Scientists claim that learning a new language can make one more intellectual. However, not many realize that learning a language is not as easy as it seems. Additionally, what is even more important to understand is the fact that not all languages have the same level of ease. While some languages may be easy to learn, others come with their own set of challenges.
At present, there exists more than 7000 spoken languages in the world. All the languages have their own beauty and represent a distinct culture.
Here, we present to you a list of the most difficult languages of the world. It is important to note that while we list these languages on the basis of their difficulty levels, we are not listing them on the basis of how interesting it could be to learn them.
Here, we have created a list of the most difficult languages of the world, as listed by the Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR). Take a look at the most difficult to learn languages of the world.
Mandarin- the most difficult language of the world
Mandarin has been listed as the most difficult language to learn for English speakers, as listed by the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center. The Mandarin Chinese is a language spoken by about 800 million speakers worldwide.
Arabic
The Arabic stands as the second most difficult language of the world for English speaking natives. It is a language spoken mostly in North Africa and Middle East.
Japanese
It is difficult to learn the Japanese language for English native speakers. The reason is that it comes with three native scripts of katakana, kanji, and hiragana. Moreover, in the Japanese language, the politeness levels determine the word choice and sentence structure in the language.
Korean
The next language in the list is the Korean language. The language is based on the Hangul alphabet.
Polish
Polish is one of the most difficult languages to learn. The syntax, pronunciation, and morphology are difficult to comprehend and thus it is a language that takes years to learn.
Vietnamese
The next most difficult language to learn in the list is the Vietnamese. It is based on six different pitch patterns to indicate different meanings from one syllable. Therefore, not many people find the Vietnamese language easy to learn.
Turkish
The next difficult language in the list is the Turkish language. It is a language that is actually written in Latin script. However, the language is influenced by French, Persian, and Arabic vocabulary. The Turkish language is actually spoken by around 80 million people globally. What makes the language even more unique is the fact that there the grammatical gender is actually non-existent in the language. There have been many standardization efforts done for the language, however, there still exists varied regional dialects.
Icelandic
The next language in our list is the Icelandic language. It comprises archaic grammar remnants such as conjugation and declension.
Hungarian
The Hungarian language too stands as one which is difficult to learn. It stands as one of the most outlying tongues of Europe.