Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6625 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese
| Message 1 of 69 23 June 2010 at 3:33pm | IP Logged |
I know we have had a lot of discussions about the hardest language. They seem to crop up every few months. This time, I'd like people's opinions on what the hardest living Indo-European language is. Polish? Czech? Armenian? Irish? Some Indian dialect that does get much press?
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Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5268 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) Speaks: Spanish*
| Message 2 of 69 23 June 2010 at 3:38pm | IP Logged |
Probably Sanskrit. But if we regard lack of materials as an integral part of difficulty, any number of other ones would be "harder".
edit: oops, I just say you asked for the hardest living language, though again in my opinion any language that is studied, read and written is very much alive.
Edited by Juаn on 23 June 2010 at 5:02pm
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Merv Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5196 days ago 414 posts - 749 votes ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian* Studies: Spanish, French
| Message 3 of 69 23 June 2010 at 4:17pm | IP Logged |
Raincrowlee wrote:
I know we have had a lot of discussions about the hardest language. They seem to crop up
every few months. This time, I'd like people's opinions on what the hardest living Indo-European language is.
Polish? Czech? Armenian? Irish? Some Indian dialect that does get much press? |
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I would think the more conservative ones, e.g. Lithuanian.
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chucknorrisman Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5371 days ago 321 posts - 435 votes ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) Speaks: Korean*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, Mandarin, Lithuanian, French
| Message 4 of 69 23 June 2010 at 4:30pm | IP Logged |
Juаn wrote:
Probably Sanskrit. But if we regard lack of material as an integral part of difficulty, any number of other ones would be "harder".
edit: oops, I just say you asked for the hardest living language, though again in my opinion any language that is studied, read and written is very much alive. |
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Sanskrit is actually alive too; there are 14,135 native speakers in India.
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orion Senior Member United States Joined 6944 days ago 622 posts - 678 votes ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian
| Message 5 of 69 23 June 2010 at 9:34pm | IP Logged |
Icelandic is supposed to be pretty difficult. I have not tried it, so can't speak from experience.
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exscribere Diglot Senior Member IndiaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5202 days ago 104 posts - 126 votes ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) Speaks: English*, Danish Studies: Mandarin, French, Korean, Hindi
| Message 6 of 69 23 June 2010 at 10:45pm | IP Logged |
It will depend on what your native language is and what similarities it has to any other language. I'm a native English speaker, so something with ergative case might drive me bonkers (and I'm learning Hindi, so I'll get a small taste of it).
I'm inclined to say that, for me at least, Lithuanian (as it's more conservative than Latvian) would likely be the most difficult. I've never dabbled in something like Armenian or Macedonian, though, so I can't speak to them.
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liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6152 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written)
| Message 7 of 69 24 June 2010 at 12:06am | IP Logged |
Of the ones I have attempted to study, It's a tie between Albanian and Georgian! I think Georgian might come out
ahead by a nose because of its alphabet.
Albanian is difficult because it is heavily inflected, not many cognates with other IE languages and speakers seem
so swallow-up sounds when they speak it. It is really, really hard.
Georgian is pretty much the same but not quite as inflected - but then there's that tricky alphabet. :-)
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Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5268 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) Speaks: Spanish*
| Message 8 of 69 24 June 2010 at 12:13am | IP Logged |
Georgian is not IE.
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