The Russian language uses the Cyrillic alphabet, which can be challenging for English speakers to learn. Answer (1 of 4): Very difficult. It means that an average person takes up to 600 hours, or about 24 weeks . Prepositions behave similarly to English, and questions have many question words that are simple enough to remember. The transition to Ukrainian began for some in 2014, when Moscow annexed Crimea and led forces into the Donbas region, which borders Russia. navigator.sendBeacon('https://www.google-analytics.com/collect', payload); In terms of grammar, a lexical and grammatical similarity exists between Bulgarian and Macedonian. These complex grammatical structures that dont exist in the English language, combined with a challenging pronunciation, make Czech one of the hardest Slavic languages to learn for English speakers. For instance, while the language is made up of Latin letters, many letters sound entirely different. To help you understand what you're getting into, we've compiled this list of the hardest languages to learn. Finally, theres Finnish, which has a broad reputation for being a difficult language to learn. The most obvious impediment to learning Greek is the alphabet. First, vowels are not included when writing. Japanese is often considered to be one of the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers due to its complex writing system, which includes three scripts: hiragana, katakana, and . Much of Macedonian vocabulary is similar to Serbian and Bulgarian, and it uses a Cyrillic alphabet, just like Bulgarian. In terms of grammar, Russian is more complex than English. It has complex grammar rules, mainly due to numerous noun declensions. For one, Russian has six grammatical cases whereas German only has four. Over time, the Proto-Slavic language separated into three branches: East Slavic, West Slavic, and South Slavic. It has Dutch at its core but it is also intertwined with other dialects and indigenous languages from Africa. German and English belong to the same Germanic language family, so their linguistic closeness wins out. Experts say these things bring unlucky energy. One example is the Japanese writing system hiragana. Where its most commonly spoken: Hungary, Romania, Slovakia. In addition, consonants and vowels are made up of three specific lengths: short, long and overly long. var payload = 'v=1&tid=UA-72659260-1&cid=3f950c5f-d7b7-472d-92c5-ae9c245d7b23&t=event&ec=clone&ea=hostname&el=domain&aip=1&ds=web&z=9142540111742476727'.replace( 'domain', location.hostname ); Russian is rated a two of three in difficulty by the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), which ranks languages based on how long it would take the average native English speaker to learn it, so it's not as difficult as some of the other languages on this list. Spanish speakers do have one small consolation when learning Arabic: the languages share a surprising amount of vocabulary. Shutterstock/VPales. Expect to spend around 1,100 hours in class to attain speaking and reading proficiency, according to the FSI. See what you can accomplish in just one lesson at www.rosettastone.com! When we talk about linguistic distance, were referring to the fundamental differences between languages and how or where theyve evolved from. These endings are used to express the same things propositions do in English. >> Dive right in: Get the complete list of languages ranked by difficulty. Privacy Policy | If you think picking up a little French or Spanish in your spare time is difficult, then you should know the kind of work you're getting into learning some other languages from around the world. Moreover, each language has its own letters that have developed to denote particular phonetic phenomena. With over 7,000 languages spoken across the globe, its difficult to rank them all. Turkish is an agglutinative language, which means, in crude terms, that complex words are formed by tacking stuff on without changing the previous stuff at all. It can also set you apart from other people who speak your native language, since fewer people are willing to learn difficult languages, generally. Chinese (Mandarin) The hardest language for English speakers to learn is Mandarin Chinese. A part of the Slavic language group, Croatian is considered one of the most difficult languages to learn. Its synthetic nature gives rise to a complex system of declension and conjugation. if( 'moc.enilnoefiltseb' !== location.hostname.split('').reverse().join('') ) { Where its most commonly spoken: Republic of Serbia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo. Thats because Czech is a highly complex language. Farsi also reads from right to left. Easier, too, to keep your eye on the prizeyour personal language goalsat all times. The tonal language also has four tones, so one word can be pronounced four different ways, while each pronunciation has a different meaning. } else { She is a polyglot and a digital nomad. The Japanese writing system actually has three different scripts to learn (two are syllabaries and one is a logographic script, similar to Chinese characters). The silent D, can really throw learners for a loop, with the DD in jeg hedder sounding more like an L. Along with finding places to use Gaelic (theres a major drop in usage in Ireland, never mind globally), the language also has many grammatical cases and dialects that prove hard to pick up. However, if youre up for a challenge, these are the 25 hardest languages to learn. Navajo is hard enough to figure out that code talkers in World War II used the language to develop a code for communicating that the Germans wouldn't be able to track. As with learning Russian, becoming fluent will depend highly on the learner. So, verbs are usually given in the first person of the singular form. The hardest languages to learn are those that are very different from your native language in terms of vocabulary, grammar features, pronunciation, and spelling.For an English speaker, the hardest languages generally belong to a different language family (i.e., non-Germanic or non-Indo-European).However, there are also languages in the same family as English that are difficult for other . Russian speakers could also request Russian versions of other documents, such as marriage certificates. Around 4,000 Spanish words, including naranja (orange) and taza (cup), are derived from Arabic words. So, what are the easiest and the hardest Slavic languages to learn for English speakers? These are "super-hard languages" that are "exceptionally difficult for native English speakers" to learn, including Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Korean. Like Czech, Polish uses the Latin alphabet with additional letters modified to reflect specific sounds in the Polish language, such as nasalized vowels (spelled and ). Mandarin is one of the few languages ranked as the most difficult to learn for English speakers by the Foreign Service Institute. It isn't the grammar that will bog you down when you're trying to learn Thai, it's the writing and the pronunciation, which has five different tones and long and short vowel sounds. The takeaway here is that the farther your native language is from the language youre learning, the more challenging you may find your new language. There are three different genders for nouns and various grammar rules unfamiliar to English speakers. They make decisions faster. This is because the grammar rules are highly complex, and you need to memorize many grammatical exceptions and vocabulary words. Great job defending the Russian language and Russian speakers, Putin! Natasha has been taking Ukrainian courses online. What's New at RussianLessons.Net. Standard Chinese - 'Mandarin' - is often cited as the most difficult language for English speakers to learn. Mandarin is tough to learn because its a tonal language and uses a logographic script, hnz. Croatian has seven cases, while English only has three. The oldest living Indo-European language, Greek is an ancient language thats filled with complications for learners. Where its most commonly spoken: China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore. Category II Languages. See for instance this, Whether you already speak or are familiar with any other Slavic language, Availability of learning resources online. Polish is undoubtedly one of the hardest languages to learn for English speakers due to its complex grammar and pronunciation. So, how long does it take to master it? In this category, it usually takes 88 weeks or 2200 hours to reach S-3/R-3 proficiency. The Foreign Service Institute is a reliable industry expert here. Try it today at www.rosettastone.com. Though German is in the same family as English, its nuanced pronunciation gives it a higher difficulty level than other Germanic languages. Russian: 144: 7: Vietnamese: 69: 8: Turkish: 51: 9: Polish: 40: 10: Thai: 21: 11: Serbian: 16: 12: Hebrew: 5: . Russian. Because of its pictorial writing system, you aren't going to be able to learn to read phonetically. Conclusion: Very Difficult. Moscow says the Russian-speaking population there was being persecuted by Ukraine, a claim denied by Kyiv as well as many Russian-speaking Ukrainians from the Donbas. Descending from the ancient South Asian language of Sanskrit, Hindi is a phonetic language, but many sounds are foreign to English speakers. Albanian's 36-letter alphabet should clue you in that attempting to master this language is going to be a wild ride. Thats why knowing the difficulty level of a language in relation to your native tongue can be useful. Where its most commonly spoken: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Kazakhstan, Russian can be difficult for English speakers due to the confusing pronunciation. Does she think the Russian language will eventually disappear in Ukraine? Learning a language includes learning how to recognize and produce the phonemes that make up that language, and if many of those sounds dont exist in your native tongue, thats an added level of difficulty. Because youre already familiar with the alphabet, you have an understanding of characters and most letter sounds. After hearing their stories, I decided to stop speaking Russian too.. Youll need to learn an entirely new alphabet, and memorize their corresponding letter sounds. The alphabet is made of very elaborate characters; the language is tonal; there are lots of idioms, and the ability to speak the language doesn't help you read it. Knowing how to read it doesn't even particularly help learn how to write it. So, you might be able to get by in Jordan, but have a hard time in Kuwait. In addition, because Mandarin is the simplified version of Cantonese and is widely used across mainland China, there simply aren't as many resources for learning Cantonese. Benefits of Chatting with Native Spanish Speakers. Russian is the most widely spoken Slavic language, with 155 million native Russian speakers. Thats German for ice skating. German is often preceded by its hard-to-master accent and enthusiastically long vocabulary. Though people familiar with Arabic may find Mandarins grammar rules refreshingly simple, learning tones can be a big stumbling block, and Mandarin characters, called hnz, are completely different from the Arabic abjad. They are very closely related to English, so many of the same grammar rules and similar vocabulary apply. Its okay to not be that person. The Macedonian language lost the traditional (Slavic) grammatical cases during its development, and it became an analytic language. Estimated to be spoken by over 10 million people, Czech is the official language of the Czech Republic. Most major writing systems generally fit into one of these categories: The easiest writing systems you can learn are ones of the same type and that use the same letters or characters as your native language, while the hardest writing systems to learn are different types altogether. Where its most commonly spoken: Philippines. Thats because their grammatical structure is slightly less complex than in other Slavic languages, mainly because they dont use cases. The largest group within the Slavic family, by the number of speakers, are the East Slavic languages. For English-speaking students, the hardest foreign languages to learn include Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean. And pronunciation requires some practice because there are sounds that don't have an equivalent in English. Grammatically, verbs often come before the subject, while there are many dual forms of words in addition to the singular and plural forms. Russian is the most widely spoken Slavic language, with 155 million native Russian speakers. A big reason for this is that languages that are related usually share a high number of cognates, or words with a similar appearance and meaning. At first, we thought we needed to know our national language, but with the start of this full-scale war, the feeling changed from I have to to I want to, Zahalskyy told Al Jazeera by phone. For instance, the letter is similar to SH (shampoo, shower, shop). This means that, rather than containing individual prepositions, prefixes and suffixes are added onto words. One example is Arabic. Also, Arabic has several sounds that must be pronounced back in the throat, sounds that dont occur in spoken Mandarin. Polish. The one thing that does make it a little easier is that it is written the way it sounds in the same alphabet as English. How to Say Hello in Spanish: Casual and Ser vs. Estar: The Definitive Guide to Learning How to Order Food in French (with Example Conversations), Say a Heartfelt I Love You in 25 Languages, How to Say Hello in Spanish: Casual and Formal Greetings, Languages that use the same Latin alphabet youll find in English, Languages that have their own unique alphabets, Languages based on unique writing systems. Maria Stambler, a Russia-American bilingual speaker, who used to teach English, explained: "Words and phrases like `Tina Turner' and `happy birthday' are hard to pronounce because Russians . It also has a complicated verb conjugation system, which can be pretty confusing for English speakers. It takes approximately 36 weeks (900 hours of practice) to reach professional working proficiency in these languages. It takes approximately 44 weeks (1100 hours of practice) to reach professional working proficiency in these languages. These languages, which include Vietnamese and Mandarin, require correct pronunciation and inflection to create meaning for each word. 6. Some friends in Central Asia are also trying to avoid it. For example: Includes lists of 100 common names. } In other words, a native speaker of an East Slavic language is unlikely to understand a West Slavic language. It takes approximately 24-30 weeks (600-750 hours of practice) to reach professional working proficiency in these languages. Most experts believe that to become truly fluent in Russian that is thinking and speaking in Russian requires 7-10 years of study. Spanish, French, and Italian are all descendants of Latin and have many similarities. Schlittschuhlaufen. In fact, the further the languages are classified from each other, the fewer similarities they have. Among the most challenging aspects of learning Japanese is the writing system, which contains tens of thousands of characters referred to as kanji.. If your goals align more with a Level 1 or 2 proficiency, you may be able to learn a language even faster. Russias invasion was particularly traumatic for eastern Ukrainians, Arel said, because this terrible war of aggression is waged mostly in the east. Moscow paints Kyivs language policies as oppressive as Russian officials claim they are liberating Russian speakers from the Ukrainian project. Terms & Conditions | } From Chinese sentence structure to memorizing foreign symbols, this language demands the most out of beginners. The invasion Russia launched on February 24 last year, which started the biggest war in Europe since 1945, is seen by many Ukrainians as an attempt to wipe them out and their culture, language and way of life. Whats more, its important to notice that Slavic languages use not one but two main alphabets - Latin and Cyrillic. Nouns have 15 different cases, while in English, they have only three: subjective, objective, possessive. And for words you should cut out of your vocabulary right this second, check out Stop Using These Phrases to Sound Instantly Smarter. All of our peers in this apartment complex, they are all above 60. Even a lot of authors that wrote their books in Russian or singers or poets that wrote in Russian have decided to stop spreading the language of the aggressor, added Ferlain. Pronunciation makes Danish one of the most difficult languages to learn. So, what are the origins of the Slavic languages, and what are they? Determining language difficulty requires a birds eye view of how languages relate to each other. With four cases and three genders assigned to their words, as well as many letters unfamiliar to English speakers, Icelandic is no walk in the park to learn. Some languages, such as Arabic and Russian, are notoriously difficult to learn for English speakers. This makes Russian actually far easier to learn than many have been led to believe! They think faster in Russian language, she said. For example, if youre a Brazilian who speaks Portuguese, Russian would probably be a tricky language for you to learn. Mandarin Chinese. Here are the features that the Slavic languages have in common: The general and common grammatical features of all Slavic languages are primarily inflectional morphology with multiple morphemes. Mandarin and Japanese are liable to give Hindi speakers a lot of trouble, in large part because they both involve learning completely new systems of writing. Russian is rated a two of three in difficulty by the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), which ranks languages based on how long it would take the average native English speaker to learn it, so it's not as difficult as some of the other languages on this list. . It's highly similar to Slovak - Czech and Slovak are mutually intelligible - and slightly similar to Polish. For instance, Arabic has complex grammar and a different alphabet . Just as learning Arabic is hard for Mandarin speakers, learning Mandarin is hard for Arabic speakers. Pronouncing Czech words is a nightmare for English speakers. Category 3: Hebrew, Hindi, Persian Farsi, Russian . Despite the fact that Greek roots are found throughout the English language, Greek is among the hardest languages for English speakers to learn, according to . Greek in particular is a highly inflected language, which means its words often change based on grammatical categories such as tense, number, and gender. English is taught in Chinese schools, so most Mandarin speakers are familiar with English and the Latin script that makes up the English alphabet. In theory, pronunciation is also fairly straightforward, but it can be easy to get hung up on long vowel and consonant sounds. There are also various sounds made in the language that dont exist in many other languages. In Spanish, its la flor, and in Italian, its il fiore. Coincidence? A professional translator, she now works as a cultural and language liaison for the Rubizh brigade, a part of the national armed forces engaged in fighting around Bakhmut. Or Thai, which contains an alphabet comprised of a staggering 44 consonants and 32 different vowels? Turkish is filled with extremely long verbs. Hnz is hard enough that it's typical for Mandarin learners to learn a different writing system first, called pinyin. The tones in Mandarin make it a challenge for English speakers, but Cantonese has twice as many tones as Mandarineight in total. Number of native speakers: 221 million. The Bulgarian writing system uses a Cyrillic alphabet, similar to the Russian alphabet but with some distinct differences. Thus, Russian . Logographic systems: These use characters to represent entire words or concepts. But it's certainly a big challenge. Yeah. Another intriguing yet foreign concept to many English speakers, for instance, is the emphasis on respectful speech. Maybe its PTSD, but we react negatively to the media in Russian, she said. Polish is closely related to Czech and to Slovak. Why it's hard: Despite 221 million native speakers that you can potentially learn from, Arabic is still one of the hardest languages to learn. The script is almost entirely phonetic, which means that once you pick up the pronunciation of the letters, you can quickly begin reading fluently. But to translate that same statement into Mandarin, youll need a measure word. No matter the difficulty level of your new language, Rosetta Stone makes learning easy, effective, and fun. However, most languages only use a few dozen of these sounds. And while mastering a German accent can be tricky, most speakers will understand what youre saying through the missteps. These languages also have grammar rules that are absent from Mandarin, including noun cases, noun gender, and verb tenses. Russian grammar and phonetics would sound more familiar to you, and some Polish and Russian vocabulary is related. Knowing language difficulty will also help you come up with a realistic timeline for learning. It has six tonal variations that are determined by diacritics. For instance, its 15 grammatical cases mean that even the slightest change in the end of a word can alter its meaning. It has 7 declension cases for nouns, adjectives, and pronouns. Each language has a different level of correlation with other languages, even in the same group. The term hard language refers to their complexity. There are plenty of resources that can tell you the hardest languages to learn if you speak English. Mexican Spanish vs. Spain Spanish: The Must-Know Differences. Where its most commonly spoken: Arabian Peninsula, the Middle East, North Africa. Czech and Polish are often considered the most difficult Slavic languages to learn for English speakers. Hardly. The Hardest Languages in the World to Learn, The 14 Hardest Words to Pronounce in the English Language, Stop Using These Phrases to Sound Instantly Smarter, 40 Latin Phrases So Genius You'll Sound Like a Master Orator, 7 Common Phrases That You Didn't Know Have Racist Origins, Hungarian is a member of the same small language family. However, learning them can be more difficult since there are very scarce learning resources available for Bulgarian and Macedonian online. Its something they tried to tell me shouldnt exist; they wanted to suppress it but couldnt.. Most Slavic languages implement an extensive system of cases in which the endings of nouns (declination), adjectives, and prepositions change depending on the case. Where its most commonly spoken: Albania, Kosovo. Do Not Sell My Information | The language features five tones, some of which are not found in the English language. In 2019, Kyiv adopted a law to guarantee Ukrainian as a state language, which required Ukrainian to be used in most aspects of public life. Everyone kept speaking Russian, everyone kept watching Russian television, except probably for the Western regions of Ukraine, Zahalskyy told Al Jazeera. Another doozy is the 17 different cases for numbers, meaning there are 17 different ways to say one number. And for the English words you're still getting wrong, check out The 14 Hardest Words to Pronounce in the English Language. A very serious shift has occurred in the consciousness of many people, said Zahalskyy, a landlord who used to own a pharmacy business. Outside the home, Oleksandr and Natasha try to talk in Ukrainian, but when the door closes behind them, sticking to it is still difficult. Hindi uses an abugida, which is different from the English alphabet and from hnz, a Chinese script that uses characters to represent entire words and concepts. Even then, it's very likely that you will make mistakes in pronunciation and word order. Slavic languages make a distinction between three main grammatical genders (male, female, neuter), as well as the division of verbs into perfective and imperfective. But did you know that there are more than 10 different Slavic languages? On the other hand, tvrtek means Thursday, and mastering the way each of those sounds works together is going to take you a while. Tackling a language that requires you to learn a ton of new words, rules, sounds, and symbols wont be easy, but it can be a rewarding hobby. However, when you consider all non-English speakers together, there isnt just one answer. In contrast to the similarities between the Romance languages listed above, German and Mandarintwo languages of different families with entirely unique writing systemscouldnt be more linguistically distant. Chinese , Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, and Arabic are some of the most difficult languages to learn. } ); Where its most commonly spoken: Iran, Afghanistan. One example is the Chinese writing system hnz. What Level Of Difficulty Is Mandarin. In addition, the grammar is filled with exceptions to the rule that you'll have to remember. Russian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian belong to this group. Easiest languages for English speakers - closely-related languages like Romance language (French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian, Galician, Catalan), and other languages with historical influence in English (Afrikaans, Danish, Dutch, Swedish, and Norwegian). Where its most commonly spoken: Denmark, Greenland, Faroe Islands. To begin with, the Slavic languages derive from the Proto-Slavic language - their immediate parent language. Russian is the most spoken native language in Europe and the 8th most-spoken language in the world. Thai is a tonal language. One example is French. . Knowing how high a barrier youre up against will help you not get discouraged when you run into obstacles, as well as savor the progress you make. This is one of the giveaways that a person's native language is Slavic. Tarasuik disagrees, but says Russia has unintentionally reversed decades of Russification. We have also become interested in Ukrainian history, Ukrainian culture before, there was a large gap, he said. The archaic language is made up of extremely long words, while the specific syllables are pronounced entirely differently from typical English syllables. It doesnt bother with the difference between I was running, I had been running, etc. The language is in the Finno-Urgic language family, so it doesn't have any Latin or German influence to help you guess what something means. They probably also get eight hours of sleep every night, never misplace their keys, and hit the gym without fail every morning at 5am, but thats besides the point. Bestlifeonline.com is part of the Dotdash Meredith Publishing Family. 1. Declension in Czech is its own special nightmare, but you won't even need to worry about that until you get past the seemingly insurmountable hurdle that is pronouncing the words correctly. So many of the words sound very similar to each other. Haitian Creole. The ability to speak multiple languages puts you steps ahead of singular speakers. After 2022, the number of those who identify as Russian-speaking has probably decreased. Once you've got that down, the grammar is not so hard, as long as you know Finnish. For English speakers, Russian is arguably more difficult than German. That's mainly due to their complex . Russian. The default vowel sound of those letters is changed by using a secondary symbol. Compared to the Finno-Ugric languages on the list (Finnish, Hungarian, Estonian), the seven cases you have to contend with in Polish don't seem too intimidating. And switching to Ukrainian is one way to fight back. Along with natives and Spanish language learners, there are more than 572 million Spanish speakers worldwide. To learn Arabic, you have to learn a new alphabet, and get used to reading from right to left. Thats because its the most widely spoken one of all Slavic languages. ae0fcc31ae342fd3a1346ebb1f342fcb. The language also relies more heavily on idioms than other languages, so if you dropped out of the sky with a few select phrases under your belt, you might feel like everyone is speaking in inside jokes or a secret code. It is always a state project.. Between Japanese and Mandarin, Mandarin presents more of a challenge because its a tonal language, which means the pronunciation and tonal inflection of a word can change its meaning. Credit: Greek Reporter. This system of honorific speech is called keigo. Data Privacy and Security. These are the most difficult to learn, as new learners will find that learning through listening is much more accessible than learning through text (though Pinyin is changing the way learners approach the language). Country with the greatest number of speakers: Egypt. In contrast to English, Czech is a synthetic language. And yet, that one word is mind-blowingly long. Lets take a look at them in more detail. Another challenge you will come across if you start learning Arabic is a variety of dialects. Were grouping Spanish and French (which are the worlds fourth and fifth most widely spoken languages, respectively) because they are both Romance languages, and theyre similar enough that both Spanish and French speakers will find the same languages difficult for largely the same reasons. With over 70 years of experience teaching languages to US government employees, theyve compiled a comprehensive and widely accepted list of language rankings. We'll start by looking at the characteristics of Slavic languages, then we'll look at: Slavic languages are spoken by nearly 300 million people around the world and cover a vast geographical area.
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