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World’s most difficult language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6278 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 25 of 130 13 October 2007 at 7:43am | IP Logged | ||
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I have voted for Japanese.
Turkish is difficult, with its agglutinative, non-Indo-European structure and vocabulary which mostly bears little resemblance to European languages. But it is written in a Roman alphabet which accurately reflects the pronunciation of the language, so that rules it out of being entered in this competition. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| skeeterses Senior Member United States angelfire.com/games5Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6624 days ago 302 posts - 356 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Korean, Spanish | Message 26 of 130 13 October 2007 at 8:00am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, I voted for Arabic but I'll admit that I'm not really qualified to say what language is the hardest.
After 9/11, I decided to read the Quran and went to the UKIndia website to learn the Arabic alphabet. Even with the vowels put in, it's still hard for a beginner to decipher the exact pronounciation of a word. Eventually I gave up. Just as Ahhiba wrote, the exact pronounciation does matter. In this pronounciation respect, getting the exact pronounciation really does matter for Chinese, Korean, and Arabic. On Korean, which I'm learning right now, speaking it is not too difficult. But if you decide to read any serious literature in this language, you will encounter one of the most complicated grammar systems. And despite the Hangeul script being easy, if you want to read serious literature and master the vocabulary, knowing the Hanja Characters and their meanings will help you learn the vocabulary more quickly, even though its not used widely. That's because half the words have Chinese roots. Now, for some additional thoughts on the languages that didn't make it to the list. My ancestors' language is Czech, which some of my family members are learning right now. Several years ago, I looked at a website on it to see how it sounded. For pronounciation, it is more difficult than most European languages and is more difficult to prounounce than Korean. The grammar is also complicated, but probably not as complicated as Korean grammar. Now the since the board members have more experience with languages than I do, I'll trust their opinions that Finnish and Hungarian are the most difficult languages in Europe. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6278 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 27 of 130 13 October 2007 at 8:19am | IP Logged | ||
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Czech might be a contender for most difficult Indo-European language. I think the Slavic and Baltic languages are the most difficult branches of it to learn.
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| manny Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6364 days ago 248 posts - 240 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Tagalog Studies: French, German | Message 28 of 130 13 October 2007 at 10:00am | IP Logged | ||
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What gives? Look at the number of votes vs "views".
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| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6278 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 29 of 130 13 October 2007 at 10:36am | IP Logged | ||
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I have probably viewed it a dozen or so times, but this is an interesting phenomenon of the Internet. I have known discussion lists to have active contributions from only about 5% of their membership or less, with most people just taking a look - "lurking".
Probably many people do not feel they know enough about the languages to venture an opinion or vote on which is the most difficult. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| El Forastero Pentaglot Senior Member Colombia alijunakai.blogspot.Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6275 days ago 186 posts - 228 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Portuguese, FrenchB1, EnglishC1, Italian Studies: German | Message 30 of 130 13 October 2007 at 10:44am | IP Logged | ||
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For instance, me. I don't learn any of the four languages proposed. So, I can't vote, but I'm enjoying reading the discussion.
To me, The hardest has been German, but the discussion is on "another level" 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| HTale Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6384 days ago 164 posts - 167 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written)* Studies: French | Message 31 of 130 13 October 2007 at 11:09am | IP Logged | ||
I don't know much about hungarian, but having dipped into a bit of finnish, it's not that hard; getting the correct intonation and accent is a whole different issue, however. Edited by HTale on 13 October 2007 at 11:10am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Zorrillo Pentaglot Groupie United States Joined 6390 days ago 41 posts - 82 votes Speaks: English*, French, Sign Language, Spanish, Polish Studies: Greek, Georgian, Indonesian | Message 32 of 130 13 October 2007 at 12:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've never seriously tackled any of these languages, but I've scratched the surface in all four of them at some point. From my own observations and from all that I've read and heard, Korean is my choice for most difficult. The grammar and pronunciation seem to be more difficult than Japanese and Arabic. Japanese has one of the world's most difficult writing systems and Mandarin of course is not easy either, but I give a slight edge to Korean.
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