Top 10 Most Difficult LANGUAGES To Learn

Looking to challenge yourself? Check out our list of the top 10 most difficult languages to learn. From tonal languages to complex grammar, these languages will push your language skills to the limit!

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Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

[UltimateTop.]

What language have you had difficulty learning? Any of the ones on this list? Comment below!

[hcholm]

A more correct title would be "some well-known languages that can be challenging for English speakers". There are numerous languages that would be a lot more difficult. And Icelandic is definitely not that hard.

[angreagach]

You describe vowel harmony as a feature unique to Turkish. Just among those dealt with in this video, it also applies to Hungarian and Finnish. It also applies, in varying degrees, to many others. See the Wikipedia article on the subject.

[landlorddiamond]

All of thse languages have a writing system, which in fact mitigates the learning process. But if we were to be more objective, languages without a writing system would be much harder. Papuan languages, Australian language, Siberian languages, Cambodian has over 30 vowel sounds, and Saramaccan has a different word for "on top" depending on the surface below. Not to mention other Afro-Asiatic languages and Khoesan languages. To become an intermidiate in those would definitely be worth boasting.

[taotie]

I'd consider Icelandic's presence controversial here though. It is a Germanic language, its grammar is extremely similar to German and the only thing that I'd consider extremely difficult is pronunciation. The rest is medium difficulty at best.

[canakkoc]

Native language Turkish, ESL learner for 75 years, taught mathematics for 60 years, in English.
Still unable to see the correlation between the phonemes in English and the alphabet. Not to mention the asinine system of units and currency.

[phen-themoogle]

Cantonese is harder than Mandarin for me by 10x.
Languages that don’t have a writing system in entertainment (Cantonese doesn’t use the same one for what they speak and impossible to find Cantonese subs on stuff that match spoken) are almost impossible for me.
At least with Mandarin you can easily find Mandarin subs on everything!
Not to mention the tones are way more complex in Cantonese than Mandarin.

I’m fluent in Japanese because I was lucky enough to read thousands of hours of it. And enjoyed the process via entertainment.
Although I like Hong Kong movies, I’m going in blind without any subs or references to learn the vocab. At least with Japanese I can hear stuff wayyy easier too, and there’s a plethora of ways to learn everything.

[monichat]

Hungarian and Vietnamese are not only difficult to learn, but impossible, according to a reliable source I read years ago.

[zalanemese]

According to linguistic research, Hungarian has been an independent language for 2, 500-3, 000 years. This means that it has been separated from its last language relative for that long. For the sake of comparison, Czech and Slovak separated from each other only a few hundred years ago, and today's New Latin languages ​​are also 1, 000-1, 500 years ago they became independent from each other.

[johnbubak]

Actually, Czech is widely considered to be more difficult than Polish. In fact, it is considered the most difficult Slavic language. What exactly is the source of this list?

[apulseapluskmkasim]

What about Malayalam?
"Malayalam is one of the Dravidian languages, which has a long literary tradition." Due to the unique sounds and tricky pronunciation of words,  the language is assumed to be the toughest one to learn. Keralites who are living outside Kerala find it difficult to pass on their mother tongue to the younger generation.

[enlightened]

I always thought that I had a mental block when it comes to learning languages. Did Spanish twice in College and failed miserably. How about taking one language at a time maybe Spanish and Mandarin and teaching 10 commonly used words daily. That would be a significant help.. thanks for another great video.

[Polskirumun]

As a native polish I can say that it s easy language... for me 😊😂

[meouwwchag]

I'm from Russia, I was tried to learn Polish. It's VERY VERV VERY easy.. I think you should say not for everyone, but for english-speakers 😅

[MigelKociu]

I'm Albanian. This language is hard too.

[DavidRayl-eu]

There are also very easy parts to every one of these language. Larry concentrating on the difficulty

[mayo]

Cantonese is tougher than Mandarin, they have 6-9 tones depending on who you ask, vs. Mandarin's 4 tones, also the pronounciation is so much tougher, plus it also has different grammar, though Mandarin definitely isn't easy, Cantonese is tougher to learn as a second language for an English speaker

[hypsyzygy]

Where is English on this list? It's generally considered pretty difficult (sometimes even for native speakers).

[vuraloranli]

Turkish, Hungarian and Finish have the same origin.

[nlsoon]

0:41 useless list. we never daily use all words. only first three.