OK, so I have sparked a small debate on another forum where we got into a discussion of learning other languages. I made the comment that English was fairly easy to learn (not including idioms and slang), because I had to learn it when I moved to the U.S., and it only took me 6 months or so to speak it fluently (maybe less--I don't really remember). I understand that it is easier to learn languages as a youth, but I have also met several people who have studied other languages at an older age, and they all seemed to think that English was not as difficult as these other languages. When I say it's fairly easy to learn, I mean learning it just enough to be able to verbally communicate with others. As you know, this does not require that you learn how to write in that particular language.

What are your thoughts on this? Are there any "official" websites which might rate which languages are the most difficult to learn, for the sake of basic day-to-day communication? I have searched Google, but I haven't found anything worthwhile... mostly .org websites that all say different things.

This one seems to have a decent rating system, but I'm not sure how much truth there is to any of it.

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You might try this question on the www.linguistlist.org website. They have a place where you can ask for expert opinions about languages, but they don't have a 'discussion' area such as we have right here. The usual response to this question at linguistlist.org is, essentially, "It depends!" Almost every language has things that are easy to learn and things that are hard. During my brief interest in learning Japanese several years ago, I came to admire the simplicity of much of it, but I quickly realized that learning correct usage, which varies according to the social context, would be very difficult for me, and also their numbering system varies with the context. You find yourself looking for one simple solution that you can use in all situations, but of course a native Japanese would look at you very strangely if you actually tried to speak that way. One advantage you had when learning English in the US is that you were immersed in the culture, which is an important aspect of any language, and something that you can't get from a textbook. BTW, I have a friend who is a native speaker of Spanish (from Nicaragua), but he has studied and lived in the US for a number of years. He speaks with an accent, but I think his written English is better than mine, and I'm a native!

I heard that dutch was a hard language to learn compared to english. Mind you this is coming from someone I talk to online who is dutch.

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It's a general bit of knowledge in Hungary that Hungarian is one of the most difficult languages to master. This is because it is completely unrelated to any other language with the noteable exceptions of Finnish and Estonian. Basically there are no genders, word order does not matter, and everything is determined by the suffixes at the end of each word.
Of course I've always wondered how someone who learned Hungarian at birth could know the difficulties of learning it. It doesn't matter, it's an unspoken bit of national pride that no one knows what we're saying and nothing short of a miracle if anyone learns what we're saying. :wink:

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I would add finnish and estonian as difficult languages to learn. They belong to the same language group (finno-ugric) and are similar in structure and usage, yet different. This joke explains some of the complexities:

The Origins of the Estonian Language



I just celebrated my fifth year in Estonia and my fifth fruitless year trying to figure out how to correctly speak Estonian. I mean really, it wouldn't be so bad if Estonians weren't so smug about it. Oh, they will congratulate you on your good Estonian even if you can speak a few words, but deep inside they really don't want you to learn it!

They are so happy with their secret code and you can see it every time someone asks you: "Oh, are you learning to speak Estonian?"

Then comes the sly grin, the "You've got a snowball's chance in hell of learning OUR language" grin.

This is quickly replaced by a faked look of concern as they say: "Oh, it’s a very difficult language isn't it?"

I think after this, they go off and laugh uncontrollably and give high-fives to other Estonians, but I haven't actually seen it happen. I have decided to write an expose on the Estonian language. One time I sent my brother a tape of Estonian language and he asked me if Estonians have an obsession with sex. There is terviseks and ostmiseks and kasutamiseks, teadmiseks, parandamiseks and armastamiseks. All kinds of "seks". That, plus the fact that after five years, little kids still laugh when I speak Estonian, has made me decide to tell all.

The real story behind why Estonian is the way it is. A long time ago, about 1000 or 1100 AD, three Estonian guys were sitting around the campfire. Their names were Billy, Ray and Duke (bet you didn't know that these are real ancient Estonian names). It was winter time and they were bored. Billy spoke first. "Ya know Ray, what we need is a new language".

"Damn stright!" said Ray, "Talkin' this way is gettin' boring and besides everybody almost understands us. We need a language that's sooo crazy, soooooo complicated that nobody will ever understands what's going on!".

As the idea picked up steam, Duke piped up. "Lets do it this way, that you can't say he or she. That way you won't know if your talkin' about a man or woman. Also, we gotta think up names for people that give no clue to foreigners about their gender, names that change with the grammar so you never know what to call somebody !"

Ray nodded in approval.

"Yeah," he said thoughtfully, "that's it. Then we can eliminate the future tense. Think of trying to ask someone out on date when you can't say the right name, whether it's a boy or girl or when it is going to happen!"

Billy, the smart one, was thinking in more technical terms already.

"OK, let's make it this way, that when you learn a noun, you don't have to learn just one word but FOURTEEN. Yeah and instead of just saying that you are going to or from something, you have to change the noun in some weird way."

Now Ray was excited and spilled his beer. "Yeah Yeah! And ... and ... the nouns can't change the same way, let's make like, a hundred different spelling groups that all change in different ways!"

This appealed to Duke who added slyly, "Ya wanna make it real hard, a real nut-buster? Let's make it so all adjectives change, too. In boring old English, you say 'five small, red houses', 'small, red houses' and 'many small, red houses'. Small and red always stay the same but in our new language? Whoaaaa Nellie!"

They exchange high fives all around and cracked a few beers. After that they started practicing how to say 'Oh, you're learning Estonian' without busting up laughing.

That's how Estonian came to be, honestly!

Just to give an example of how words change is shown at this site on the Finnish language. Vocabulary isn't difficult, it's the usage/structure that is the killer. I grew up, learning Estonian and am thankful that my parents made sure I learned their native language. After all these years, I'm positive I still butcher it at times. #-o Mostly from the fact, I don't use it as much as I used too.

Edit: As Andromeda noted above, Hungarian can fit into this as well, it is also part of the language group. I wasn't too sure about the structure etc of Hungarian. Estonian and Finnish sound similar, Hungarian has a different sound all together.

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I've heard that Mandarin Chinese is one of the most difficult languages to learn, particularly for Western speakers because it's tonal - the pitch at which you say a word (relatively, at least) can change its meaning entirely.

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I haven't studied the tiniest bit of Mandarin (though I was once taught by a native speaker how to say 'thank you'), but from what I've read, the tonal aspect is difficult for non-natives to master. Of course, reading and writing require the learning of thousands of characters (I don't know what the Chinese call them; they're called 'kanji' in Japanese). OTOH, Mandarin -- as I understand it -- has no plurals, tenses or cases. So, there you go -- some of it is difficult, some of it is simple. According to something I read on the aforementioned linguistlist.org, Cantonese is more complex than Mandarin.

Mandarin, hands down. although i know a few westerners who have mastered it, it's horribly difficult... even the chinese locals here (95% is chinese) have difficulty mastering the mother-language. their dialect has changed a little over the years and they are no longer considered fluent.
i speak 5 languages, but Manadarin is a killer.

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I'd go for Finnish (And that means Hungarian and, seemingly, Estonian as well). The swedes have to learn finnish at schools as a standard language, and you should hear them ***** about it

Furthermore I'd like to add "Bask" (Euskera) to the list of languages that are hard to learn mostly because they are just unique.

Bask/Euskera is a language that has NO relations to other languages whatsoever - it is even more remote and unique than Hungarian, which is still similar to Finnish and Estonian, as said.

The Euskera/Bask language is said to stem from the Neanderthal language.
There is not a single word in the Bask language that resembles any other language's word for that object or thing. Notable exceptions are modern inventions such as computers, which have spanish-like names (But not all, they are quite thorough in naming new things using derrivats of their own language)

(For the people who dont know the Bask Country / Pais Vasco : It is located near the southern border of france, and it's a part of northern Spain)

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I can't imagine thinking that English would be easy to learn. I mean, I love speaking it (it has a certain flavor to it that I like) but all of the inconsistencies in pronunciation and contractions make me think that it would be very difficult for a non-native to learn, especially coming from some languages that have very strict pronunciation rules.

Being Danish, I have to say that german grammar is fairly difficult with it's three genders(masculine, feminine and neutral), english was fairly easy having only one and danish comes in the middle with two (contrary to what you might expect, they are common and neutral)

In the other hand, it's my impression that danish pronounciation is considered very difficult, with 3 vowels more than english, and a horrible tendency to string lots of consonants together.
Just try pronouncing "ngstskr" and you'll know what I mean.
Yes, that sequence does appear in a danish word, and it's not a word that's considered difficult by danes.

With a few exceptions, it does seem like most people consider their native language to be difficult.

What do you call a person who knows 3 languages?

Trilingual

What do you call a person who knows 2 languages?

Bilingual

What do you call a person who knows 1 language?

AMERICAN

[edited as not able to type]

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That's because you're from Copenhagen, those of us from the southern parts doesn't find it that difficult. :wink:

Words with "ngstskr" are composite words. For example "angstskrig" (meaning "wail of fear" or "angst scream") should be read as "angst-skrig" making it easier to pronounce.

From what foreigners tell it's not the Danish grammar that is hard but the pronounciation where subtle differences can change the meaning af words.

No No No! It's the other way around. We (Finns) are the ones *****ing about Swedish in our schools. Finnish is not compulsory language in Sweden, though it has a strong positions as the biggest minority language, but still it's only optional for Swedes.

I wouldn't say that Finnish is the most difficult language to learn, though I can imagine how difficult it might be for most of the English speaking people. I'm still amazed how well some of the immigrants can speak Finnish and how quickly they learned our language.

But what language is the most difficult in my opinion? Hmm, difficult to say, I'm not very good at languages... Swedish and German were big stumbling blocks to me, but I've heard some stories about Mandarin, so it gets my vote.

I have studied Mandarin, and I guess it's harder than say, French for a western speaker, due to the tonal component, but the grammar is much simpler than English.
We had a veterinary student from Latvia as a house guest for several weeks a few years ago and she mentioned that Latvian is one of those languages with no modern related languages, and that it is probably derived from Sanskrit. She also said people who speak English and the Romance languages find it very difficult to learn for that reason.

I'm having trouble with Vietnamese. It seems simpler than mandarin, but those tonals are difficult, and no-one can understand my pronunciation.

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I'm surprised no one has mentioned any of the Native American languages here. Navaho was so obscure that the US Marines recruited members of that tribe as radio talkers (the so-called code or wind-talkers) on the assumption that the Japanese would not recognize the language or have anyone around who could speak it.

Aside from obscurity, though, my understanding is that the language concepts are very different from those in European languages. To put it one way, the Native American languages don't use verbs and adverbs in the same manner as Europeans do. Not being a linguist I couldn't say for sure, though.

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"If it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!" - Tweedledee

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. - Wolfgang Pauli

This reminds me of an incident I had with a little kid at Hungarian Scouts. The little girl in question used to live in Switzerland but has a Hungarian mother so as a result she knows English, French, and Hungarian fluently along with a decent smattering of English. I was asking her questions about school and the friends she had there and she was telling me about her friends and such. Then she leaned close to me and whispered, as if it was an embarassment to the people she was referring to, "you know what? There are some kids in my class who only speak one language!"

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Yes, I have a life. It's quite different from yours.