Most difficult language ?

[rachel_]

i think korean is a lot harder than japanese because of the pronunciation.

[Yukiko05]

Kon'nichi wa,
I'm a native English speaker and I still don't know all the rules
I've also studied Spanish, French, and Arabic. I've studied Arabic the longest (8 years) It is the hardest language I've ever studied! Even more than Japanese. I've been studying Japanese about a year now and I've found it to be easier than Arabic in many ways, although it is still difficult. GANBAREMASHO MINNA-SAN!

[salivia_baker]

I actually don't like learning a new language and I am bad at it. But I had to learn English in school (though I actually learned it from movies and TV Shows :p).
in 7th grade I though it would be really smart to learn French because I need a second language for the A-Level. After a few lessons I prayed the year would end soon so I can end this class and take something else instead. Ever since I can't stand French.
Since I did my A-Level I had to take another language and that was Spanish. I like SPanish it's very similar to my native language (German).
And just because I watch a lot of Japanese movies, TV Shows and Anime I try to learn Japanese...

The hardest language for me was French. why? Because what you write sound spoken completely different. I have a hard time as it is getting words into my head I need at least the letters to rely on! Grammar is always a nightmare so I am actually very happy that Japanese has lesser times and no cases and stuff like that. Sure it's completely different from the way of thinking but at least that keeps it interesting.

[untmdsprt]

Mandarin
Latin
Japanese
German (native speaker, but sometimes I think, what the hell am I talking )
Russian (I studied it 2 years and the grammar was not as difficult as Latin, but I have forgotten nearly everything)

Latin? An ex-boyfriend's daughter was taking that in high school. Kid is highly intelligent but no common sense.

She had a sign on her door that said "If you can read this, then you have too much education." Of course the sign was written in Latin.

[Blaznist]

I took French I and II in high school and wanted Spanish but had to stick with French cause advisor forgot I guess to change me but nearly 100 in both, and the teacher was funny. Only thing I remember now is the French national anthem cause the song kinda funny.
Some of the sounds make you sound like a pirate especially the letter C. lol I'm focusing on really Japanese and some Korean on the side. But this interest me so Its not so bad compared to French which i d didn't really want and French rare in US lol compared to Asians so I really like to learn what interest me though. Japanese seems more easier then Korean in pronounciation.

[YukkiKurobane]

I'm currently taking Mandarin Chinese and German in school, and both have proven rather easy. The only problem I have with Chinese is the tonal aspect (I've called my mother a horse a few times ><) but it's overall simple. As far as Japanese, I'm having a bit of trouble grasping some of the grammar, and my handwriting is horrible, so Kanji is a challenge. I'm trying my best, and doing whatever I can to learn. I really want to try to learn Korean, Russian, and Arabic as well. I'm a bit of an overachiever, I suppose ^^

With <3,

Yukki Kurobane

[Twiggular]

I havent exactly 'studied' it. Not formally atleast but I had a friend from Russia and in High school we would sit around and she would attempt to teach me some things. I dont remember a single thing she 'taught' me. Its so hard, for me atleast.
The easiest has been German though.

[Bloodwolf]

German (mother tongue)
Im not very fond of German. The interpunctuation rules are still a mystery to me.

English (since 5th class in school)
I thought it was very easy, I tend to be an intrinsic learner.. and I somehow picked it up from playing games and watching undubbed movies. I have no real formal knowledge about English grammar. I tend to use it by instinct and it works out surprisingly well.

French (5 years in school)
For me it was more difficult than English. Might be because I have no use for it in daily life. Especially the grammar was something I had to study.

Japanese (3 years)
Well I started with the mindset of learning Japanese as hobby. I thought from the beginning that it would be hard.. but I still underestimated the effort necessary
And I thought that watching subbed Anime would help like watching English Movies... I was wrong, I tend to focus too much on the subtitles... and English gets used in my head. Kanji are surprisingly the easiest part of it (thanks to Heisig). Whats really frustrating is that I tend to become lazy when seeing a page full of Japanese. Like a grade schooler not wanting to read a book because its to much of a hazzle:(

Chinese (1 Basic Course)
I picked this course because I was interested in the differences between Japanese and Chinese. Grammar seems to be easier, there are obviously a lot more characters. But what makes Chinese the most difficult language for me is the pronunciation. I have a hard time remembering which tone to use for a word. But I am definatly revisiting Chinese as soon as Im content with my Japanese skills.

Overall I think a language gets a lot easier to learn if you actually need to know it.

[oskar2008]

I skip Thai, after many years my Thai friends unable to teach me nothing than basic politeness.(Poor to me now after 8 years I forget all)
I cannot even pronaunce Thai words.

Croatian (my native is too difficult for me sometime)

for start there is a 7 major tense, conjugation are for foreigners mission impossible(no mathematics rules)
7 cases, 3 genera, and more. The biggest difficulty is the small country of Croatia and it is impossible to get good books, OK Russia is almost the same problem, but more land(big country) and more textbooks.(Addition is in Russian Cyrillic letters)

No wonder why all my Japanese friends say "Croatian is very hard to learn language"
(best part is I can easy pronaunce everything in Japanese language and more), but my Japanese friends hard to pronaunce something in Croatian.

Croatian try it before say easy language, not for this list "Difficult to learn"

[Jetsada]

Though my native language is Cantonese, I have to say Cantonese is one of the hardest languages to master if you're from an European background. Unlike Mandarin, Cantonese has a ton of slang, 6 tones instead of 4, and things like n and m endings to the sounds. And of course, to the literary side of it, which is the same as Mandarin (standard Chinese), recognizing all that kanji isn't an easy thing at all.

Whilst Cantonese isn't my mother tongue, I have dabbled in it so it'd have to be either Cantonese or Thai mostly down to the vast intonations that can have completely different meanings! Coming from England where the most complex intonations we get is usually sarcasm it's pretty difficult to adapt! But then again I have awful vocal control

[winterpromise31]

For me, Japanese is the hardest but only because I just started learning.

English is my native language. I took a year of Latin in high school and didn't think it was too difficult. Then we moved to another state and my new high school didn't offer Latin so I started learning Spanish. I took two years of Spanish and can read a bit of it, understand a fair bit of conversations around me, but speak very little of it. High school was 10 years ago!

[aozoraway]

I've studied...

Finnish (native language)
English (9 years)
French (7 years)
Swedish (5 years)
Japanese (4 years)
Latin (2 years)

Out of these, French and Latin have definitely been the hardest ones. In French there are so many things you have to remember when you're writing even a relatively simple sentence. Listening to spoken French is also hard for me because the words are "tied" to each other so it all sounds like a mess. But I still love the feel of the language and don't regret taking it up in 5th grade.

English and Swedish are obligatory for everyone in Finland. I find Swedish pretty boring (no offense, that's only my personal opinion!) but easy to learn. It's like a hybrid of English and Finnish grammar-wise.

Japanese is the only language I'm not studying via school so it takes a different amount of effort. Right now I have the JLPT N4 as my goal for this year and I'm confident about it.

In my opinion, the hardest part of learning Japanese is the first months where you have to practically throw everything you've learned about the logic of languages out of the window. You just have to let the "This makes no sense, this language is crazy" attitude go.

Well, he actually says that Finnish is the hardest language he's ever studied. From the description ... I see what he means. there are 15 cases in Finnish but 16 in the plural form.

Yes, I think Finnish might be tough for many...My mother teaches Finnish for deaf children. (Their first language is sign language so they have to be taught from the beginning just like foreigners.) She says that English is like an upside-down pyramide: it's easy first but there will be a lot of complicated stuff later. Finnish, on the other hand, is the other way around - you have to learn a ton of rules but when you have them in check, there won't be much exceptions or weird changes. That's just a piece of motivational advice for anyone who's studying Finnish. I'll root for you!

That was one long message. Sorry for not being able to make it short!

[avrichard4285]

Hi everybody! Firstly, learning Japanese via JPod is BY FAR the best way I've ever found. I found it after listening to ChinesePod - for the record I found ChinesePod really good too

The question as to hardest foreign language depends on what your native language is.

My native language is English. I don't think English is particularly hard... native speakers often think it is, but all my European friends say it's the easiest foreign language they ever learnt. Probably different for native speakers of Asian languages...

I teach high school German and French in Melbourne, Australia. My second language is German (I lived in Germany as a teenager and went to school there), French is my third. I speak German waaaay better than French, but I actually think French is easier from a beginner's point of view. From experience, my students make more progress in German to begin with, but after about 6 months the French students overtake them and get more fluency a lot quicker.

I learnt Spanish at uni, found it easier than both French and German (in theory). It's my fourth language in actual ability to use though.

I have also learnt some Russian, Mandarin and Japanese. Russian is complex and I can't actually say very much even after three years of class, but I learnt it in the most old-fashioned, dry way possible. A classroom setting straight out the 1950s or maybe even crustier.

Mandarin I learnt first through conversation with Chinese-speaking friends. Then I later took evening classes, which were pretty lame from a language acquisition point of view, but I did learn to read a lot of characters. If I hadn't already learn some conversation though, I would have got basically zero from the classes. I didn't find it that hard, but I like to think I've got a good ear for tone Definitely not as hard as people told me it was.

Japanese I find to be about the same level of difficulty as Mandarin. Japanese grammar is harder, but with Mandarin the different consonants and getting used to the tones is harder.

BUT

I have to mention that at the school where I teach, we get lots of students from overseas coming for their last two or three years of high school. The Japanese teachers both tell me that students from Korea find Japanese really, really easy in comparison to the anglophone Australian students. They seem to learn Japanese about four times as fast as the Aussies. They come as absolute beginners, go into a class with Australians who've been learning for three or four years already, and by the end of the year they're the best in the class

Apparently some of that is because a) the languages are somewhat similar and b) they already know some kanji because they mostly still learn hanja (the Korean version of Chinese characters) at school. But that's just what the Japanese teacher tells me... I don't know much about the Korean language so I can't really judge!!