The 10 most difficult languages to learn

http://mylanguages.org/difficult_languages.php

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Last updated: November 18, 2013

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First submitted	October 14, 2012
Times taken	5,248
Average score	60.0%
Rating	2.50
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Rank	Region	Answer
1	Asia	Chinese
2	Africa and Middle East	Arabic
3	Amazonian region	Tuyuca
4	Europe	Hungarian
5	Asia	Japanese

Rank	Region	Answer
6	United States	Navajo
7	Europe	Estonian
8	Region in France and Spain	Basque
9	Europe	Polish
10	Europe	Icelandic

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30 Comments

Level 13

Oct 16, 2012

I tried mandarin, cantonese, wu, before i tried chinese (since chinese refers to a group of languages). It's like asking for spanish instead of basque. If portuguese is accepted for Tuyuca (btw tupi and guarani should be there too), then those definitely need to be added. Also, are you sure, you've properly researched these? I expected to find Korean, Finnish (suomi), Swahili, Urdu, Hindi, Thai, Vietnamese, Hebrew, Turkish, Greek, Russian... Nice choice for a quiz, tricky one though...

Level 13

Oct 16, 2012

Also Khoisan and Bantu (the click languages).

Level 81

Apr 28, 2013

some of those languages you mention are known for being difficult to learn, but Korean is so easy. It doesn't have all the crazy tones like Mandarin and Thai, nor the complicated system of diacritics like Vietnamese. It's written language is one of the most elegant and logical in the world- maybe the only written language in the world designed completely from scratch by linguists so it lacks all of the confusing inconsistencies and needless complications inherent in languages that evolved organically over centuries. It has a fairly simple phonetic inventory. Honestly I think Korean is probably one of the *easiest* languages in the world to learn, along with maybe Latin and Spanish and a few others.

Level 71

Aug 6, 2017

Thai isn't so bad. Medium difficulty for English natives.

Level 52

Dec 26, 2018

Estonian should be replaced with Finnish. They are relative languages and Finnish is more difficult.

Level 43

Jan 5, 2022

Russian is quite easy, its like polish but easier and clearer

Level 66

Nov 24, 2012

Very good quiz

Level 81

Apr 28, 2013

I got 100% but only because there was such a generous time limit and also because Portuguese is accepted for "Tuyuca"

Level 23

May 12, 2013

I'd just like to mention that Chinese is not a language; it's the race of people that come from China. They speak either Mandarin or Cantonese. Very unfair that I got 9 because of that.

Level ∞

May 14, 2013

It depends on the definition of language. Chinese can be considered a single language, or a language family:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_language

Level 46

Jul 2, 2013

I'd imagine that what languages are difficult to earn would be highly subjective and dependent on which language(s) you are already fluent in. Like, a Czech speaker would have an easier time learning Polish than someone who only speaks Tamil.

Level 61

Nov 17, 2013

you should accept "dine bizaad" for navajo

Level 64

Nov 18, 2013

Done!

Level 76

Aug 21, 2014

I wonder how they rated these languages? I'm surprised Welsh and Czech didn't make the cut.

Level 32

Sep 9, 2014

As a user of the Polish language I can say that it's generally true about the difficulty of our language (almost no rules, hard pronunciation, freestyle word order) but this ranking is generally extremely subjective. Some languages or groups of languages (Khoisan, Andamanese, Rotokas, some Aboriginal in Australia) are not even well studied.

Level 78

Feb 8, 2018

My mother claims Polish is easy because all letters and their combinations are pronounced consistently (unlike English, which is very inconsistent in this regard). It's a small consolation because almost everything else about Polish is a nightmare.

Level 22

Dec 19, 2015

Great quiz! I made one about the easiest languages to learn.

Level 41

Mar 23, 2016

I'm surprised Georgian isn't on here. Georgian doesn't have any similar languages and is almost completely unique, so there's really nothing to go on when you learn it. Also I'm fairly certain that Icelandic would be fairly easy to learn for Norwegian, Swedish and Finish speakers.

Level 40

Aug 25, 2017

Not Finnish; Finnish is more similar to Hungarian and Estonian than it is to Swedish.

Level 72

Jul 3, 2016

I was really surprised to see that finnish wasn't here! And also icelandic is very similar to danish, norwegian and swedish but not finnish though. And Estonian is also very similar to finnish.

Level 73

Sep 14, 2016

1. Language difficulty depends HEAVILY on what language you're starting with. You need to specify "Difficult for native English Speakers"

2. In terms of hours needed to gain fluency, Icelandic, Estonian, and Polish rank way lower than a bunch of excluded languages

3. Chinese isn't really a language. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_language

Please check out this list:

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Language_Learning_Difficulty_for_English_Speakers

While it isn't comprehensive, it does a MUCH better job explaining how this works.

Level 40

Dec 19, 2016

I wouldnt have got tuyuca in a million years if portuguese wasnt accepted. But i still dont think it should, since the 2 languages are completely different and have completely different origins. As far as i know, the only similarity is both of them being spoken in brazil and i think accepting tupi or guarani instead of portuguese (even though its still not the same language) would be much better as they at least are both indigenous languages of the region and not european ones

Level 57

Feb 11, 2017

Galic and Albanian

are more difficult than hungarian

Level 46

May 4, 2017

Not sure why "American" is a type-in for Navajo, but I'll take it.

Level 70

Feb 12, 2018

I tried Welsh...... if that is not one of the most difficult then heaven help the ones that are.

Level 60

May 4, 2018

Can you please accept Mandarin, Cantonese, or Wu for Chinese? Or explain why you wouldn't? Thanks.

Level 72

Jan 17, 2019

I really expected finnish (but i guess estonian is close) a celtic language (irish of scottish gaellic or welsh), xhosa, maltese

Your list is based might be as your source gives it. But that source is just a list made a by a single person that thought these were difficult. Their guess is as good as anyones, so a questionable source imo.

I know people like to bash wikipedia, but atleast there it gets edited by thousands of people, so it is like having your exam being checked over and over, the chances for mistakes are much lower, then when it is just the thoughts of a single person. (I am not claiming everything on wikipedia is correct btw...especially in controversial cases..)

Though it will remain quite subjective, you cant really measure it, you can just look at certain factors. I dont think this is a realisticly representative list.

Level 72

Jan 17, 2019

and yes, what your mother tongue is matter in what language is tough FOR YOU. But you can still establish that some languages are more difficult than others regardless you r mothertongue.

isolated languages with hardly anything in common with any other languages for instance. Languages where the prononciation seems very far from the written version. Languages with a lot of exceptions to the rule, with more cases etc etc

Level 55

Jan 29, 2019

Chinese is not a language, but a group of languages (including mandarin, cantonese, wu etc.).. I tried all of these 3, but didn't try chinese..because Chinese is not a language..

Level 85

Jan 14, 2022

Could you accept Magyar for Hungarian?