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. Thats because its the most widely spoken one of all Slavic languages. If you emphasize the second ("su-KA"), then you have "vinegar." Outside the home, Oleksandr and Natasha try to talk in Ukrainian, but when the door closes behind them, sticking to it is still difficult. Korean and Arabic may not be as hard, but theyre still challenging. So, verbs are usually given in the first person of the singular form. Arabic only has three cases nominative, genitive, and accusative while Finnish has a staggering 15 cases. Mandarin, by contrast, has little to no inflection. For example uenik, translates to male student. Some individual letters prove tricky as well. The time estimates here reflect how long it would take the average person to reach a Level 3 proficiency level, which is pretty fluent by most standards. Having originated in the Philippine islands, Tagalog is the first language of most Filipinos. Maybe its PTSD, but we react negatively to the media in Russian, she said. Mandarin is tough to learn because its a tonal language and uses a logographic script, hnz. A Finno-Ugric language, Finnish features a complicated verb conjugation, case system, consonant gradation and clitics. Or Navajo? Phonetically, there are more than 20 vowel sounds in the Danish language. Get ready to put in some serious study time if you're looking to master one of these. Much of Macedonian vocabulary is similar to Serbian and Bulgarian, and it uses a Cyrillic alphabet, just like Bulgarian. Polish is closely related to Czech and to Slovak. This makes Russian actually far easier to learn than many have been led to believe! You need about 3,000 to . Georgian has its own writing system that no other language uses. In the wars early days, their apartment block was hit twice by artillery fire from the nearby town of Bucha, where Russians are accused of many atrocities. Brilliant planning there, mate. If you're looking for official statistics, the Defense Language Institute (where they teach members of the CIA foreign languages) has organized languages into four categories, the 1st Category being the easiest, and the 4th Category being the hardest languages to learn for English speakers. Pronouncing Czech words is a nightmare for English speakers. The Greek language is very difficult for English speakers to learn, but the effort required to learn the language is worth it. With similar pronunciation and grammar to other salvia languages, the thing that makes learning Russian so difficult is the Cyrillic alphabet which is notably employed throughout eastern Europe and central Asia. This is just one example of unique grammar rules that dont exist in other languages. Hungarian is a member of the same small language family as Finnish, so the average English speaker won't be finding much familiarity in its vocabulary. Seems that every person I know in #Ukraine has stopped speaking Russian. See for instance this, Whether you already speak or are familiar with any other Slavic language, Availability of learning resources online. Most English speakers have cited the language as the hardest language to learn in the world. Arabic features 28 script letters, is written from right to left and excludes most vowels in words. The grammar seems like it's very simple, but Japanese also uses particles, which are markers for parts of speech that do not have an English equivalent. Where its most commonly spoken: Albania, Kosovo. In English, its acceptable to say that you bought five books. Data Privacy and Security, The Complete List of Language Difficulty Rankings, Get the complete list of languages ranked by difficulty, Mexican Spanish vs. Spain Spanish: The Must-Know Differences. document.addEventListener( 'DOMContentLoaded', function() { Moreover, each language has its own letters that have developed to denote particular phonetic phenomena. Hungarian. In Spanish, its la flor, and in Italian, its il fiore. Coincidence? But the more each language continued to evolve, the more it differed from its initial state. The best time to start learning a language is today. } else { Category II Languages. The Macedonian language lost the traditional (Slavic) grammatical cases during its development, and it became an analytic language. While Russian is not that hard for some speakers in Eastern Europe, it appears challenging for English speakers. A languages grammar also determines the order of words in sentences. 6. Furthermore, it requires learning the Greek alphabet, which is not a requirement for the majority of European languages. Indeed, Slavic languages (unlike Romance languages) often appear on the lists of the hardest languages to learn. 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. 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. Where its most commonly spoken: Republic of Serbia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo. Mandarin Chinese is challenging for a number of reasons. Its synthetic nature gives rise to a complex system of declension and conjugation. In theory, pronunciation is also fairly straightforward, but it can be easy to get hung up on long vowel and consonant sounds. The transition to Ukrainian began for some in 2014, when Moscow annexed Crimea and led forces into the Donbas region, which borders Russia. Some languages, such as Arabic and Russian, are notoriously difficult to learn for English speakers. The Icelandic language remains one of the hardest languages to learn, which makes sense considering the language hasnt changed since it settled in the ninth and 10th centuries. 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. Factors such as grammar rules, syntax, vocabulary, and pronunciation can make some languages more difficult to learn than others. The longest word in Hungarian, megszentsgtelenthetetlensgeskedseitekrt, means for your [plural] continued behavior as if you could not be desecrated in English. For English sayings you didn't realize were offensive, check out 7 Common Phrases That You Didn't Know Have Racist Origins. Russian. It uses VSO (verb, subject, object) word order, which can be tricky for most. We would say "I put the pizza in THE oven". The sentence structure is also very different from English. One example is the Japanese writing system hiragana. Whats more, Polish words often contain many consonants in a row, which makes them hard to pronounce for English speakers (and non-Slavic speakers in general). Grammar is the system that defines how words are formed and put together into sentences. Other languages with non-Latin alphabets, such as Russian and Greek, are also hard for Mandarin speakers. 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. Theres no set timeline for how long it takes to learn a language, but language difficulty rankings serve as useful goals posts to guide your journey. Russian is the most widely spoken Slavic language, with 155 million native Russian speakers. 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. Towards the end of 2022, Ukrainian forces wrested back the city of Kherson, while most of the rest of the region remained in Russian hands. There are a lot of sounds that simply aren't present in the English language and require a lot of practice to master. Oleksandr Zahalskyy spent most of his life speaking only Russian. 25 Hardest Languages to Learn, Ranked. Most experts believe that to become truly fluent in Russian that is thinking and speaking in Russian requires 7-10 years of study. A very serious shift has occurred in the consciousness of many people, said Zahalskyy, a landlord who used to own a pharmacy business. It also has a different word order; In Hindi, like Japanese, the word order of basic sentences is subject-object-verb, but in Mandarin its subject-verb-object. A Korean speaker learning Arabic, for example, might have a hard time with the letter , which sounds like an h that is pronounced using the throat. These are the HARDEST LANGUAGES to learn ranked by the time it takes to be FLUENT in them! Russian is the most widely spoken Slavic language, with 155 million native Russian speakers. As an example of cognates, here are the words for a smile in different Romance languages: Cognates can make a language feel familiar. Knowing language difficulty will also help you come up with a realistic timeline for learning. Born in 1960 in what was then the Soviet Union, Zahalskyy hails from the largely Russian-speaking Ukrainian city of Kherson. However, when you consider all non-English speakers together, there isnt just one answer. And because its placed at the very end of the sentence, you cant understand the meaning of whats being said until the sentence is finished. 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. Also, some of its letters are tricky to pronounce, and Korean has its own version of honorific speech that requires specific forms of words depending on social context. The most obvious impediment to learning Greek is the alphabet. Does she think the Russian language will eventually disappear in Ukraine? Slavic languages make a distinction between three main grammatical genders (male, female, neuter), as well as the division of verbs into perfective and imperfective. Todd Bridges and Gary Coleman played brothers. Every aspect of learning Mandarin is difficult. Its okay to not be that person. It became a symbol of our resistance against Russian aggression, said Viktoriia Tarasuik, a 25-year-old born and raised in Kyiv, who grew up speaking Russian and has also made the linguistic shift. Gabe Wood is a writer for Rosetta Stone and other websites in the IXL family of brands. Most Ukrainians can speak Russian and many speak what has been labelled Surzhyk a blend of Russian and Ukrainian so measuring who speaks what is challenging. It goes without saying that the more time you spend practicing something, the better you will become at it. The three Slavic language groups are mutually unintelligible. An Austronesian language, Tagalog features a complicated grammar and sentence structure that make it hard to learn. And because there are no characters, its harder to visualize them for memorization purposes. And switching to Ukrainian is one way to fight back. Experts say these things bring unlucky energy. To begin with, the Slavic languages derive from the Proto-Slavic language - their immediate parent language. Macedonian is the language spoken in Macedonia, which used to be part of the former Yugoslavia. 1. Beginning language learners may want to start with an easier language, such as Spanish, German or Italian.

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