Comments on: What is the Hardest Foreign Language to Learn?

By: Caroline

Caroline — Sat, 15 Feb 2025 22:27:06 +0000

I can’t understand why Vietnamese is considered a level 4 language. It’s the most difficult language I’ve tried to learn. I make a habit of learning the basics of a language before I travel, taking a couple of months of daily training so I can ask for directions, order food, and be polite. I found Japanese so much easier than Vietnamese. I even found Arabic slightly easier, but I guess we hear more Arabic in Europe. And we hear Japanese in anime. It’s the intonation and the need to use so many short words to form a sentence in Vietnamese that makes it impossible for me. I found learning hiragana and katakana easier as the symbols are simple and it’s often possible to create a mental link with the meaning of the word. Vietnamese is just too far from anything I’ve learned and i can’t seem to memorise anything other than a few frequently used words.

By: joanne

joanne — Fri, 19 Jul 2024 22:42:14 +0000

it absolutely depends on your native language and what/ how many languages one speaks.

For a fluent speaker of Farsi learning Arabic is a piece of cake ( I know this for a fact)

For someone who speaks fluent Spanish or French or Italian, then obviously learning any of the other two is a piece of cake

( I know this for a fact too)

Also depends on talent for languages, some people reach an intermediate level within a year, ( outside of the country where the language is spoken)

while others need 10+ years to reach the same level

( I know this from my own experience as well)

By: D. Kagal

D. Kagal — Fri, 10 May 2024 15:37:45 +0000

In reply to Maria Guzenko.

Hello.

I agree.

English is my native language. I learned Russian and lived in Russia for many years. Hebrew for me is the language of the prayer book and Jewish scriptures but i can speak it very slowly given a patient listener. 🙂

Phonetically, Russian is quite distinct from English. My accent fools Russians for a bit…they think i’m Estonian after about 10 minutes. In love with the language, it took me about three years to shed the obvious accent and intonation. The grammar is complex. All those nouns with shifting stress. All those genitive plural exceptions. Verbs are easy, though, compared to Spanish.

Hebrew…? Of course, when i speak i don’t sound like i grew up in the Holy Land. Words are shortened, the intonation is different from Russian and English. However, there are only maybe three sounds…the /l/, the /r/ and the /Kh/ that are not common to most English dialects. Once instructed on how to do them, it was easy. Grammar-wise…I think Hebrew grammar is a cake walk compared to Russian. Only the future tense i find annoying with all the exceptions. Smikhut is extremely complex but it seems to be used in only a very limited fashion in spoken Hebrew…ishti, imati, avi…

The only area where i find Hebrew more difficult than Russian is in the vocabulary. Russian vocab. is build up of roots in combination with prefixes and suffixes…ekhat’/prijekhat’/vyjekhat’. There are also a lot of cognates…situatsija, komp’juter…In Hebrew you have to learn lots of “separate” words…lalekhet, lavo, latzet… and there aren’t that many cognates…miqreh, makhshev..

I enjoy languages and have studied probably 20+ so i can probably compare. I find the classification system too “simple.” A language can have easy vocab. for an English speaker, e.g. Spanish… but complex grammar…again…those Spanish verb forms! A language can have easy sounds and grammar but possess a daunting vocabulary…Hebrew.

By: KevinAveryAbel@gmail.com

KevinAveryAbel@gmail.com — Mon, 24 Apr 2023 05:32:10 +0000

I have been listening and repeating all 5 levels of a pimsleur Mandarin for about 12 years. Levels 4 and 5 are newer so about 5 years for those. I have been using Duolingo for almost 3 years. Mandarin speakers have a difficult time understanding me. I understand about 50 percent of simple stuff. If I read a news paper I recognize maybe 9 of 100 characters. I have seen 75% of them before from duolingo but I forget their meaning. I’m the best at Chinese restaurants. I think of it as a never ending game but I don’t see how I could become fluent.

By: Licus Lingua (@LaMarcellina)

Licus Lingua (@LaMarcellina) — Sun, 24 Jan 2016 10:58:40 +0000

In reply to cnielsen56. I wonder. Personally I'd put it in the "Medium" category. Nearly all of the letters are familiar. It's got some scary word order rules but, in my experience, there seem to be fewer exceptions in pronunciation or grammar that found in, say, French. Long words which intimidate the beginner are easily broken down into their compounds.

By: gamesforlanguage

gamesforlanguage — Thu, 21 Jan 2016 20:51:42 +0000

I have seen similar infographics before. While not listing some languages, e.g. German (which about 95 million speak worldwide per Wikipedia), or Hungarian, (as Finnish, not an Indo-European language), they get the message across that English speakers who really want to get proficient in a language need to put the time in.
What should be made clear is what these time estimates represent: Hours of intensive study in a Foreign Service Institute course setting?

By: Julia Smucker

Julia Smucker — Thu, 21 Jan 2016 03:40:11 +0000

In reply to Maria Guzenko. I was similarly wondering why Hebrew is listed as categorically different from Arabic. They are both structurally consonant-based with the vowels written as diacritic marks. I've studied a bit of biblical Hebrew - just enough to be boggled that anyone can read it without vowels, especially given how it can affect the grammar and morphology.

By: cnielsen56

cnielsen56 — Tue, 19 Jan 2016 20:18:07 +0000

Where is German?

By: Maria Guzenko

Maria Guzenko — Tue, 19 Jan 2016 17:07:59 +0000

I find it surprising Russian and Hebrew are in the same category of difficulty for English speakers. I’m a native speaker of Russian and have learned (and since forgotten most of my) Hebrew. I see how learning a new writing system would be a challenge in either language for English speakers.
However, in my experience, Hebrew grammar and morphology are super logical so that once you grasp a principle, you can apply it across the board with few exceptions. While it does “skip” vowels like Arabic, word-building patterns make (common) words very easy to recognize. I would imagine Russian would be more challenging for English speakers to learn, with its intricate system of inflection and morphology. My guess is that much more would need to be memorized in Russian than in Hebrew.
I’m interested in hearing what English-speaker learners of Russian an/or Hebrew think.