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.
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.
The Chinese language has a unique structure and pronunciation system that is vastly different from English. Chinese is made up of tens of thousands of characters, each with its own meaning, and often multiple pronunciations. This makes the language extremely difficult to learn, especially for non-native speakers.
Chinese, the most commonly spoken language in the world, is challenging to master. Rather than an alphabet, Chinese has thousands of characters. On top of that, the language is tonal, so how you speak a word can completely change its meaning.
The language is actually easier to acquire than romance tongues like Spanish or French because Mandarin Chinese shares a similar grammatical system with fewer commonly-used words.
Chinese and Japanese are two of the most popular languages to learn, Japanese is generally seen as being harder than Chinese due to its writing system and complex grammar structures.
However, due to the sheer volume of English speakers who want to learn Mandarin or Japanese, there are more resources for those languages. From that practical standpoint, learners might find that the hardest language to learn of the three is Korean.
It takes a learner with average aptitude only 15 weeks to reach level 2 for Spanish or French, but about 50 weeks to reach a similar level of the Chinese language. If you want to be fully fluent in Mandarin, you'd better plan to spend about 230 weeks, which is about 4 years.
Mandarin Chinese
Interestingly, the hardest language to learn is also the most widely spoken native language in the world. Mandarin Chinese is challenging for a number of reasons. First and foremost, the writing system is extremely difficult for English speakers (and anyone else) accustomed to the Latin alphabet.
Of course, this could be divided up in very different ways depending on how you structure your learning. Studying five hours a day, five days a week? FSI says you will need 88 weeks, somewhere between 1.5–2 years. Another yardstick is the Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK)—the standard proficiency test for Mandarin Chinese.
Reading and writing Chinese characters is perhaps the most difficult aspect of learning Chinese. The Chinese written script, called 汉字 (hànzì) in Chinese, is based on the use of "logograms"—single characters that can represent an entire word.
China's distinct language is the number one reason why many Chinese students find it hard to differentiate which pronunciation is correct and which one is not. Some of the most common pronunciation problems are the following: Word and sentence stress – This pertains to a speaker's flow of speech and sounding rhythm.
Japanese is slightly easier to learn. But, Chinese is much more widely spoken. Both languages have their pros and cons. Ultimately whichever language pulls on your heartstrings the most is the winner.
Relatively, Korean would be an easier language to learn. Thanks to its phonetic alphabet and more simplistic grammar rules, Korean is not the most challenging Asian language to learn. Chinese on the other hand is much more widely spoken.
Mandarin Chinese is generally considered to be easier to learn than French due to its simpler grammar, phonetic writing system, simpler vocabulary, and more logical structure.
It takes about 4-7 years (roughly 2200 to 4000 hours) to become fluent in every aspect of the language, if you spend at least an hour and a half to study every day. However, it's quite common for learners to become more fluent in some areas than others depending on how they allotted their study time.
According to some estimates, fewer than 10 million Chinese, or less than 1% of the population, speak English. In Hong Kong, a special administrative region, English is an official language; about 50% of the population speak it, though most in that category would not consider themselves fluent.
Mandarin language, also called Northern Chinese, Chinese (Pinyin) Guanhua (“Officials' Language”), or (Wade-Giles romanization) Kuan-hua, the most widely spoken form of Chinese.
While children are generally more adept at quickly learning and remembering new information, including languages, it is possible for individuals of any age to become completely fluent in Chinese (including the written and spoken language) as long as they are willing to put forth the time and effort.
A general consensus is that in order to develop a native accent easily, children should start learning Chinese before the age of 12.
It is definitely possible to become fluent in Mandarin Chinese as an adult. According to data (and the vast amount of people who've done it), it's also possible to reach a native level if you start learning after you turn 18 years old. The big difference is you learn differently as an adult.
Indonesian or Malay is the easiest Asian language to learn. Moreover, with 77 million speakers, it's certainly worth considering learning as the easiest Asian Language! Thus, what makes the language so simple compared to other Asian Languages?
While both languages can be challenging for English speakers, Mandarin is generally seen as being more difficult. This is due to the fact that there are thousands of Chinese characters, while Arabic only includes 28 letters in its alphabet.
As we've already mentioned, Japanese is considered the fastest language in the world. It is always mentioned as the first on the list. So, here are 6 of the fastest spoken languages in the world, based on the average number of syllables spoken per second (SPS): Japanese - 7.84 SPS.