What Are the Most Difficult Languages to Learn?

In today’s globalized and working world, knowledge of languages has become essential.

Learning a language greatly enriches a person in many ways. It’s not just about understanding a language other than your own and not having to google, “Who can write an essay for me?” if you’re a foreign college student. It also opens up a world of possibilities wherever we are – we can learn a lot more about new cultures and stories, allowing us to step forward in all areas of life.

The labor market in recent years is possibly where this need to learn languages has been most noticeable. Many companies have been looking for bilingual people who can express themselves and manage companies in different languages to take a business to another level and expand internationally, something very beneficial on a commercial level.

There are different ways to learn and develop language skills. One of the most current is watching or listening to television or radio programs that allow us to know this new language.

Even so, experts still recommend going to a place specialized in teaching to have all the possible means to learn effectively. In addition, due to many existing languages, it is complicated to opt for alternative techniques in some cases where academies can be essential.

But there are extremely complicated cases worldwide, so we compiled a list of the most difficult languages to learn, where six stand out above the rest.

The six most difficult languages:

Due to a series of particular characteristics of each of these six languages, specialists have highlighted the most important points that make them difficult to learn, which we review below:

Arabic: one of the five most spoken languages in the world. Due to its great variety of dialects and a non-Latin alphabet where it is written from right to left, Arabic is complicated by its unique sounds and complicated grammar. Its pronunciation has guttural sounds, and to top it off, you have to learn the so-called Arabic alphabet, which is used by other languages such as Persian or Urdu.

Chinese: is considered one (or most) of the most challenging languages in the world. The complexity of Chinese is primarily characterized by its characters and the fact that it is a tonal language. There are four tones (five if you consider the neutral also a tone). The most complicated thing about Chinese is that it is a tonal language, something we Spaniards are not used to. The most complex thing for a Chinese student is probably to learn to detect the difference between one tone and another. In addition, there are different accents and regional dialects. And last but not least, Chinese is written in simplified Chinese, while the traditional script is used in Taiwan or Hong Kong.

Japanese: is extremely complicated because one must learn to read and write using the kanji sinograms (one of the three writing systems, along with katakana and hiragana). It is believed that there are about 7,000 kanji, and the average Japanese may know about 3,000. The problem with Japanese kanji is that, unlike Chinese characters, they have different readings and can mean other things depending on how they are combined. To give you an idea: it is believed that there are about 7,000 ‘kanji’, which even the Japanese themselves do not know. An average Japanese usually knows 3,000 ‘kanji’ and a doctoral student a little more, and can know up to 5,000.

Korean: experts consider this language to be an isolated language that lacks close relationships and becomes a significant obstacle for learners. Its language that agglutinates meanings while speaking plays a determining role and makes learning extremely difficult even for people who have already learned a lot of grammar, like editors and ‘writemyessays‘ specialists.

Hungarian: considered the most difficult language in Europe, it belongs to the Finno-Ugric group of languages (from the Uralic language family), which is very unusual in a continent where the languages are usually Germanic, Slavic, or Romance. Not only does it have 45 letters with quite subtle differences, but also 14 vowels with different pronunciations. If that demoralizes you, think that you will not only be able to speak it in Hungary but also in parts of Romania, Slovakia, Austria, Ukraine, or Serbia.

Finnish: this northern European language is also a headache for many speakers. Although the alphabet may be similar, its grammar is quite challenging to learn because to form a simple sentence, we must know the conjugation, consonant gradation, case system, and pronoun declension.

But even though these languages are pretty tricky to learn, that’s no reason not to learn them. After all, overcoming difficulties makes us stronger!