The hardest language to learn, especially for English speakers, is widely considered to be Mandarin Chinese. This is due to several factors:
- Mandarin is a tonal language with four tones, meaning the same syllable can have different meanings depending on pitch, which is challenging for speakers of non-tonal languages
- The writing system is complex, relying on thousands of characters rather than an alphabet, requiring extensive memorization and practice
- Mandarin has various dialects, such as Cantonese, which differ significantly in pronunciation and characters, adding to the difficulty
Other languages also ranked among the hardest include:
- Arabic , due to its unique script, right-to-left writing direction, many dialects, and complex grammar
- Japanese , with three writing systems (kanji, hiragana, katakana), complex grammar, and a hierarchical politeness system
- Korean , which has a logical alphabet (Hangul) but complex grammar and multiple speech levels
- Hungarian , known for its 18 grammatical cases and agglutinative structure
- Additional difficult languages include Polish, Russian, Finnish, Icelandic, and Telugu
The difficulty of learning a language is subjective and depends on the learner's native language and experience, but Mandarin Chinese consistently ranks as the hardest due to its tonal nature and writing system complexity
. In summary, Mandarin Chinese is generally regarded as the hardest language to learn for English speakers, followed by Arabic, Japanese, and Korean among others
