Compared to others, some of the hardest languages to learn can take double the amount of time to reach fluency. But that doesn’t mean all aspects of difficult languages are tough going.
There are usually always some similarities and they are often also the most fun to learn.
What Makes A Language Hard To Learn?
The main thing that determines language difficulty is how different it is to your native language.
Easier to learn languages are typically in the same family and therefore closely linked. They usually share a high number of cognates, i.e. words with a similar appearance and meaning.
The most difficult languages to learn often have different grammar structures. These are the rules that determine how words are formed and ordered in sentences.
Languages can also have different writing systems. The English language uses the alphabet, but there are other types which are made up of unfamiliar symbols instead. This can make the learning experience feel quite intimidating.
Then there is the fact that some languages contain completely different phonemes. These are the individual sounds that make up words. Linguists estimate there are at least 800 across the world’s languages, however each language only uses a small proportion of them.
Some languages are also tonal and furthermore using a different pronunciation can completely change the meaning of the word. This can be really tricky for a non native speaker.
When choosing a new language to learn that is very different from your own, it isn’t just about learning new words. Ultimately it involves retraining your brain to think in a completely different way and whilst that is difficult, the challenge can also be really enjoyable.
Mandarin
Despite being the second most spoken language in the world, Mandarin is also widely regarded as the most difficult language to learn.
One of the aspects that language learners find most challenging is the different writing system called hànzì. Instead of letters it uses logograms which can be complicated to learn as rather than individual letters, the characters represent entire words and concepts.
Learners need to memorise a minimum of 200 characters to be able to read and write the basics of Mandarin. However, to have proper language proficiency in Mandarin you would need to know thousands.
Being a tonal language also makes Mandarin awkward for English speakers to grasp.
Especially when learning a second language as an adult, this added level of complexity takes lots of dedicated practice. The most useful advice is to listen as often as possible, read what you are listening to and also speak to yourself - practice imitating what you are listening to.
The good news though is that for beginners, there is an alternative writing system called pinyin that uses a phonetic alphabet with the same letters as English. This subsequently makes it feel more familiar and is initially very helpful for practising the pronunciation of Mandarin words.
Arabic
The Arabic language uses a writing system called an abjad which looks very different to the English alphabet. It does however only have 28 letters, so there’s not too many to learn.
Moreover, there is even some shared vocabulary between English and Arabic. For example, algebra comes from the word ‘al-jabr’ and sofa comes from the word ‘suffah’.
But that’s where the similarities end and the complexity begins. Because each letter can change its shape depending on not only its position within a word, but also the letters around it.
To further complicate the learning experience, the language is written from right to left. And moreover is written in a short form style whereby only consonants are noted and the vowels must be inferred.
The spoken Arabic language also uses several sounds that just don’t exist in English. Some of which are pronounced using the throat. A lot of training and patience is required to make those noises constantly and reach full language proficiency.
There are very few shortcuts to learning a new language. But probably the best piece of advice when just starting out learning Arabic is to pick a dialect.
Because ultimately if you start learning Moroccan Arabic and then mix in some Egyptian Arabic or Iraqi Arabic, for example, it’s going to be doubly confusing.
Vietnamese
The Vietnamese writing system, Chữ Quốc Ngữ, is very distinct. There are lots of diacritical marks, which indicate tones and essentially how to pronounce the language.
So even though it is based on Latin and is phonetic, it still looks quite daunting and is well known as one of the most difficult languages to learn.
The alphabet is made up of 29 letters, 12 of which are vowels. On top of that, some vowels work together to make new phonetic units. And lots of Vietnamese phonemes just don’t exist in the English language so speaking and listening is really tough going for newbies.
When it comes to learning to read and write Vietnamese however, the language is much more straightforward. This is because the grammar structure is relatively simple, tenses are easy to use and the order of words is the same as in English.
Words are also either single syllables or compound words made up of two or more words.
The combinations are logical, which makes remembering vocabulary less demanding. For example ‘ba mę’ means ‘parents’ and ‘ba’ means father and ‘mẹ’ means ‘mother’.
There are also no genders, no plurals and no complicated verb endings - the form of a word literally never changes. If you know the word ‘ăn’ you can say ‘eat’ in any situation. I eat, you eat, they eat, we eat, you all eat - you get the picture.
Nonetheless, because of how difficult the pronunciation is, it would be almost impossible to reach fluency without spending at least some time completely immersed in the language.
Finnish
Compared with most other European languages, Finnish is very unique. In fact it’s so different that lots of words don’t even have an English equivalent.
It is also often the case that Finnish words can express a whole sentence in English. For example ‘söisinköhän’, translates to ‘I’m wondering if I should eat something’.
This complexity stems from the fact that Finnish is an agglutinative language. Which means words are formed by adding affixes to a root word. Basically put, words are joined together.
Each Finnish verb also has an incredible 200 possible endings that are conjugated according to person, number, tense and mood. So if you want to infer doubt or convey excitement it changes not only how the word sounds, but also how it looks.
Depending on the inflection being used, consonants within the word may also change or even disappear. So it takes a lot of practice just to work out the basic form of some words.
There are also different versions of Finnish.
There’s the written standard one (kirjakieli) and then various different spoken dialect versions (puhekieli). And whilst all are similar, they can really catch learners out and cause a lot of frustration.
Furthermore, something that can also be challenging is identifying syllable boundaries in the pronunciation of very long words, as in how the word is actually broken up to say it.
Despite all of these peculiarities, at its core, Finnish is grammatically actually a very logical language to learn. This is because verb endings are mostly all regular and the language is usually pronounced as it is written.
Japanese
The Japanese language has three writing systems. Hiragana is the main character set and Katakana is mainly used for foreign words or names. Both of them represent sounds and helpfully are phonetic. They do, however each have a whopping 46 letters.
The third system, Kanji, is a syllabary system that represents meanings. It is adapted from Chinese and therefore similarly uses characters to represent words. In order to have fluent reading and writing language skills you will need to know around 2000 of these.
The good news is that Japanese has consistent grammar rules and the most common sounds shouldn't be too difficult for English speakers to grasp.
But it does have pitch accents. That is to say speaking Japanese requires you to raise or lower your pitch between syllables. And using a different pitch changes the meaning.
For example; “ima”, with “i” pronounced with a higher pitch than “ma”, means “now”, but with the “i” pronounced with a lower pitch than “ma”, it means “living room”.
Then there is also the honorific speech system, Keigo. This means that vocabulary and grammar change depending on your relationship to the person you are speaking with.
Quite often the words completely change too. For example eat in the standard form is ‘taberu’ but in the polite form it's ‘meshi agaru’. Politeness and respect is a big deal in Japanese culture so making an effort with these language skills will really set you apart when speaking.
In Conclusion
The fact that these languages are so tricky for English speakers to master means they are in demand in many professional workplaces. So let that spur you on.
But one of the best motivators to becoming fluent in a hard to learn language is just enjoying it.
If you can have fun and make some new friends, you’re already halfway there. And as is the case with any new language, practising with a native speaker as often as possible is key.
If you are able to fully immerse yourself in both the language and culture through a homestay or language exchange for a period of time, all the better.