especially vocabulary,you cannot imagine how revolting some words are. what do you think when confronted with “pseudocholinesterase” an kind of enzyme present in blood and certain organs? My teacher used to say I could remember it by root and affix,but roots and affixes largely come from Latin or Greek,and I had no knowledge in the said two languages at all,so I concluded that I could not remember the word for the world. take ,DNA,for another example,if you write its full name ,you’ll also find it terribly long to remember.

    as for the most difficult language,I think it must be a dead language-otherwise,why are dead languages “dead”? it may be old Egyptian or Chinese before AD 200,which nowadays could only be learnt by specialists.the living languages,however hard as people think,if assiduously practicing,sooner or later they can be conquered.

12. Liz June 17th, 2009 at 6:26 pm 12

    Thanks for giving your perspective Dawn. A lot of us have been wondering which is harder out of English and Chinese, and I think you are in a perfect position to know!

13. Gabi June 23rd, 2009 at 7:43 am 13

    I am Spanish and I study Japanese and English. I could say English pronunciation is more difficult than Japanese phonetics, but you have to learn almost 3000 characters to read a japanese text.

    In Chinese, there is often one reading for each character. Anyway, in Japanese you will find at least two readings; in some cases, three or more, and involving basic words too. In my opinion, Japanese it’s the most difficult language…

14. Liz June 23rd, 2009 at 7:19 pm 14

    That’s interesting Gabi. I think English speakers forget sometimes how difficult it is to learn English as a foreign language. But it sounds like characters make reading much more difficult. Thanks for sharing your experience!

15. Karolina August 9th, 2009 at 11:12 pm 15

    I’m a native speaker of Polish and I know how many difficulties it can cause. I’m suprised that you haven’t involved this language in the article.
    I think it’s a very difficult language to learn for a speaker of “hard” language, like English, German or Finnish. Polish is very melodic and its pronounciation can break your tongue.
    If you can cope with the pronounciation it’s good for you, but check out Polish grammar. If you don’t give up after seeing 7 cases for nouns, adjectives and numbers and more than 11 conjugation types then I’m very proud of you and I admire you.
    Don’t forget that there are 5 genders in Polish, 3 in singular and 2 in plural, not only for nouns and adjectives, but also for verbs in past and future tense.
    A thing that is quite interesting for me is that there can be even 3 negative forms in one sentence, e.g.: Nikt nic nie robi, literally Nobody is not doing nothing.

16. Daichi August 24th, 2009 at 5:33 pm 16

    Hi, I came across this interesting article through a search.
    I’m a native speaker of Japanese, and in fact a researcher in computational linguistics.
    From a viewpoint after intense training, I have been constantly surprised what a difficult language it is.
    Yes, maybe the basic grammar is as difficult as Chinese or Korean; however, contemporary Japanese includes tremendous amount of new words and jargons that sometimes even requires a lot of English knowledge (many people cannot understand these words).
    Moreover, when it comes to express a complicated thought, it needs a very intense knowledge of difficult Chinese character idioms and subtle semantic differences between them. (For example, “get” a knowledge corresponds to “eru” “kakutoku-suru” “shutoku-suru”, almost equivalent but slightly different.)
    I think that even a native speaker do not have all commands over this fiendish language.
    It’s difficult, but not in the same sense that more structured languages like Polish or Latin are difficult.

17. Liz August 26th, 2009 at 8:25 am 17

    Hi Daichi. Thanks for sharing your expertise. It seems there is a lot of agreement on the difficulty of Japanese! I think it’s interesting how some languages can seem easier at first and are very difficult to master, whereas others which may seem difficult are in fact much easier once you get past the basics. Sounds like Japanese is in the first group.

    Karolina - thanks a lot for your comment. I think Ann (above) agrees with you on the difficulty of Polish pronunciation. Unfortunately I could not find information about Polish, but you are right it should be included.

18. Matthew November 14th, 2009 at 12:24 am 18

    Wow - great post and interesting comments!

    As a learner of both Japanese and Hungarian, Hungarian is definitely more difficult as far as vocabulary and grammar go. Japanese is also much easier to pronounce and two of its writing systems are actually more logical than the Roman-letter system English uses. And as Daichi said before, contemporary Japanese has an amazing number of borrowed English words - this makes it even easier for an English speaker!

19. liz November 14th, 2009 at 7:18 pm 19

    Thanks Matthew! It’s really interesting to hear your opinions - and I guess there aren’t many people in a position to compare Hungarian and Japanese! For English speakers I would still expect that learning another writing system slows things down. Has that been your experience? I’m trying to learn Arabic at the moment, and although the writing system is logical just the fact that it’s different is slowing me down a lot.

20. besiki November 17th, 2009 at 6:14 pm 20

    Georgian ქართული არის ერთ ერთი ყველაზე ძნელი ენა can you read this ?

21. liz November 18th, 2009 at 11:14 am 21

    Well no, I found this site which helped me though

    http://www.translate.ge/

    So you vote for Georgian as the hardest language? From that script it certainly looks difficult!

    By the way is Georgian similar to the Laz language spoken in the Black sea region of Turkey? For example, if you are a Georgian speaker can you understand Laz?

22. mess November 22nd, 2009 at 2:03 am 22

    But what about polish language? it’s very hard to learn, particularly pronunciation.

23. Emma November 25th, 2009 at 12:35 pm 23

    This is a great topic and one which 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 http://www.lexiophiles.com/english/top-list-of-the-hardest-languages-to-learn . Were hoping to come to some kind of conclusion!

24. Anett November 28th, 2009 at 3:00 am 24

    Hi!
    Great article and topic and very interesting posts!
    I’m Hungarian and I’ve started learning English when I was 6. Also I had French and Italian lessons in high school, and now I have to learn medical latin, but I’m extremely interested in Japanese. (((I wish I could actually be able to use these languages properly…well I guess I’ll need to re-upgrade my long-gone English knowledge first and foremost)))

    Hungarian is a conjugative language and pretty much unsimilar to other European languages, that is why it is said to be difficult. Plus, there are a powerful lot of exceptions.

    Learning English have always been fun and relatively easy for me.
    I’ve started Italian in parallel with French and I must admit that it helped a lot! I could always trace it back to French in Italian class and vice versa. Often when I couldn’t figure out the meaning of a French word, I found it’s similar to an English one I know. Learning the gender of nouns is very intriguing especially when you’re just being told that the beard is feminin!:P
    Medical latin does not contain a large amount of grammar, mostly it’s about creating syntagms.

    I have to agree that the pronunciation in Japanese is easy, but for someone who is a native European it gives a headache to memorize the characters (not to mention trying to write a phrase in Japanese). Even though hiragana and katakana alphabets are indeed logical.

    Sok sikert a japánhoz és a magyarhoz Matthew!
    Good luck with learning Arabic Liz!
    Köszönöm, hogy elmondhattam a véleményem!

25. liz November 29th, 2009 at 9:56 pm 25

    Thanks Anett! Good luck to you too!

26. sella December 5th, 2009 at 1:16 am 26

    hello everybody ^_^

    I am a native arabic speaker and i can tell you that arabic is the MOST difficult language ever , yes chinese is hard and its writing script makes it classified as hard , but actually the hardest to speak is arabic ..

    we have almost infinite grammar ..
    i will tell you the easiest most basic words ..

    as for the word YOU .. in arabic it depends
    anta >> if you are talking to a single male
    anti >> if you are talking to a single female
    antoma >> if you are talking to 2 persons !
    antom >> if you are talking to male ploral
    antonna >> if you are talking to female ploral

    for example , we don’t have the word YOUR in arabic ..
    it’s conjucted to the object directly making it a one word ..and surely depends on whom you are referring to .. wether it is a single male or a single female or ploral male or ploral female or to two persons .. !!

    your book ( as for a single male for example ) = ketabuk
    your book ( as for ploral females ) = ketabukonna

    your book ( as for two persons ) = katabukuma

    another example of the VERY BASIC structure in arabic ..

    word THE , is pronounced depending on the word that follows it , we have 28 letters in arabic alphabet .. some are classified as moon-letter and some are classified as sun-letter ..
    if the subject or object starts with a moon-letter THE is pronounced as al , if it starts with a sun-letter it is pronounced as a+streching the first letter …

    for an example , walad means boy , M is a moon-letter in arabic alphabet .. so the boy = al walad

    sama mean sky , S is a sun-letter in arabic alphabet , so the sky = assama

    emmm , there’s also .. the comparative rule ..
    in english you just say nicer , hotter , more beautiful …
    jameel ( beautiful ) , put an A in the beginning , eliminate the vowul aftar the constant letter and add another A before the last letter in the word , and here we go AJMAL means more beautiful in arabic .. that’s just in case the word ends with a constant letter .. !!!!!!!! I KNOW

    ktaba = the original word of write.. if you want to say writting , written , wrote .. then take the verb and do some work with it .. it’s all about adding vowls before and after constants and in every time it gives a new function of the original word .. !!

    who wants to speak arabic should understand these ULTIMATELY BASIC things very well , because usually it takes you to think for few moments to before you spell a very simple word .. I , you , she , he , they .. or even me , her , them ..
    always sticked to the word making it a one word ..

    I love you =
    ahebek .. it’s a one word now lol ..
    i loved you ,
    habetek !!

    told u , it’s about re-ordering the vowls and consistants .. and that should be very basic .. we are not into the real arabic grammar YET !!

    complex enough ? =)

    and yeah , about the arabic script , it’s written from right to left , and we use dots in letters alot , dropping a dot or a adding a dot or changing the dot’s place may change the whole word thus the whole meaning ..
    plus , this may be shocking but seriously we don’t write down vowls unless they are extended in pronounciation !!!!! the reader must figure ‘em out by himself ..

    PEACE , salam =)

27. sella December 5th, 2009 at 1:19 am 27

    hey just had read that you are learning arabic .. i can help you if you want =)

28. Liz December 5th, 2009 at 4:55 pm 28

    Wow, great comment Sella! These are exactly the things I am struggling with. Especially the writing without dots. And you wrote some I haven’t found out about yet too… so your offer to help is very kind and much needed. Thank you!

29. Merri December 5th, 2009 at 7:06 pm 29

    wow! thanks for the interesting topic here^^
    i’m from indonesia..i find that japanese is easy..chinese also..imo the hard part for them is just memorizing the characters though..
    well..i find myself hard to learn french coz it’s grammar for the conjugation is really hell to me..
    it changes depends on the sentence..
    i am learning arabic now..the spelling is hard..haha..

30. liz December 6th, 2009 at 6:46 pm 30

    Thanks for commenting Merri! Glad you liked it. Very interesting to hear your perspective (and good to know I’m not the only one struggling with Arabic spelling!)

    I live in Turkey and many people here (Turkish speakers) say they find French difficult too.

    Also please forgive me, I’ve just noticed I spelt Indonesian wrong in the picture. I will change it…

31. dan December 12th, 2009 at 7:15 pm 31

    I believe that portuguese is the most difficult language to learn

32. EM December 18th, 2009 at 12:34 am 32

    I find lithuanian one of the most difficult languages. That’s for sure.

33. London Caller December 22nd, 2009 at 2:47 am 33

    Insightful!

    Well, Chinese Mandarin is my first language. I think, it’s equally easy and difficult. We only do grammar at primary schools. Afterwards, we mainly focus on linguistic analysis, Classical Chinese, etc, at high schools.

    To conclude, I’d like to emphasise that all languages are similar: Simple English is brief and clear; technical English is specific and esoteric. The same applies to German, Hindi or Arabic. Just to name a few…

34. Nyagoslav December 23rd, 2009 at 5:39 pm 34

    Hey! Very interesting article that was.
    I am Bulgarian and for me the easiest language to learn is Russian and other Slavic languages like Serbo-Croatian, Czech and Polish. I suppose I cud learn them for less than a month if I attend intensive courses.
    I have studied English, Portuguese, Spanish, German and Japanese. All in all from the European tongues I encountered - the most difficult proved to be German in terms of grammar and in terms of pronunciation - Portuguese by far. Japanese is something extremely different and I suppose even if one goes to the most intensive course available it is impossible to learn the language for less than 1 year (if outside Japan) or 6 months (if studying in Japanese institution). Japanese is 100% harder than Chinese I cud say.
    I have friends from almost every country in Europe and I think overall the most difficult European language is Hungarian, followed closely by Finnish… Maybe for English speakers Bulgarian or Russian seem quite difficult to learn but for me Russian is like a piece of cake

35. Veronika December 29th, 2009 at 9:59 am 35

    Hi guys!!!

    I’m Hungarian, and I’m agree with Nyagoslav that in Europe for sure Hungarian and Finnish are to most difficult languages (they have the same roots). I’ve tried many times to teach Hungarian to my friends, but it was extremely difficult to them. It’s true that there are a lot of exceptions, and eg. we say with different suffixes “I see” and “I see that”. However I like Hungarian, the only problem that nobody understand me.

    By the way I’ve been learning English for 10 years, I’m learning on English Department, so I like it:). I used to learn Latin in high school, and that time I hated it. Now I see that it was extremely useful. It helped in learning Spanish( i just learned for 2 months,so I’m a beginner:)), but I’ve been learning Italian for half year, and Latin helps a a lot:)

    In the future I’d like to learn one of the Scandinavian languages and also Russian.

    Bye!!!

    Oh, I have a question, Liz! From these langueges whoch one you tried? you’re and English, tried Arabic….

36. liz December 30th, 2009 at 11:07 pm 36

    Hi Veronika! I heard a lot about Hungarian and its difficult suffixes. I know some Turkish, which also uses suffixes. I read a few times that Turkish could also be related to Hungarian and Finnish. I think distantly though! Did you hear the same?

    Otherwise, I can speak French, Spanish and Italian. They were quite easy to learn. German for me was more difficult - I studied for many years at school and I know very little. So the only ‘difficult’ language I have tried is Arabic. I can confirm it is difficult although I think Turkish grammar is more complicated.

    Thanks for your comment!

37. Finnish american January 9th, 2010 at 12:19 pm 37

    Finnish is so hard. Have been studying it for 10 years and have also been living in Finland for two years. It has 15 cases and conjucations is really hard. Then you also need to figure out the ending of a word. And pronauciation is also very difficult. Hungarian is the same. I have also studied Russian and Germanic languages (Swedish and Danish) and I found those to be ralatively easy.

38. Anna January 16th, 2010 at 5:02 pm 38

    Hi, I’m from the Ukraine.I was 12, when I went to live in Barcelona,Spain.Now I’m 26, and I can speak seven languages in perfection: Spanish, French, Italian, Russian, Arabic, Polish, Romanian.Also I can speak German, Japanese, Turkish, but I can’t say that’s easy for me.Spanish is very easy.Franch and Italian are similar to Spanish in grammar and in words, but they are different in pronunciation.
    German is very hard.Articles, sort and plural forms one of complexities of this language.
    Russian and Polish are very similar to Ukraine, but they’re very difficult because you have to change almost each word in the sentense.There are a lot of problems in plural forms of the nouns.Besides there are many exceptions, because there aren’t articles and many verbs and pretexts.English and Spanish speakers,do you think that Polish is more difficult than Russian?If you answered “yes” you are mistaken.If you have ever learnt Polish, maybe you remember about 17 grammatical forms for the number 2:
    dwa
    dwie
    dwoje
    dwóch/dwu
    …
    In Russian is similar, but it is more difficult for reading:
    два/две
    двух/двоих/
    двум/двоим
    два/двух/две/двоих
    …
    So to my mind Russian isn’t easy enough for English speakers.But Russian isn’t more difficult then Arabi, Japanese and Turkish.

39. liz January 17th, 2010 at 10:08 pm 39

    Wow, that’s a lot of languages! I’m interested you said German is difficult as well. I thought it should be easier than Russian.

40. Neil Fox January 26th, 2010 at 11:20 am 40

    Great post,

    I am a native English speaker and I speak several languages. I would love to learn Arabic, however; I am currently studiying Tien Viet. That is to say Vietnamese. By far the most difficult languauge so far. Speaking Chinese on the street is a cake walk compared to this langauge. I live in TP Ho Chi Minh and everyday someone will have to correct me on my pronunciation. The tones are very difficult but I live hear so I can hear them. My english tounge just can’t seem to pronounce correctly.

    Great site and regards

    Neil

41. Neil Fox January 26th, 2010 at 11:27 am 41

    BTW

    I gave up on learning Dutch. ABN Nederlands is not difficult but learning to speak where you live is. Local Dutch vernacular is amazing and diverse. The people who live in this country are witout doubt the best linguistson earth. I lived in Rotterdam for two years and my friends finally told me “Just speak English it’s easier, we do”.

    Neil

42. liz January 26th, 2010 at 6:01 pm 42

    Hi Neil, thanks a lots for your comments. I have to say I know nothing about Vietnamese so I’ll take your word for it.

    Really interesting what you say about local Dutch variations. It’s such a densely populated country as well.

43. lila123 January 26th, 2010 at 6:41 pm 43

    and what do you think about slovak language???
    i am from slovakia, so i really wanna know what do people think about our language….thanks=))

44. Mal January 28th, 2010 at 1:13 pm 44

    Hi Lila, I am from Bulgaria and I have travelled quite a bit in Central and Eastern Europe. For me Slovak is one of the ¨friendlier¨ Slavic languages. I found it quite easy to listen to and read, I thought it was more accessible than Czech, and certainly more than Polish. I haven´t tried to study it though, maybe the devil is in the details..

45. liz February 19th, 2010 at 3:56 pm 45

    This post gives another source (Defence Languages Institute) with ratings for more languages. I couldn’t verify it, but for the languages here it more or less agrees.

    http://hi.nciku.com/space.php?uid=20&do=blog&id=1174

46. Paulina April 7th, 2010 at 4:13 pm 46

    Hello, my name is Paulina, I come from Poland. I’m very interested in learning languages, I’m addicted to them, so if anybody from you want to develop new skills, and find out something about Poland and Polsh(both are extraordinary), please write me an e-mail. I’m willing to learn every language in the world;]

47. Alex April 14th, 2010 at 9:53 pm 47

    I am a native speaker of Mandarin Chinese and English, and have studied some Japanese, Korean and Spanish. To comment on different aspects of the three major East Asian languages:

    GRAMMAR: Chinese grammar is remarkably similar to that of English. Its order is subject-verb-object. It has no verb conjugations (cf. Spanish/French), no noun declensions (cf. Latin), no noun genders (cf. Spanish/French). Korean and Japanese, on the other hand, have grammars that are quite alien to English speakers. For example, the verb always go at the end; nouns and verbs have a wide assortment of inflection (declension/conjugation).

    HONORIFICS: Noun and verb endings in Japanese and Korean change depending on the relationship between the speaker and audience, and the level of politeness. Chinese, on the other hand, is just like English in that there is generally one way to say something, though you can always add extra words to make it more polite (”May I ask who’s speaking?” vs. “Who are you?”).

    PRONUNCIATION: Japanese is easy to pronounce correctly: It has few consonants and vowels, and its syllables are very short (”arigato”), similar to Spanish or Italian. Chinese and Korean, on the other hand, have many consonants and vowels that do not exist in English. Furthermore, Chinese has tones.

    VOCABULARY: Chinese vocabulary is actually quite small and self-logical. Instead of turning to foreign languages like Latin/Greek for sources of new words, Chinese looks to itself. For example, “computer” is literally “electronic brain”, “elevator” is “electric stairs”, and “snack” is “little eat”. Korean (and to a lesser extent, Japanese) has historically borrowed heavily from Chinese vocabulary in a similar way that English borrowed from Norman French, Latin, and Greek, so knowing Chinese helps in understanding Korean vocabulary. However, this means that many words exist in two forms in Korean: the “native” form and the Chinese form. A similar situation occurs in English: “sweat” is (native) Germanic, but “perspire” is from Latin. Knowing when to use which form depends on the context (use “sweat” in casual conversation but “perspire” in medical journals), which can be a headache to learn properly.

    WRITING: The Korean alphabet, Hangul, is widely praised as the most scientifically designed writing system. It is incredibly easy to learn. Japanese is more complex: It has two sets of syllabaries (kana), both of which has one symbol representing one whole syllable (and thus has more “letters” than Korean or English), and also uses some Chinese characters (kanji). Knowing which of the three systems to use to write a particular sentence is straightforward, yet a skill to learn. Chinese has perhaps the most complex writing system in the world: Each morphemic word has its own character.

    In terms of learning curve: If you’re just learning a bunch of basic phrases, Japanese is the easiest to pick up (simple pronunciation). A Chinese learner, on the other hand, would have to spend hours getting the tones and new sounds correct. Once you move on to full sentence construction, though, you’ll be able to breeze through Chinese, while Korean and Japanese will bog you down in inflection and honorifics. At the most advanced level, you will always have to learn many new Chinese characters, some (but not as many) new characters in Japanese, and none in Korean.

    In terms of learning all three eventually: Korean uses mostly Chinese-origin vocabulary, and Korean grammar is similar to Japanese grammar. Thus, someone who knows both Chinese and Japanese should be able to learn Korean very quickly. Alternatively, one could learn Korean as a “bridge” language if one already knows Chinese or Japanese, which eases the learning of the remaining third language.

    Hope this helps!

48. liz April 15th, 2010 at 2:10 pm 48

    This is amazing information. It could be a post on its own. Thanks Alex!

    This might be a difficult question, but from your experience, do you think it’s easier for English speakers to learn Spanish or for Chinese speakers to learn Japanese / Korean?

49. Alex April 16th, 2010 at 3:31 pm 49

    No problem!

    > from your experience, do you think it’s easier for
    > English speakers to learn Spanish or for Chinese
    > speakers to learn Japanese / Korean?

    For me, learning Spanish as an English speaker was easier than learning Japanese/Korean as a Chinese speaker. In all three cases, there is overlap in vocabulary (though in the Japanese-Chinese case, the similarity is in the written characters, not in the spoken form). Spanish grammar is far closer to English grammar than Korean/Japanese grammar are to Chinese grammar. Finally, other than the “tu vs. Usted” distinction, Spanish does not have the complicated levels of speech/politeness than Korean and Japanese have.

50. Justin April 19th, 2010 at 10:16 am 50

    So many insights above to share.I’m a Chinese,and I am taking painful efforts to learn English now.I think English quite difficult to grasp.Chinese has little common with English in either writing system or grammar as they belong to two distinct categories,Chinese is pictographic while English is alphabetic.Chinese characters didn’t change much all through her long history,so people today can understand those incisive ancient literary output 2000 years ago rather well,while ordinary English people today can seldom know what Shakespare said 400 years ago.However, English is more time-efficient than Chinese in writing.It really matters in such a Time-Is-Money era.

51. liz April 19th, 2010 at 12:58 pm 51

    Justin, thanks for your comment. You gave us some new and useful insights. It’s true that English has changed a lot in the last few hundred years.

    Also, now English is spoken as a second language by many people in different countries, so there are many different versions of English.

52. johanna April 21st, 2010 at 6:01 pm 52

    My first language is finnish and I live in Finland (north europe), and I still think that FINNISH is much difficult to learn than spanish or portugese of like these! You should try, so you could know ;D

    ” vai olenko ainoa suomalainen korpisoturi täällä joka aattelee samalla lailla kun minä? Ehkäpä mutta ei se haittaa”

53. reza April 29th, 2010 at 4:38 pm 53

    The correct is INDONESIAN . not INDINESIAN .

    i’m an Indonesian , I learn deutsch, dutch, suomi, french, and turcke .

54. liz April 29th, 2010 at 6:00 pm 54

    Hello Reza. Thanks for the reminder, I corrected it I’m sorry for the bad spelling.

    Good luck with your studies!

55. Matthew M April 30th, 2010 at 4:10 pm 55

    While it is true that to speakers of English some languages appear difficult, but consider this:
    There is no difference in the make up of our brains whatsoever.
    We use the same area of our brains to learn a foreign language as we do our native language
    Most of us have no difficulty learning our own language, and by the age of five have a pretty good grasp of it (I understand that Chinese and Japanese characters take a little longer, no personal experience though).

    Therefore rating languages in order of difficulty in my view, merely makes it harder to teach. Our adult brain tells us it should be hard, and this makes it hard. If a Saudi child can learn Arabic, why shouldn’t I be able to, having already learned my native language. We should therefore avoid “rating” languages, and concentrate on promoting the simplicity of languages - so easy, a baby can do it!

56. kyh May 7th, 2010 at 5:26 pm 56

    Being a Chinese Malaysian, we’ve been brought up in 3 languages - Malay (the national and official language), English (the language of international business and trades), and Mandarin Chinese (my mother tongue). I’d say that, even though I’ve been exposed to Chinese more than any other languages, to me it’s still the hardest among all those languages I’ve learned. Classical Chinese is even harder, and I tend to screw up that particular section in high school exams. English and Malay, by comparison, are much more easier to master compared to Chinese. And according to a friend, Japanese is a lot easier than Chinese (He’s a Chinese Malaysian too btw).

57. Binyu May 18th, 2010 at 11:34 am 57

    that means chinese is actually the hardest for native english speakers hugh? is it vice versa?
    i mean i’m chinese, and chinese people should regard english, spanish or french as the hardest language to learn?

58. Postrediori May 21st, 2010 at 10:10 pm 58

    Interesting post.

    It was quite surprising that such a big number of people pointer Polish as complicated. Try to learn Russian - that’s much more difficult.

    English is neither the easiest nor the most complicated tongue. The same thing can be said to Hungarian, Arabic and even Chinese. Mandarin Chinese it’s not difficult to read indeed, but the pronunciation is uncommon for an English speaker. The easiest ones are Spanish, Portuguese, Swahili and Turkish. Korean is the most comfortable Far East language to learn as it has easy writing system and logical grammar. German is the most complicated European tongue.

    I’m a native speaker of Lezgian (a Caucasian mountain ridge language that has got unique and plain grammar, with the vocabulary to consist of Turkish and Persian loanwords). It took me three years to become fluent speaker of Russian and only two years to learn English. For me such a widespread “difficulties” as Polish and Hungarian look strange.

59. Greg May 30th, 2010 at 12:09 pm 59

    Why you people matching Latin with Greek?

    There is absolutely no similarity!