German is 2.5 times more difficult than English. Italian, Spanish is 1.8 times more difficult than English. French is twice as difficult as English. it when it comes to intermediate level(Intermediate). if we are talking about the advanced (Advanced) level, then German is 1.5 times more difficult than English. Italian, Spanish, French is 1.4 times more difficult than English. because there are so many exceptions in English that are important if you want elegance. and are secondary for practical purposes. I speak from personal experience - I learned these languages ​​myself. and I teach three foreign languages.

voices from the audience:« what are you talking about! my godfather in Italy learned Italian in six months! but English has been living in England for almost two years now and cannot learn". different people put very different meanings into the word “learned”. the more often a person uses the words “ freely, perfectly, learned“, The more likely it is that he himself does not know him and judges him from the words of godfathers, neighbors and friends. or by the way the words are read - the most common criterion criterion, by the way. but the easiest way to read words in Russian is - we both write and read. But does this mean that in other senses Russian is the easiest?

German has 4 cases and 3 genders, which are displayed by changing the endings, a stricter word order, separable prefixes: " I was just about to call you. - Ich habe gerade vorge habt, dich anzu rufen". literally: " I have just collected, call you«. ge and t show the elapsed time. zu is analogous to the English infinitive particle to... their verbs have personal endings. " ich arbeite, du arbeitest, er arbeitet ... - I work, you work, it works ...»

Italian, Spanish, French have feminine and masculine gender, as well as many irregular verbs. their verbs have personal endings. " io lavoro, tu lavori, lui lavora ... - I work, you work, he works ...”And even more times. there are four more tenses that show the desirability or subjectivity of an opinion. " E ' di Milano. - He is from Milan. Credo сhe sia di Milano. - I believe he is from Milan«.
these three languages ​​are full of short phrases and words, making them difficult to learn on their own on the spot. for example, what in English sounds like "he has" and in German "er hat" in Italians just "ha" (read "a"). English "he is" in Italians "e". "It is" in Italians is also "e". Italians have there is c'e '(read "che"). in more detail about learning languages ​​by immersion in the environment - I'll tell you in the next post.

Chinese... their grammar is simpler than English. but almost half! all phrases -
special patterns, that is, the thought is launched in a very strange way for us, for example
My mom bought this bread. -> "This is my mom buy la from bread".
I didn't learn hieroglyphs. there are textbooks with written words in Latin, for example:
Ta kan de bao shi "Renmin ribao". - He reads from the newspaper to eat Zhenmin Ribao.
Wo gei ni jieshao zuo zhongguo fan de fangfa. - I will introduce you to make Chinese food from the way (I can).
although written in Latin, their words have many superscripts.
each vowel has 4 types of reading: descending, ascending, plateau, springboard.
for example, the word "ma", so they mean 4 completely different things.
when I talked to the Chinese, they very often asked again because of this.
when I was teaching, there was still no skype. and to practice my Chinese, I went to their dorm,
knocked on a dozen rooms. and still found willing to barter: my Russian to their Chinese.

the charm of German and Chinese in how they form new words.
the Germans have a much more developed system of prefixes than in Russian.
for example, to the word gehen - to go 31 prefixes are added and very different words are obtained.
it follows that if we know 20 important verb roots and 20 prefixes,
we thus know 20 x 20 = 400 words. cool!
in English, various scientific terms are taken from Latin. in German they take their root,
add their prefix and we have an advanced word.

Linguists from the University of Oslo named the most difficult language in the world to master, having the most complex phonetics. According to scientists, this is the dialect of the Pirahan people living in the Amazonian jungle of Brazil. The researchers explained that the reason for the difficulty of the Pirahana lies in the multitude of whistling sounds.

Sign language. How to find out the secret thoughts of the interlocutor?

As Izvestia writes, representatives of this tribe whistle words and whole sentences to each other. In this case, sounds spread over a long distance. With the help of the Pirahan language, they orient themselves in space, making their way through the jungle or crossing the river. It is also used for hunting.

It is interesting that verbs are used here only in the future and past tense. Also, there are no singular or plural nouns in the language. Speech, based on one consonant and one vowel, can sound in different keys.

Note, in the opinion of neurophysiologists, that even the host's brain perceives with difficulty. For example, Chinese and Arabic.

In answer to the favorite question of everyone who has come across the study of a foreign language - what is the most difficult language on Earth? - linguists chuckle: it is impossible to give a definite answer. In their opinion, the difficulties depend primarily on the student himself, namely on which dialect is native to him. A rather difficult Russian language will not be so difficult for a Czech or a Ukrainian, but a Turk or a Japanese may be too tough.

From the point of view of "kinship" one of the most difficult to learn is the Basque language (euskara) - it is not associated with any of the currently known groups of languages, living or dead. Everyone is equal in the face of the difficulties of mastering euskara. The Guinness Book of Records calls the most difficult languages ​​Chippewa (the dialect of the Ojibwe Indian people in Canada and the USA), Haida (the language of the Haida Indian people living in northwestern North America), Tabasaran (it is spoken by one of the indigenous peoples of Dagestan), Eskimo and Chinese ...

The most difficult languages ​​in terms of writing are Chinese, Japanese and Korean. They are difficult even for the native speakers themselves. For example, in Japan, schooling lasts 12 years, and half of this time is devoted to only two subjects - the mother tongue and mathematics. Since preschool age, Japanese kids are taught developmental activities to train their memory. To pass the final exams, they need to learn about 1850 hieroglyphs, and to understand a note printed in a newspaper - about 3 thousand.

The lightest group (again, for native English speakers) includes Danish, Dutch, French, Haitian, Creole, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Swahili and Swedish. The second most difficult were Bulgarian, Dari, Farsi (Persian), German, Modern Greek, Hindi-Urdu, Indonesian and Malay.

Amharic, Bengali, and Burmese, as well as Czech, Finnish, modern Hebrew, Hungarian, Lao, Nepali, Polish, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Sinhalese, Thai, Tamil, Turkish, and Vietnamese, are considered even more difficult by American teachers and students. The hardest for English-speaking students were Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

It is curious that, despite the kinship and obvious similarities in spelling, the Hebrew and Arabic belonging to the Semitic group turned out to be at different levels of difficulty. This pattern is also true for speakers of both languages. A study by scientists from the University of Haifa has shown that it is more difficult for Arabs to read texts in their native language than Jews and British (or Americans). The reason is simple, but surprising: the brain processes the graphic characters of these languages ​​in different ways.

As you know, the functions of the left and right hemispheres are different. The right one, for example, "specializes" in solving spatial problems and template processing of information, while the left one is responsible for speech recognition and detailed processing of text messages. In this case, the right hemisphere is responsible for intuition and is able to "understand" metaphors, that is, words and phrases with veiled meaning, while the left hemisphere is responsible for understanding only the literal meaning.

Israeli scientists analyzed brain activity in reading and recognizing words in people whose first language was English, Arabic or Hebrew. The volunteers were offered two experiments. In the first, they were shown on the screen words or meaningless combinations of letters in their native language. The subject had to determine whether a given word made sense, and the researchers recorded the speed and accuracy of the response.

In the second test, the volunteers were shown the words simultaneously on the left and right sides of the screen - sometimes on one, sometimes on both. Thus, the brain was faced with the task of processing the displayed symbols with the left or right hemisphere separately.

The resulting picture turned out to be interesting. English-speaking volunteers and those whose mother tongue was Hebrew easily "read" words in one hemisphere independently of the other. But the Arabs had a worse situation: when reading in Arabic, the right hemisphere cannot function without using the resources of the left. Reading the symbols of the Arabic script activates the cognitive systems of the brain in a unique way, the scientists summarize. Want to develop your mind - learn Arabic!

By the way, the same pattern was found earlier for the Chinese language in comparison with English. In the study, the researchers monitored the brain activity of native Chinese and English speakers, respectively, while listening to their native language. In English-speaking subjects, only the left hemisphere was activated, while in Chinese subjects both.

According to various estimates, there are from 2,000 to 6,000 languages ​​in the world.

How do you know which one is the most difficult? What are the criteria for this?

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

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

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

What languages ​​are considered the most difficult to learn?

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

The Chinese language is difficult, firstly, because you need to memorize a huge number of hieroglyphs. To read more or less, you need to know at least 3000. And there are more than 50,000 of them in the language. The 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 writing in it differs from the pronunciation, secondly, there are three systems of writing, and thirdly, it is necessary to learn a huge number of hieroglyphs.

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

The Estonian language has 12 cases and many different exceptions to the rule.

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

Icelandic has many archaic forms that will have to be memorized.

There are also many less common languages, which are also very difficult to learn, which should be mentioned.

For example, Eskimo (63 forms of the present tense), Chippewa (the language of the North American Chippewa Indians, the language contains about 6,000 verb forms), Haida (the language of the Haida people living in the Northwest of North America, the language has 70 prefixes), Tabasaran (one of languages ​​of the inhabitants of Dagestan). These languages ​​have entered the Guinness Book of Records for their complexity.

There are also such complex languages: Tuyuka (the language of the eastern Amazon), Navajo (spoken by the bilingual people, there are no published articles on the grammar of this language), Basque (possibly the oldest language in Europe), Czech, Finnish, Lao, Nepali , modern Hebrew, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Sinhalese, Thai, Tamil, Turkish, Vietnamese.

The lightest languages ​​in the world

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

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

Many people ask which language is the hardest to learn. What can I say? Many languages ​​are complex. Below is a list of some of the hardest languages ​​to learn. But you must remember that a certain language may be difficult for you for certain reasons. So after reading this article, you can make your own list of the most difficult languages ​​to learn.

What is the most difficult language in the world?

Many people ask which language is the hardest to learn... What can I say? Many languages ​​are complex. Below is a list of some of the hardest languages ​​to learn. But you must remember that a certain language may be difficult for you for certain reasons. So after reading the article, you can make your own ranking of the most difficult languages ​​to learn.

Ranking: 10 most difficult languages

Arabic, Chinese and Japanese are considered the most difficult languages according to the Institute of the Diplomatic Service of the State. Department of the United States. Finnish, Hungarian and Estonian are also among the most difficult ones due to the huge number of cases. Their pronunciation is more difficult than even in Asian languages, since they have a set of long mind-blowing consonants. But our list is not limited to these languages. Here is our list of ten candidate languages ​​with an explanation of why a particular language made it to the list. Your personal list may be different from this.

1. Chinese... This language made the list for many reasons. For example, the hieroglyphs used in writing are very complex and ancient. Each word is denoted by a separate symbol - and not phonetic, so it doesn't give you the slightest idea of ​​how the word is pronounced. The tonal system doesn't make life easier either, because Chinese has four tones. And here's another reason: Chinese has a huge number of homophones. For example, the word shi is associated with thirty different morphemes. Some people try to learn Chinese just because it is so different from other languages ​​and so difficult.

2. Arabic... The first difficulty is in writing. Many letters have four different spellings, depending on their position in the word. Vowels are not included in the letter. The sounds are difficult, but the words are even more difficult. An English speaking European language student will come across a ton of words that look familiar. But the same student studying Arabic will no longer come across a single familiar word. The verb in Arabic usually comes before the predicate and object. The verb has three numbers, so nouns and verbs must be taught in singular, dual and plural. Present tense has 13 forms. The noun has three cases and two genders. Another problem is dialects. In Morocco, Arabic is as different from Arabic in Egypt and from literary Arabic as French is from Spanish and Latin.

3. Tuyuka- the language of the eastern Amazon. Its sound system is not overly complex: simple consonants and a few nasal vowels. But here's the agglutination !!! For example, the word "hóabãsiriga" means "I don't know how to write." It has two words for "we", inclusive and exclusive. Classes of nouns (gender) in the languages ​​of the Tuyuka family range from 50 to 140. And the most amazing thing in this language is that you need to use special verb endings that make it clear how the speaker knows what he is talking about. For example, “Diga ape-wi” means “the boy played football (I know because he saw)”. In English we may or may not speak about it, but in tuyuka these endings are required. Languages ​​like these make their speakers think hard about how they learned what they are talking about.

4. Hungarian... First, there are 35 cases or noun forms in Hungarian. That alone puts Hungarian on the list of the hardest languages ​​to learn. Hungarian has many expressive idioms, many suffixes. The large number of vowels and the way they are pronounced (deep in the throat) make this language difficult to pronounce. You will need more effort to learn and maintain this language at a decent level than many other languages.

5. Japanese... It is difficult primarily because the writing is different from the pronunciation. That is, you cannot learn to speak this language by learning to read in it - and vice versa. Moreover, there are three different writing systems. The kanji system uses Chinese characters. Students must learn from 10 to 15 thousand hieroglyphs (cramming, no mnemonic techniques will help). In addition, written Japanese uses two syllabic alphabets: katakana for loan words and hiragana for writing suffixes and grammatical particles. The State Department allocates three times as much time to Japanese students as Spanish or French students.

6. Navajo... This amazing language also claims to be on the list of the most difficult languages. During World War II, this language was used as a code for sending messages on the radio (radio operators were bilingual Navajo speakers). The advantage of this method was that information could be encrypted very quickly. The Japanese were unable to make sense of this code. Navajo was chosen not only because it is very difficult, but also because there were no published dictionaries or grammars of this language, but there were native speakers of the language. In this language, almost everything is done differently from in English. For example, in English in a verb, we select only the third person singular (in the present tense) with a suffix. And in Navajo, all faces are distinguished in the verb by prefixes.

7. Estonian... Estonian has a very rigid case system. Case is a grammatical class that affects the behavior of words in a sentence. There are 12 cases in Estonian, which is twice as many as in many Slavic languages. In addition, there are many exceptions to the rules, many words can denote several different concepts.

8. Basque is also in the top ten most difficult languages ​​according to the British Foreign Office. It has 24 cases. It is not possible to associate British with any Indo-European language. It is possibly the oldest language in Europe. It belongs to agglutinative languages, that is, it uses suffixes, prefixes and infixes to form new words. It is a synthetic language rather than an analytical one. In other words, the language uses case endings to indicate relationships between words. It changes not only the ending of the verb, but also the beginning. In addition to the usual moods of Indo-European languages, Basque has some other moods (for example, potential). The language has a complex system of designating the subject, direct and indirect object - and they are all part of the verb.

9. Polish... The language has 7 cases, and its grammar has more exceptions than rules. For example, in German there are 4 cases and they are all logical. Learning Polish cases will take more time and effort to learn (and discover) the logic and rules, you may have to first learn the entire language. In addition, Poles rarely communicate with foreigners who speak their language, so you have to be very careful about your pronunciation, otherwise you will not be understood.

10. Icelandic very difficult to learn due to its archaic vocabulary and complex grammar. All ancient declensions of nouns and conjugations of verbs have been preserved in it. Many Icelandic phonemes do not have exact counterparts in English. You can only learn them by listening to the original tapes or talking to the Icelanders.

But there is one more thing to keep in mind. The more the language differs from your native one (in spelling, grammar ...), the more difficult it will be for you to learn it. If the language lacks logic, it will also seem more complicated (for example, in English plurals are added at the end of -s or -es. In Arabic, the plural usually needs to be memorized, and it takes time). One thing is for sure: no matter the complexity of the language, you will need the following: sufficient and appropriate resources, an understanding of what and how you learn, and a thirst for knowledge!

Translated from mylanguages.org by Natalia Gavrilyasta.

It is interesting to know which language is more difficult to learn - Spanish, English or some other. One of the most difficult is the Russian language, and the most common is English.

Is English difficult?

Very often we hear about the emergence of the question of the difficulty of learning English. Admittedly, English is far from the hardest language in the world. When compared to Polish, Chinese, Arabic or Russian, it is lightweight.

Why is it so difficult for Russian-speaking people to learn English? This is due to the fact that the Russian language is inflectional, that is, words can be put in a sentence as you like, while in English each word is in its specific place.

Some words turn out to be known to us due to the fact that they are used in Russian, as borrowed from English. These are words such as lift, rails, manager, finish, as well as jeans, content, and so on. In addition to such words, there are international words that sound the same in many languages. These are the words satellite, microscope, republic, police, etc.

If you believe the conclusions that researchers in Great Britain made at one time, English is the most positive and simple language in comparison with other world languages.

As you know, the skeleton of every language is grammar. From the point of view of grammar, English is one of the most logical and simple European languages. Due to the fact that there are practically no personal endings in English, it can be classified as an analytical language. Due to the lack of personal endings, it has a wide structure of grammatical tenses.

The main thing when studying is to understand that knowing the times does not mean knowing the language. Many have a fear of the times, which makes it impossible to continue studying.

The real difficulty in learning English is the many prepositions. You have to learn them for a long time and conscientiously, they have noticeable sense-separating functions, prepositions are used very actively in the language.

However, learning a language of any complexity will take both time and effort. It is impossible to learn any language both well and quickly. By the way, according to the site, the longest word in the world is in English. You can read more about the longest words in the world.

Difficult Russian language

All those who have made the decision to learn Russian say about considerable difficulties. Comparing Russian with other languages, we can confidently say that it has features that are absent in many other languages. Most often, in Russian, the order of the arrangement of words in a sentence is confusing, this is due to the fact that it is not fixed. So, words can go in completely different sequences, the most important thing is that the meaning and logic of what is said do not change.

Difficulty in learning Russian for foreigners is the case declension. Another difficulty lies in the very long spelling of some words. Difficulties are also caused by the fact that in Russian there are a considerable number of rules and an even greater number of exceptions to them. This language is difficult not only for foreigners, but also for ordinary students for whom it is native.

Is Spanish difficult?

There is often a question about the complexity of the Spanish language, as it is taught in many countries in universities and schools. As a Romance language, it is similar to Portuguese, Italian, Romanian and French. They have a lot in common. This melodic language is not considered difficult to learn.

If we compare the grammar of Spanish with the grammar of the Russian language, then it is simpler. To master it, with persistent studies, one month will be enough. In the same month, it is quite possible to learn a thousand words. This will be enough for simple communication.

It is believed that learning Spanish is much easier for native speakers of the Indo-European language, for example, Russian or Icelandic. When communicating with Spanish speakers, it is difficult to get used to the fact that they do not pronounce consonants clearly. Having mastered basic grammar and possessing some vocabulary, it is often recommended to start communicating with a Spanish speaker, which will significantly speed up the learning of Spanish.

The most difficult foreign language in the world

When learning a foreign language, you should not take into account many myths. One often hears that the language must be learned without fail from early childhood. There is also a myth that a teacher must certainly be a native speaker of the target language. Another myth is that the language must be learned in the country where it is the state language.

It is known that, according to conservative estimates, there are no less than forty thousand languages ​​and dialects in the world. Eastern groups of languages ​​are considered to be one of the most difficult. Arabic script and hieroglyphs cause problems in the study. However, it is impossible to say unequivocally which language is the most difficult. This is influenced by several factors, including the degree of complexity also depends on what language is the native language of a person who has started learning a foreign language.

Neurophysiologists report that the most difficult language to learn is the one that is difficult for the brain of the native speaker of this language. They call the languages ​​Chinese and Arabic the most difficult.

We can confidently say that the Russian language is very difficult for the majority, it is easier to learn by Czechs and Ukrainians, but for the Japanese it can be too difficult. If we talk about the complexity of the language, evaluating its writing, then the most difficult languages ​​are Chinese, as well as Japanese and Korean.

Many agree that Basque is the hardest language, since it is not connected and does not resemble any other known language, this applies not only to the languages ​​of the living, but also to the dead. Its carriers are approximately six hundred and sixty thousand people. Basque has an extremely complex verbal structure. Scientists conclude that it arose even before the emergence of the Indo-European language group. The conclusion suggests itself that no matter what language a person is native, it will be extremely difficult for him to master Basque. The Eskimo, Chippewa, Tabasaran and Haida languages ​​are also recognized as the most difficult.
Subscribe to our channel in Yandex.Zen