One reason Mandarin is seen as the most challenging language to learn is because its writing system uses characters that might be difficult to grasp for those accustomed to writing with the Latin alphabet, Babbel says.
Arabic. Arabic is the queen of poetic languages, the 6th official language of the UN and second on our list of toughest languages to learn.
Mandarin language, also called Northern Chinese, Chinese (Pinyin) Guanhua (“Officials' Language”), or (Wade-Giles romanization) Kuan-hua, the most widely spoken form of Chinese.
Both Japanese and Chinese are extremely complicated languages for an English speaker, but in different ways. Japanese grammar and word order is a struggle, whereas Chinese is easy in that regard. Japanese pronunciation is not a big deal, but Chinese tones will take a long time to learn.
Russian. Ranking fourth on our list of hardest languages to learn, Russian uses a Cyrillic alphabet — made up of letters both familiar and unfamiliar to us. But speaker beware: some of the Cyrillic letters may look familiar but make a different sound than the Latin letter they resemble.
Naturally, homophones exist in other languages as well, but in Japanese, it's far more common. The second factor apart from homophones, where things literally sound the same, is that the syllables and consonant combinations are so few that it's hard to recall vocabulary when they sound so similar.
Most of the challenges when learning the Mandarin language stem from characters and how they are not phonetic. We would recommend for non Mandarin speakers to learn first by reading pinyin since it is phonetic and then, as you progress, focus on associating characters with their pinyin.
The Russian language is easier when you look at their writing style. On the basis of Sounds: There are more sounds in the Korean language as compared to the Russian language.
Generally speaking, English is also considered to be a challenging language, though not quite as complex as some. Compared to some languages, English has a large vocabulary, tricky grammar, and challenging pronunciation.
What is the first language? 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.
Old English – the earliest form of the English language – was spoken and written in Anglo-Saxon Britain from c. 450 CE until c. 1150 (thus it continued to be used for some decades after the Norman Conquest of 1066).
In modern English, mandarin is also used to refer to any (though usually a senior) civil servant, often in a satirical context, particularly in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth countries.
Most English language learners will find it challenging to learn English verb tenses, phrasal verbs, articles, spelling, pronunciation, and idioms. This is because these are features of English that are very different from most other languages in the world, or which simply require a lot of memorization.
Top 10 Hardest Languages To Learn – Finnish
After the Hungarian grammar, the Finnish language has the most challenging grammar. It sounds and looks a bit similar to English because of its pronunciation and lettering. But the grammar makes it far more complicated than the English language.
Japanese has a reputation for being one of the world's hardest languages, and for good reason. Japanese has not one but three scripts you need to learn. Hiragana and Katakana, used mainly for writing foreign and Japanese words respectively, are phonetic, both containing 46 characters.
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.
According to the US State Department, the easiest language for English speakers to learn is a toss-up between Danish, Dutch, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, and Swedish. All of these languages take approximately 600 hours to learn to a professional level.
Like Spanish, French is an awesome language for children to learn because they may have more real-life opportunities to practice the language with others and learn from local community organizations. Plus, French is one of the most common languages to teach in American schools, alongside Spanish.