The most difficult language in the world. Top most difficult languages in the world

Let's talk about languages today. You are not a stupid guy and you understand what kind of languages we are talking about now. You probably remember how at the university you were told about the importance of language in the life and history of people. We cannot argue with the statements of the teachers, on the contrary, we subscribe to their words.

We want to tell you about the most difficult languages not only for Russian speakers, but also for English speakers. Damn, I'm sorry, but this word is hard to replace, so you have to use it all the time. Language learning is The best way to contact a person from another part of the world. If you know at least the basics of the local dialect, you will feel many times more confident than the dude for whom the spoken speech is incomprehensible nonsense.

So, back to enlightenment: today you will learn about some of the most difficult languages. Let's get started.

1. Arabic

Compared to English, it really is a living hell. Can't you learn the language that has been taught since school? Then you can't master Arabic. In addition to an alphabet that is completely incomprehensible to you, consisting of unfamiliar characters, you will encounter opposite direction reading and complex pronunciation patterns.

2. Japanese

Various Asian dialects have a certain level of difficulty for native Russian speakers. In addition to the new alphabet, they all have one feature that makes them difficult to read. unprecedented person. In the case of Japanese, you have to master thousands of characters in order to speak more or less normally. This is because the Japanese has three individual systems writing, each of which has its own alphabet. In addition to these complexities, the Japanese language includes a structure that is responsible for addressing peers and older people, who are usually treated with due respect, therefore, they need to be spoken to in a different way.

3. Chinese

Chinese - unique language, because in it the grammatical structure and tone of the speaker largely matter. In some languages, having basic knowledge grammatical structure, you could well get out. However, with Chinese, grammatical confusion can put you in an awkward position. In addition, the writing system language system different from reading and writing systems. So it will be quite difficult to survive in China if you don't get into the area with at least English speakers.

4. Greek

We hasten to please: Greek is less difficult for Russian speakers than the top three languages that we have already mentioned. But there are other aspects that may be a problem for you if you undertook to learn this language. Difficulties with the alphabet are not found in everyone. However, what confuses many is the tension required for the other person to understand what you are saying. Incorrect alignment of tension in the voice changes the meaning of the word and the phrase as a whole.

5. Estonian

Estonian is fifth on our list due to its complex structure, That is big problem in many other European countries that have their own language system. All this depends on the influence of other neighboring languages.

6. Finnish

Like many European languages, Finnish is preserved within the country itself, influencing the growth of the corresponding manner of the language. In addition, for many people, Finnish and Estonian may be perceived as close relatives in their speech and grammar patterns. Of course, Finnish is a bit easier to learn than Estonian.

7. Thai

Making a small detour from European languages, we find ourselves in Thailand. Thai can be described as medium difficulty compared to top our list. When learning Thai, you will encounter pronunciation difficulties. Grammar rules are similar to the rules in English, but the pronunciation and tone of the speaker are the most important and most difficult for beginners.

8. Norwegian

At the end of our list, let's return to Europe, or rather, to Norway. Norwegian- last on our list for a reason. It is a language that is easy to learn in various collective courses and official setting. However, the fact that Norwegian is mostly spoken only in Norway makes it the final language on our list, because Norwegian speakers use a less formal form of communication than what is taught to you in a course. By the way, this is a problem of any courses. Because of this, not every guy in Norway will understand what you are talking about. This is the same if you were addressed on the street in Old Russian.

Instruction

In terms of proximity, the most difficult language in the world is the Basque language, which does not belong to any language group. AT Basque 24 cases, and it is considered the oldest in Europe. This language uses suffixes, infixes, and prefixes to form new words. Here, to denote relationships between words, we use case endings. In Basque, very a complex system designations of the subject, indirect and direct complement. Now Basque is spoken and written by approximately 700,000 people.

Scientists from American Institute foreign languages created a kind of most difficult language to learn (for native English speakers). The most difficult for them were: Bengali, Burmese, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Finnish, Hebrew, Hungarian, Czech, Khmer, Lao, Nepalese, Polish, Thai, Tamil, Vietnamese, Arabic, Chinese, Korean and Japanese languages.

In terms of writing, Chinese, Korean and Japanese are considered the most difficult languages. For example, the latest Chinese, compiled in 1994, contains 85,568 characters. In Japan, children go to school for 12 years. For successful delivery exam, a Japanese student must learn 1850 characters.

The Russian language is considered one of the most difficult in the world, but it will be quite accessible for a Serb, Pole or Ukrainian to learn, but for a Turk or Japanese, Russian will seem very difficult.

The number of languages spoken by the peoples of Dagestan cannot be accurately calculated. The Tabasaran language entered the Guinness Book of Records as containing the largest number of cases - from 44 to 52. Tabasaran language 54 and 10 parts of speech.

The Eskimo language also held the record. There are 63 forms of the present tense. Eskimo speakers are very imaginative. For example, the word “internet” is expressed in it by the unpronounceable term “ikiaqqivik”, which literally means “travel through layers”.

Israeli scientists conducted a curious experiment among native speakers of Hebrew, Arabic and English. The results were very interesting. Hebrew and English speakers were able to read words easily using only one hemisphere of the brain independently of the other. Carriers, while reading, actively used both hemispheres of the brain at the same time. Conclusion of scientists: when reading Arabic writing the work of the cognitive systems of the brain is activated. So, if you want to develop your mind, then studying Arabic.

Tip 2: Which language is the hardest and which is the easiest to learn?

Learning foreign languages opens up new career prospects, makes it possible to watch movies and read books in the original, understand the meaning of songs, and simply trains memory. However, not all languages are learned with the same ease - among them there are very simple ones, and those that are extremely difficult to learn.

One of the most difficult languages is Chinese. Each word is indicated in it by a separate symbol, having learned which, you still will not have a clue about how it is pronounced. The complexity is also represented by a huge number of homophones - words that are pronounced the same way, but are spelled differently and denote different concepts. The tonal system in Chinese also does not make the task easier for the student. In addition to the general intonation of the sentence, each syllable is also pronounced with a different tone, which determines the meaning of the word.

The Japanese language is not much inferior to Chinese in its complexity. Knowledge of symbols also does not give an idea of their pronunciation. Japanese has three writing systems: kanji, which uses Chinese characters, hiragana used for writing grammatical particles and suffixes, and katakana for loanwords.

It is estimated that students who study Japanese spend three times as much time on it as those who study English or French.

The Arabic language also causes a lot of difficulties. Vowels are not used when writing, and consonants have four spellings depending on their position in the word. Nouns and verbs have to be studied in singular, dual and plural. The nouns themselves have three cases and two genders, and the verb in the sentence is placed before the predicate.

Of great difficulty are the dialects of Arabic, which can differ as much as modern European languages differ from each other.

The easiest languages

Despite the fact that the English language has a lot of nuances (for example, words are often read not at all the way they are written, and a lot of verbs are conjugated incorrectly), it has a simple grammar. Besides, in Everyday life people often come across English in songs, movies, brand names and products on supermarket shelves. Learning this language will not be so difficult.

Spanish is also quite easy to learn. The pronunciation is very similar to English, however, unlike the language of the UK and the US, in Spanish the spelling of words is the same as their pronunciation. The structure of sentences in this language is also easy to learn.

For a Russian-speaking person will not be great complexity learning other languages Slavic group, and the closer they are to their native, the easier will be trained. The fastest way to learn Ukrainian and Belarusian, somewhat more difficult - Bulgarian and Czech. Polish language is not considered simple - it has seven cases, and the grammar is replete with exceptions to the rules.

There is a myth that the Russian language is one of the most difficult in the world. However, in order to write short summary about yourself in English, it will take a couple of months of training, but if you repeat this trick with Polish or Hungarian, then you will have to master them for almost a year. So what is the most difficult language in the world? Today we will remember the 10 most difficult of all existing.

We have compiled our list from 10 to 1, where 10th place is the easiest of the difficult ones, the place belongs to the most difficult language to learn.

We present you with a descending list: Icelandic, Polish, Basque, Estonian, Navajo, Japanese, Hungarian, Tuyuka, Arabic, Chinese. Today we will talk about three of them.

The most difficult language in the world, 10th

The simplest of the complex languages was Icelandic, which retained words from ancient times. By at least, in Europe no one else uses them.

This language cannot be thoroughly learned without communicating with its native speakers, since transcription is not able to convey the sounds that Icelanders use.

To make it completely clear to you what we have just written about, just try to pronounce this word: Eyyafjallajökull. This is the name of one of the Do you want to learn this language?

The most difficult language in the world, 5th

There are three types of it: hieroglyphs, katakana and hiragana. And even in the very manner of writing, the Japanese distinguished themselves - they write from right to left, in a column. Local students were especially unlucky, because in order to get a diploma of higher education, you need to know 15,000 hieroglyphs.

The most difficult language in the world: 1st

In terms of complexity, Chinese is rightfully in the first place, but this does not prevent it from being considered the most common on the planet.

This language contains 87,000 hieroglyphs, although you can communicate if you know only 800, and someone who knows 3,000 hieroglyphs will be able to read newspapers.

The problem is that the Chinese language has more than 10 dialects, and writing can be both in a column and horizontally, in a European way.

Today you learned about the most complex languages world, the list of which would be incomplete without some kind of Slavic dialect. Unfortunately or fortunately, this turned out to be not Russian, but Polish. It turns out that his grammar has not so much rules as exceptions to them.

The most difficult peoples - Polish

Our advice to those wishing to learn Polish thoroughly: start simple spoken language, and only when you master it, you can understand the logic of grammar. Suppose there are 7 cases in this language, and it is possible to understand how they are used only in practice.

The alphabet consists of 32 letters, but many of them are pronounced in two or three versions, in different ways. This is especially interesting when the Poles pronounce the letter "l" as "v".

Therefore, we especially try to protect you from trying to understand Polish only from familiar words. In this country, our Russian words can have a completely different meaning.

If you don't want to rack your brains over complex languages, study European ones. They say that the brain of polyglots is much better developed, that their thinking and abilities are more perfect, but the main thing is not yet learning foreign words and pronunciation features.

Start with English, and then maybe get to Chinese.

First, let's determine which languages are popular today.

Of course, English, which is unanimously considered the language of international communication.

Then Spanish, because it is spoken not only in Spain, but also in most countries South America, it is also one of the official languages of the United States.

You can't forget about French, and not only because it is on an equal footing with English official language Canada, as well as the main language of many African countries, but also because this beautiful and melodic language there are many fans who study it just like that, "for the love of art."

Deutsch, despite the limited area of \u200b\u200bapplication (officially - Germany and Austria), still does not lose ground and has a huge army of students or masters of it, apparently due to the fact that Germany has had a huge historical and cultural impact on other countries, and continues to flourish in economic and political terms.

Let's not forget about our own in Russian, after all, it is spoken not only in the largest country in the world, but also in the former union republics, as well as emigrants who have departed from this very country and republics in all other developed countries. Let's include it in our list also in order to compare its complexity with other popular languages.

And now let's face it and admit that in fact, the first on this list should be Chinese , which is statistically the most widely spoken language in the world, because it is spoken by 1.213 billion people, and this is a lot.

At first we wanted to be fair to add to our list National language India - Hindi, which takes an honorable 3rd place in the list of the most common languages, after Chinese and English. But, unfortunately, it is of little interest to anyone outside of Hindustan. This situation has arisen due to active role English, which in the century before last became in India lingua franca- language international communication. That is, in India you can freely communicate in English, and you will always be understood.

Therefore, we will include in our analysis Arabic, which is spoken in many countries in the Middle East, North Africa, South and Central America.

So let's start with the complexity analysis. English, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Chinese and Arabic. We will make a reservation right away that we will analyze them from the perspective of a Russian-speaking person, and we will take into account the data on the Russian language itself from the perspective of foreigners studying it.

1. The simplest of these is... English language ! There are no genders, cases, word agreement in it, its grammar is quite simple. The words in it are short, as a rule, the verb and noun are denoted by the same word, verbs acquire a suffix only in the third person. Native speakers are comfortable with the mistakes of foreigners, because so many people learn English as a second language. It is in English that 80% of the world's information is now stored, the bulk of technical and scientific literature is also printed on it, in addition, English is considered the language of the Internet.
For those who are just starting to learn English, it is important to understand that this is a language of structures, a language with fixed order words. You just need to remember that the structure of each sentence is the same: “subject + predicate + minor members» , and in that order. It should also be remembered that in every sentence there must be verb. Well articles of course - it is they who cause the greatest difficulties for Russian speakers. In general, English can be learned quite quickly for everyday communication, but to master it masterfully ... more than one year is needed. As they say, English is easy to learn, but hard to master.

Read more about English.

2. Second place can be Spanish. His vocabulary is similar to English because they have common roots- Latin. His spelling is simple - as it is written, so it is heard. The word order here is not as rigidly fixed as in English, no need auxiliary verbs. In addition, this language is brighter, richer and more interesting in terms of word formation - for example, diminutive suffixes are actively used (which English simply does not have). Tenses on the same level of complexity as in English, but a little confused in the past. In general, for a Russian person, Spanish is easily perceived by ear, much easier than English, this is due to similar phonetics. More about Spanish language read .

3. French is also not very complicated, many of his words are similar to English and Russian, which is historically conditioned. French is widely used, it is quite easy to find opportunities to learn and speak it.
The most difficult thing in French is pronunciation and reading. It is difficult to get used to the fact that several letters in a word may not be read at all, and those that are read may not be pronounced the way they are written. In addition, the pronunciation features of abbreviated forms are related and studied in parallel with the main grammar.
What about grammar? Verbs are conjugated according to persons (there is both you and you) in different times and inclinations. AT traditional system grammar is distinguished: 3 present tense, 3 future, 6 past, 2 types imperative mood, 2 types conditional mood and 4 types subjunctive mood. French is also distinguished by the abundant use of negative and restrictive phrases and the frequent use of the infinitive as a subject.

With the seeming difficulty French there are many fans, even fans, and it's really not that hard to learn it. You can read more about French.

4. If you like long words and nouns with capital letter- your language Deutsch. German is easier for people with a technical mindset, it is rather sketchy and predictable, its sentences are similar to electrical circuit, where each subsequent link is connected to the previous one. And it also looks like a sprawling tree with many branches - rules and exceptions to them. You definitely can’t call it a poor or boring language!
German is difficult in its grammar, it has 4 cases and three genders of nouns, of course, in no way connected with the real qualities of the objects they denote (all articles are declined). According to Mark Twain, "In german girl devoid of sex, although the turnip, say, has it.
AT German also pretty complex syntax, and the words in it are very long, because are formed by combining different words and adding suffixes and prefixes to them.

Despite the fact that it is considered a rough language in terms of sound, many people hear its lyricism and see its ornamental beauty. Although, we admit honestly: teaching him is not an easy task. As said Richard Porson, Life is too short to learn German. But, of course, this is an exaggeration. Read more about the German language.

5. Russian It is certainly a rather difficult language. Even the Russians themselves have to learn it all their lives, and at school only a few have an “excellent” mark on it. Russian has 6 cases, while German has only 4, in general its grammar is very confusing, with many exceptions, exceptions to exceptions; word order is not fixed, there are no articles, and the meaning is often conveyed by intonation.
Punctuation in Russian is rather confusing, but logical, but contains many rules.
It is difficult for foreigners to perceive Russian by ear due to excellent phonetics - a large number hissing and whistling sounds and a rolling "r". Most people in the world consider Russian to be even more difficult than Chinese. Many people quit learning the "tourist set" immediately after they try to pronounce "Hello" - Hello. Combination "healthy" and "vstv" in one word is unpronounceable for most people.
Russian is a very emotional language. Its lexical content is rich and plastic - indeed, in no other language you will find so many diminutives and curse words! For example: girl - girl - girl - girl - girl - girl - girl, and all these are derivatives of the same root. Compare English: girl - littlegirl, and that's it!
Much in Russian is not subject to logical comprehension, as it conveys mood, emotion.
For example:
- Do you want tea?
- No, probably.

So think, foreigners, whether we want tea or not.

6. Arabic no one will call it easy, but let's see how difficult it is. The first thing a beginner encounters and what scares him is Arabic writing, Arabic script. However, the fear of the Arabic script is false, as there are only 28 letters in it, which are connected to each other in printed and writing. However, many letters have four different spellings depending on their position in the word. Another difficulty (although in fact just a lack of habit) is the direction of writing from right to left. Here are the accents Arabic words arranged very simply and logically without any exceptions.
So what's so hard about it, you ask? Firstly, the pronunciation of Arabic sounds corresponding to a particular letter is rather difficult for both Slavs and Europeans. This mainly concerns the reading of vowels, since it is believed that they are not there, but there are "vocalization". Arabic has 28 consonants and only 3 vowels - a, i, u- each of them can be short or long. But vowels are not reflected in the letter. In addition, there are sounds there that do not have an equivalent in Russian. At the same time, words are read the same way they are written.
The grammar of Arabic is also not encouraging - the verb usually comes before the predicate and the object. The verb has three numbers, so nouns and verbs must be learned in singular, dual and plural. The present tense has 13 forms. The noun has three cases and two genders.
It is also necessary to take into account the fact that the Arabic language is the language of a completely different culture (for Russian speakers). Studying any European language, we will meet a lot of words that are familiar to us. And when studying Arabic, we will no longer come across a single familiar word.

Another problem of the Arabic language is that there are many dialects in it. Classical Arabic - the language of the Koran - was originally a dialect of Mecca (the territory Saudi Arabia), and its adapted form, which is called "Modern Standard Arabic", is used today in literature, newspapers, television and radio, in the mosque, as well as in the communication of educated Arabs from different countries. But the differences between local dialects sometimes so huge that a representative of Morocco, for example, may not be understood by an Iraqi, and vice versa, although both formally speak Arabic.

7. There is an opinion that Chinese not at all that complicated. In fact, only its grammar is simple and even primitive - there are no endings, no suffixes, no prefixes.
What makes Chinese really difficult is the mass of synonyms and the terrible interchangeability of words, as well as the actual characters. Many hieroglyphs are often synonyms, and the synonyms themselves require the study of more and more hieroglyphs, and often completely different words read identically.

At the same time, when reading hieroglyphics special problems no, they appear in oral speech when the brain has to deal with a mass of associations and equally sounding words. That's why the Chinese say in short sentences sometimes repeating everything that was said. And for a native speaker of the Slavic group, even just saying one Chinese sentence with the correct, understandable pronunciation is already a great achievement, for which you need to work and work.
As for the simplicity of Chinese grammar, it is more than covered not only by complex writing, but also by an extremely complex pronunciation with 4 tones, extensive homonymy, homophony, homography. Thus, Chinese is on our list for last place, and you can read more about it.

So, we have considered 7 popular languages today and arranged them according to the degree of complexity. But which language will be easier or more difficult for you, this separate question, which depends on many factors. If, for example, you already taught English at school, like most Russians, then it will be easier for you to learn related languages - German, Spanish, French.

if you have strong motivation, for example, the intention to move to another country (read about emigration), then of course the language you are learning will be easier for you - it will affect emotional mood, interest in the life of the country, the press, television, the desire to watch films and TV shows in the language.

In the world, according to various estimates, there are from 2000 to 6000 languages.

How to understand which of them is the most difficult? By what criteria is this determined?

Firstly, it is believed that it is very important which language is native for a person. And it will be easier for him to learn close languages. For example, it will be easier for a Pole to master Russian than, for example, Turkish.

Also look at the complexity of the grammar of the language. This is very important indicator for determining, what is the most difficult language.

The most difficult of the most common, according to linguists, are Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages. Interestingly, the perception of Chinese and Arabic by the human brain differs from the perception of other languages. For speakers of these languages, both hemispheres of the brain are involved in writing and reading, while for speakers of other languages, in this case, only one hemisphere works. Here we can conclude that the study of these languages will help to greatly develop the brain.

What languages are considered the most difficult to learn?

In Arabic, for example, in addition to writing from right to left, difficult pronunciation, there is no logic in writing plural, many letters have four different meanings.

The Chinese language is difficult, first of all, because you need to memorize a huge number of hieroglyphs. To more or less read, you need to know at least 3,000. And there are more than 50,000 of them in the language. Tonal system of pronunciation. That is, if you pronounce it without the desired intonation, you may get a completely different meaning. Plus, the hieroglyph does not give an understanding of how the word should be pronounced.

Japanese is a completely confusing language. Firstly, the letter in it differs from pronunciation, secondly, three writing systems, thirdly, you need to learn huge amount hieroglyphs.

The Hungarian language is considered very difficult. It has 35 cases, many vowels, many suffixes. And his pronunciation is quite difficult.

Estonian has 12 cases and many different exceptions to the rules.

The Polish language is also quite difficult. You need to watch your pronunciation, otherwise you may not be understood.

The Icelandic language has many archaic forms that need to be memorized.

There are still a lot of less common languages, also very difficult to learn, which should be mentioned.

For example, Eskimo (63 forms of present tense), Chippewa (the language of the North American Chippewa Indians, the language contains about 6000 verb forms), Haida (the language of the Haida people living in the Northwest North America, there are 70 prefixes in the language), Tabasaran (one of the languages of the inhabitants of Dagestan). These languages have entered the Guinness Book of Records for their complexity.

Other complex languages include Tuyuca (the language of the eastern Amazon), Navajo (spoken by the bilingual people, there are no published articles on the grammar of this language), Basque (perhaps the most old language in Europe), Czech, Finnish, Lao, Nepalese, Modern Hebrew, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Sinhalese, Thai, Tamil, Turkish, Vietnamese.

The easiest languages in the world

And the simplest are: Danish, Dutch, French, Haitian, Creole, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish. True, this data American researchers. And they most correctly show the ease of learning a particular language for English-speaking students.

By the way, an interesting thing is that English is not at all considered the most easy language in the world. It has a lot of exceptions, a specific pronunciation, etc. There is an opinion that it became international by accident.

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