World’s most difficult language (General discussion) Language Learning Forum

World’s most difficult language
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Language Learning Forum : General discussion

Poll Question: Language that takes most time
Poll Choice	Votes	Poll Statistics
Japanesewww	55	[15.07%]
Mandarinwww	45	[12.33%]
Arabic	39	[10.68%]
Korean	66	[18.08%]
a language not listed herescr	160	[43.84%]
You can not vote in this poll

130 messages over 17 pages: << Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 16 17 Next >>

Camundonguinho
Triglot
Senior Member
Brazil
Joined 4538 days ago
273 posts - 500 votes

Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish
Studies: Swedish

Message 121 of 130

25 January 2012 at 9:02pm | IP Logged

Tamil, Arabic and Japanese.
1 person has voted this message useful

zenmonkey
Bilingual Tetraglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 6341 days ago
803 posts - 1119 votes

1 sounds
Speaks: English^C2*, Spanish*, French, German
Studies: Italian, Modern Hebrew

Message 122 of 130

25 January 2012 at 11:30pm | IP Logged

I would imagine that one of the extinct language would be hardest.
After all, it was so hard they killed it off.

"Snow Crash" is my reference.

Edited by zenmonkey on 26 January 2012 at 12:27am
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Superking
Diglot
Groupie
United States
polyglutwastaken.blo
Joined 6432 days ago
87 posts - 194 votes

Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Mandarin

Message 123 of 130

25 January 2012 at 11:35pm | IP Logged

zenmonkey wrote:

I would imagine that one of the extinct language would be hardest.
After all, it was so hard they killed it off.

"Snowcrash" is my reference.

This is the correct answer.

"We've got how many noun cases? Forget this, I'm switching to Spanish."
1 person has voted this message useful

zekecoma
Senior Member
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5133 days ago
561 posts - 655 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Spanish

Message 124 of 130

26 January 2012 at 2:11am | IP Logged

Where is Hungarian and Finnish?
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Superking
Diglot
Groupie
United States
polyglutwastaken.blo
Joined 6432 days ago
87 posts - 194 votes

Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Mandarin

Message 125 of 130

26 January 2012 at 2:49am | IP Logged

Hungary and Finland, respectively.
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Iversen
Super Polyglot
Moderator
Denmark
berejst.dk
Joined 6492 days ago
9078 posts - 16473 votes

Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan
Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian
Personal Language Map

Message 126 of 130

26 January 2012 at 9:57am | IP Logged

Zenmonkey is right. An extinct language which only is known from a few place names or one loanword in another language is more dead than the dodo, and you can't possibly learn it. However for the sake of the discussion the most difficult language should be found among languages which are known more or less in their entirety - but to whom?

I would say that Sumerian could be a problem because nobody speaks it, only a handful of scholars plus one or two members of HTLAL can read it (fluently or not?), there are no new texts and no podcasts available and the language is as far as I know an isolate. Such a language is difficult because of scarce resources, but unlike for instance the language of the langobards it is not impossible - the knowledge exists.

I have no idea whether the grammar of Sumerian is complicated, but the other languages which have been characterized as difficult have all - surprise surprise -had a lot of morphology. For speakers of English and other morphology poor languages this is natural, but the the chaos reigning in English might be seen as just as problematic for foreign learners. However the easy access to English materials more than compensates for this.

The really scary grammars are probably those of certain American polysynthetic languages, where immensely long words are put together from elements which all change according to the surrounding sounds. How do you look things up in a dictionary if nothing is constant and no element can be used in isolation? The astronomical numbers of cases quoted for some languages are irrelevant when even the notion of case isn't supported by the language, but the problem is what you can use instead. I'm impressed by those linguists who even have dared to attempt to describe these languages.

And finally there are the writing systems which can make some languages seem difficult. And of course the prime culprits here are Chinese and Japanese (though we should add the adaptions of cuneiform writings system to languages which didn't have the same sounds as Sumerian .. and maybe also Arabic insofar the vowels aren't written).

Edited by Iversen on 26 January 2012 at 3:23pm
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IronFist
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6226 days ago
663 posts - 941 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: Japanese, Korean

Message 127 of 130

28 January 2012 at 1:41am | IP Logged

kingofcatss wrote:

Also, many people are actually hostile towards foreigners wanting to learn their language, sometimes very openly.

Has anyone else had this experience?
1 person has voted this message useful

IronFist
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6226 days ago
663 posts - 941 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: Japanese, Korean

Message 128 of 130

28 January 2012 at 1:49am | IP Logged

Homogenik wrote:

I don't know much but I can say some aspects of polish are giving me a hard time, of course it's the numerous
different declensions and spellings (there's like 20 different ways to write the word "two"...). Also hard is the
NUMEROUS (I insist) words meaning relatively the same thing, but in differing contexts and of the course the fact
that virtually every single verb has many different infinitive forms which change it's meaning slightly (for
instance, for the verb to go : iść, chodzić, jechać, jeździć, etc.). For every verb you learn, you at least have to
learn two and figure out which one to use when you have a perfective situation and when imperfective (which, for
me whose first language is french, is completely strange). Some are kind of hard to differenciate (prowadzić,
prowadzać : guess which one's which!). Because of the declensions, simple things like telling time or reading a
date become a mine field of possible mistakes (depending on how you construct your sentence, the words are
written and pronounced very differently).

But, on the positive side, and that makes the language much easier in my opinion, everything is phonetical
(except some foreign words like jazz) and, at least for me, pronunciation is not very difficult ; one simply has to
start a new word slowly, syllable by syllable, and then repeat it faster and faster : done! Of course, some words
are kind of intimidating : przyszczypnięcie, przeczyszczający, konstantynopolitańczykowianeczka!
But even double consonants are pronounced, contrary to french where this makes no sense at all (for instance
Anna is pronunced An-na). What makes a declension heavy (or agglutinous) language difficult is the quasi
absence of articles and particles. In french, for instance, words like le, la, les precede nouns and announce the
gender and number. In polish, this information comes at the end of each word but when you get there, another
word is already starting so you have to be quick!

Edit. For fun, the various forms of the simple word for "two" (2) :

dwa, dwaj, dwie, dwoje, dwóch, dwóm, dwom, dwu, dwoma, dwiema, dwojga, dwojgu, dwojg?, dwójka, dwójku,
dwójki, dwójce, dwójkiem, dwójko, dwójgo dwojgiem, drugi, druga, drugie, drugiemu, drugiej, drugiego, drugim,
drugą

I enjoyed that post. I had been under the impression that Polish was difficult, and you have just verified that impression :)

1 person has voted this message useful

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