grammatically, writing, reading, and etc.

That would be language such as chinese or japanese
I can try to figure out what most language means
because they have abc blah blah blah blah

Thai or Chinese. Tonality =\

Khmer ;) World longest alphabet..

Theres like 50 constanets and vowels, an arm, leg and head for each vowel and constanet making a total of about 300 letters...And my dad thought he could teach me it!

Japanese is harder to wite than Spanish, but Spanish is certainly much, much harder than Japanese when it comes to grammar.

Its learing a new language thats hard. Learning a language as your 1st is relatively easy. Well, easier :heh:

Khmer ;) World longest alphabet..

Theres like 50 constanets and vowels, an arm, leg and head for each vowel and constanet making a total of about 300 letters...And my dad thought he could teach me it!

And chinese has no alphabet so it makes it ten times harder to write.

Chinese for sure

Tamil. You would be amaze how fast Indians speak.

Oh! And Hindi! Did you know theres like 3 diffrent letters in Hindi that have compleatly diffrent sounds to people who grow up with Hindi, but sound identical to people who dont?

And I heard Chinese isnt that hard. There is no real alphabet, but the diffrent symbles make up a word. And isnt there only like 20 diffrent symbles altogether? So just think of the symbles in Chinese like letters; you put a bunch of them together to make words. Not that hard..

...Untill you need to add an arm, a leg and a head to each letter X_X

Dutch is by fact one of the hardest languages to learn for foreign speakers. Why? Because there are a zillion grammar rules and even more exceptions to those rules. Next to that Dutch has over 900 different syllables, while Chinese has just over 700 and Japanese has about 65.

just a question. where does the word dutch come from, if people are from englend they're english, america american, wales, welsh etc.
yet how comes people from holland are classed as dutch?

Oh! And Hindi! Did you know theres like 3 diffrent letters in Hindi that have compleatly diffrent sounds to people who grow up with Hindi, but sound identical to people who dont?

And I heard Chinese isnt that hard. There is no real alphabet, but the diffrent symbles make up a word. And isnt there only like 20 diffrent symbles altogether? So just think of the symbles in Chinese like letters; you put a bunch of them together to make words. Not that hard..

...Untill you need to add an arm, a leg and a head to each letter X_X

There are tens of thousands of Chinese characters; even if they're made up of the same stuff it's still pretty tough remembering them all.

Korean's alphabet is actually really nice. But Korean itself has too many vowels for me. @_@

just a question. where does the word dutch come from, if people are from englend they're english, america american, wales, welsh etc.
yet how comes people from holland are classed as dutch?

Because stupid fools used to think that the Netherlands and Germany were the same thing, so they called it Dutch (from Deutsch which is German for... well, German) and for some reason it sticked.

It's kind of funny

England (England) - English (English)
Germany (Deutschland) - German (Deutsch)
Netherlands (Nederland) - Dutch (Nederlands)

Does anyone see the link? XD

I think any tonal language would be hard to learn, at least for me. Even in my own language, I always use the wrong accent, giving rise to a totally different meaning of the word I want!

Well, for me (I haven't even tried chinese or any of those kinds of languages) Latin was the hardest cuz of all the grammatical rules, and mostly because I am always trying to relate it to english which is a major no no. Also, writing Latin Poetry is very, VERY hard, espeicially when you can't remember if those two vowels are diphthongs or not (It is hard enough for a beginner to try and remember how to spell everything or not and whether this is really a long syllable or a short).

I took a little bit of latin too, there is a LOT of memorization needed to get the grammar right hehe. it was pretty hard but it was all pretty logical.

I would have to say Chinese is the hardest to learn, seems like you almost have to learn word by word.

Japanese is not that bad, everything makes a lot of sense, almost like math. Won't take you long to learn how the grammar system works, then from there on out, memorize vocab!

Pig Latin is much harder than Latin...
I think Pig Latin is the hardest language and since ALL KIDS should know it I feel left out because I don't...

I think any tonal language would be hard to learn, at least for me. Even in my own language, I always use the wrong accent, giving rise to a totally different meaning of the word I want!

*cries*

All my families languages are tonal, so it makes it really hard for me to learn them all seeing how I have English as a first language and English isnt tonal.. And when I say one thing, everyone else hears another...

GERMAN. It's so hard it makes me cry and stress out and BREATHE too quickly :: dies quietly ::

wow, im surprised no one's mentioned it before, but english is REALLY hard to learn. So many exceptions to all those grammatical rules. I learned my english through TV (which is probably why i had to have an english tutor for so many years)

english... when i first came to the usa i went crazy... (not litterally) and people speaking it improperly most of the time doenst help (well where i am anyways :()

writing - character based
reading - character based
talking - korean

tonly chinese grammarly icelandic

GERMAN. It's so hard it makes me cry and stress out and BREATHE too quickly :: dies quietly ::

German is relatively easy, I just never could be arsed to work on it XP

German is the hardest for me. Followed by Italian, which is confusingly similar to French. Then followed by Japanese which is fairly easy... then the easiest is French.

-Chinese/Dutch would be the hardest to pronounce, I think. Because in Chinese, most words has at least four different meanings and a different way to say it each, and some have five. Not to mention you can't learn how to pronounce Chinese just by looking at the word, it's all memorization (by the way, I'm talking about traditional, if you haven't figured it out yet). And I also say Dutch, because the accent and the guttural sound is more difficult for me to pronounce correctly. But other languages (Indian, Bulgarian, Japanese, Spanish, French) I've been able to speak sentences in it without any accent.
-Grammar, I would say English because it's organization is just... very weird and random... and maybe Spanish a little, because you kind of have to think exactly what you're going to say before you speak, because you'd have to move around pronouns and adjectives based on what you said and... well, things of that nature. But English and Spanish is very easy to learn to speak at least.

dominate: haha yeah and that's just Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese chinese uses 9 different intonations. Which is why I'm glad it's my first language, probably really really hard to learn to speak correctly.

My first language is english 2nd chinese and 3rd japanese. Hardest to write is definitely chinese.

I speak Finnish as my native language, so its not hard for me, but its really hard for anyone not from around here. We dont have words like in, with or from at all. We just add them to the end (or sometimes the middle) of a word.
Mopan and Kekchi Maya languages are also really hard. A friends friend of mine tried to learn them but every time she said something, it would mean something else, but she couldn´t hear the difference.
I also think that chinise might be hard. Chinise people speak so fast and there are way too many different marks (or whatever) to learn.

German is relatively easy, I just never could be arsed to work on it XP

It's not easy for me, I find it ridiculously difficult. The easiest I would say, is French.

It's not easy for me, I find it ridiculously difficult. The easiest I would say, is French.

German is probably one of the more difficult languages to get started, but once you "get" it, it becomes easier. English is the other way round, it's easy to learn, but hard to learn to speak well.

But then the difficulty of a language depends on your mother tongue. A native speaker of Italian will find learning Spanish quite easy, for example.

If Angelic knows Dutch (which from comments earlier in the thread is quite possible), German wouldn't be too difficult to him. I don't know Dutch, but watching Dutch movies in the original, I can - now and then - guess what is being said (my mother tongue is German).

German is probably one of the more difficult languages to get started, but once you "get" it, it becomes easier. English is the other way round, it's easy to learn, but hard to learn to speak well.

But then the difficulty of a language depends on your mother tongue. A native speaker of Italian will find learning Spanish quite easy, for example.

If Angelic knows Dutch (which from comments earlier in the thread is quite possible), German wouldn't be too difficult to him. I don't know Dutch, but watching Dutch movies in the original, I can - now and then - guess what is being said (my mother tongue is German).

My mother tongue? o.o My mother is English. ^_^; Yes. XD No advantages there :p However, I'm taking Spanish next year and French; I've been told since I'm better at French than German, I should -really- take Spanish. And I will. <3

German is probably one of the more difficult languages to get started, but once you "get" it, it becomes easier. English is the other way round, it's easy to learn, but hard to learn to speak well.

But then the difficulty of a language depends on your mother tongue. A native speaker of Italian will find learning Spanish quite easy, for example.

If Angelic knows Dutch (which from comments earlier in the thread is quite possible), German wouldn't be too difficult to him. I don't know Dutch, but watching Dutch movies in the original, I can - now and then - guess what is being said (my mother tongue is German).

The biggest problem with German was the whole der die das bit x_x that's why I was never really good at it (and lack of study of course :whistle: I can watch German telly and understand most of it without much trouble.

The biggest problem with German was the whole der die das bit x_x that's why I was never really good at it (and lack of study of course :whistle: I can watch German telly and understand most of it without much trouble.

I can understand that. What do you make of a language where a carrot is female, and apple is male, but a girl is neuter. @_@

If Angelic knows Dutch (which from comments earlier in the thread is quite possible), German wouldn't be too difficult to him. I don't know Dutch, but watching Dutch movies in the original, I can - now and then - guess what is being said (my mother tongue is German).

dutch is a mix of german, english and french, but everyone already knew that
so why am I making this post???:think:

Any type of language from "old world" African tribes. I can't even begin to imagine how long it would take to get the right "click" or any type of articulation they used to mean a word. It just seems hard for me.

English is hard as well, even though it's my primary language. It's amazing the amount of rules people don't even realize exist!

probably because no one follows the rules any more for english.

dutch is a mix of german, english and french, but everyone already knew that
so why am I making this post???:think:

That's not true.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_language

Read that.

probably I had a hard time studying japanese before but now I a little good at it...anybody tried speaking in Filipino language? :D

Dutch,french and German for me is the hardest...before I thought japanese is hard but I got a hang of it...by the way has anyone tried speaking in Filipino/Tagalog?

i know some one who speaks tagalog

though not the hardest, i think vietnamese is pretty hard. each letter in the vietnamese alphabet has several different tones, aside from the basic. like "A" has 18 different tones.

Japanese, Chinese, French, Spanish, Korean, etc

all the ones you ve said are very easy to me kike

Dutch,french and German for me is the hardest...before I thought japanese is hard but I got a hang of it...by the way has anyone tried speaking in Filipino/Tagalog?

nagtatagalog ako... (translation: i speak tagalog) tagalog is pretty easy really

it's chinese that's hard i think.^.^

I heard that English is actually the hardest language to learn.. It was pretty easy for me considering that it's my first language. I also heard that Japanese is the second hardest language.

In my opinion, I would think that Japanese is the hardest.

I would say......Chinese, both Cantonese and Mandarin. Why? Make a long vowel sound and it completely becomes another word, watch the pronounciation since it makes a big factor, second would be Japanese, not speaking hypothetically, but the writing system is, three different styles and each are used differently.

Navahoe (srry if a spelled it wrong)...no one can understand the language fully if u were not raised in the culture....

..Chiniese too, but other ppl can still learn it, and didn't the same problem..personally, I think Cantonese is harder, since speaking and talking isn't the same thing. For cantonese, u can't speak what u write...and it changes quickly through westernization...add oil! (Lol)

I've heard that Chinese is hard, but since I've never tried learning it, I can't have a real opinion. Tamil is the hardest language that I've tried to learn so far. Oh, and if you can tell me a good (in size and content) Tamil-English translation dictionary I can get in the U.S., I will love you for life. Japanese has much easier sounds than Tamil does, but a larger alphabet when you consider kanji. I've dabbled in Spanish and (of course) English, but they're not too hard for me considering they're used everyday where I live.

I think "proper" English is hard in my opinion, besides Cantonese.

We Americans speak broken up and messed up English. For example: We don't pronounce the "T" at the end in some words like, "What" and "that"

and also pronouncing words differently like, "Laboratory" Many would pronounce it as, "Labro-tory" The correct way actually is, "Lab-or-a-tory"

Anyone ever tried arabic.

For the word lion theres 85 ways to say it (more or less)

There are so many grammar rules and things so we say its rich,

English has only one word for a thing like house.

So we say its poor.:P

xpeed, English is one of the hardest languages of the world. I would have to say that everyone who speaks anyone language will have their own accents. In the part of America I lived in for most of my life we did pronounce the 'T's in our words. But now that I've moved it has bugged me that people don't. People from southern Japan sometimes can't even understand people from northern Japan thanks to accents. They are speaking the same language, and who is to say one is right and the other is wrong?

yousee... English has a poor word bank?!?

You could replace house with any of these words and still be understood: home, residence, dwelling, abode, place etc.

I'm going back to my 'place' to eat lunch. His 'dwelling' is rather small eh?

And then different 'house's could have many different replacements depending on it's traits.

ie: mansion, cottage, shack...

hardest language, well apparently english is, but since i live in australia..its not hard for me, well english has a lot diffrent rules, eg. silent letters >.< and such, not to mention diffrent places...have their own "style" of english, e.g. Australia: Mum, Colour etc. American: Mom, Color etc.. btw did i forget to mention, english is a combination of multiple langages, e.g.gaelic + anglo saxon + latin + french + ....something else, all combined >.< to make english...... *i think i know i got something wrong in there, but give me a break, i cant remember history >.<*

japanese.....besides kanji, is actually a pretty easy language, grammar is confusing at first, but after a while it all clicks, Hirigana and Katakana are easy to remember, its just kanji that bugs you...

Cantonese - possibly one of the hardest of the chinese..well since my parents and cantonese and i speak....it fluently enough, its not too hard for me.... Cantonese is hard because we have a lot of difrent tones, 9 diffrent tones *i think...*, not to mention the way we speak and write is diffrent, writing is a lot more formal, while our speaking is less...formal i suppose you can say. Also for us Cantonese people, its easier for us to learn manderin than manderin people to learn cantonese

Fact: Cantonese is one of the most widely spread chinese language around the world, since cantonese people were one of the first people to migrate out of china, though now days, its slowly changing to manderin
Added note: most Cantonese people speak manderin...though i'm still learning >.<

Manderin - Easier than cantonese, has 4 tones, but have to be careful as when you speak if you say a tone wrong, you can change a word like look into kiss, or soup into salt. (even though its a hard language... more and more ... white? people a learning to speak manderin...especially buisnessmen....lol, though its still surprsing every time i see a white person speak chinese...fluently lol. though on the added note, speaking is relatively easy if one is determined to learn, its the reading thats hard >.<)

Writing: hard >< lots of diffrent characters to remember, average person knows about 2,000 or so character...< maybe wrong, some one correct me if i'm wrong

yousee... English has a poor word bank?!?

You could replace house with any of these words and still be understood: home, residence, dwelling, abode, place etc.

I'm going back to my 'place' to eat lunch. His 'dwelling' is rather small eh?

And then different 'house's could have many different replacements depending on it's traits.

ie: mansion, cottage, shack...

You could be understood but for the exact meaning of the word house. Not because of traits or anything. not my house or his home. The word house exactly. Just the object with a roof, well you get the point. But you also have one word for two different thing. Pear, Pair. Both sound the same. But only one word. Of course you can say 2 so its kind of a bad example but its that kind of thing. Its why most people learn english. Because its widely used and quite easy.

English is by no means easy; it's a very fucked up language with no proper rules - or rather, the language hardly sticks to its own rules. Proper English is hard to learn.

yep, if a man was sowing seeds in a garden and his wife was sewing a dress, how would you write that they both spent the day sowing/sewing?

You could say they both spent their day in boredom. But seriously, if you say 'they both spent their day _____ing,' you are implying that they are doing the same thing (_____ing). And since sewing/sowing are different... you get the idea.

When it comes to grammer rules, a hero of mine once said something like all native speakers of a language inherently speak and write their language correctly. Even if it isn't technically the most 'proper' style used 500 years ago, and who is to say that what was used back a few years ago is proper and not what we use now.

Ok, people do mess up just for being human, but the point is we don't have to spend 8 years in graduate english studies to speak english correctly, as long as we live english (I doubt I'll ever speak Arabic correctly in my lifetime though).

I read something yesterday, and apparerntly, its harder to speak other languages because the tongue muscles find it hard.

I think english is easy!!!! (ok i use a translator so what?) If you want me to speak independant english ill try for this thread but im trash.

never never NEVER want to learn chinese!

I think english is easy!!!! (ok i use a translator so what?) If you want me to speak independant english ill try for this thread but im trash.

You say English is easy, yet you claim you need a translater and say without it your English is trash (actually it also is with the translater). You make no sense.

hmmmm wouldn't russian be the hardest to learn

You say English is easy, yet you claim you need a translater and say without it your English is trash (actually it also is with the translater). You make no sense.

Youi have a valid point angelic ^_^! Yes i cant speak english properly if my life had been staked on it: but I think my classes are pretty easy; (didn't say I could speak language!!!! Just easy!) Perhaps I have been ignorant of the languages' truth language?

(off topic but: Yay! Golden week is here!!!!... almost...)

In all likelyhood, the hardest language is probably an obscure one spoken by a tribe on the verge of extinction. There are languages out there with 48 cases, 140 distinct sounds, and 30 letter words (not all in the same language, of course). From what I've seen, Mandarin and Japanese aren't especially difficult in terms of grammar (just very different). The hard part is the writing syetem, which linguists don't consider to be part of the language itself.

yup: i agree: the hardest to learn language to learn is: The unknown dieing language: Congratulations! ^_^

Don't ever mind. We'll find it some day....

hmmmm wouldn't russian be the hardest to learn

nah i managed to translate my mate's russian without me ever learning it or hearing it before, just by picking up on one word that sounded half english.

I'm surprised no-one has considered body language as a language.

Sign language, you know, for deaf people. That has to be very hard x_x

I practice sign language as a spare hobby (wierd eh?) anyways I am actualkly rubbish but I can do colours and all of the english alphbet. Did you know that about 10 of the ones I learnt of my brother are used in Japan too?

Sign language, you know, for deaf people. That has to be very hard x_x

Yeah that's true. One of my teachers used to try and do that. All I remember is how to "say" everybody.

I know a few, because i had to learn a song and the sign language for some parts.
They had some MASSIVE dictionary just to teach the simpler signs. O.o

Englishx_x x_x it recks your head , a lot of it doesnt make sense grammeracally.... but ive learnt it , considered fleunt and i dont give a crap anymore

It's not easy for me, I find it ridiculously difficult. The easiest I would say, is French.

Ha! That's funny, now. My mother tongue is french, and I don't find it easy at all. Grammar rules, all the exceptions in everything, etc... sure, it's not chinese, it's not dutch, agreed; but I think it is way easier to master english for a french native, than the opposite. As a matter of fact, most english people I've heard trying to speak french often end up being the only ones to understand what they are saying, i.e. it's really bad. Moreover, how often do you see, on Internet, english people giving french titles to their blogs or stories or avatars and etc., making errors in spelling basic words, such as "rouge?" Isn't there someone on this forum who's sig. reads: "Le papillon rogue?" I see it all the time.

Anyways, just to say: french isn't so easy.

Im surprised no one said the languge of india.

Sign language, you know, for deaf people. That has to be very hard x_x

It's pretty hard, I only know a few signs because my grandmother is deaf, but she really doesn't know many herself as she was never taught. But she has her own way of letting you know what she wants, but you should hear her when she's mad, not to be funny or anything but she sounds like a chicken.

Is japanese hard. I want to start learning. Are the words similar to something else. (probably not)

Hardest language myabe latin. I hate it with a passion. 2 years wasted in school. All we ever were taught was Quis est tu? What is your name.

The rest we had to learn ourselves.

i used to know sign languge. I was mute when i was small.

Really? that's interesting.

yup it's true

it seems like ym depressing post about my past has stopped this topic.

English is the hardest if you think about it. We use a amazingly large amount of slang. We have a vast number of accents and dialects, not to mention all the complicated word spellings (to, two, too). Conative meanings, and large array of synonyms that most americans don't even know (consuetude, gormandize, sterling, resplendent) don't help either.

That's true, but try teaching yourself Japanese like I am! It's hard. T.T

That's true, but try teaching yourself Japanese like I am! It's hard. T.T


Diddo. No one's around to teach me, so I have to teach my self... all I know is "hy" (sorry if I misspelled it!) means yes... :(

Speaking Japanese is actually very easy to catch on to. It's sentence structure is pretty straight forward (though it still confuses me), and it doesn't have tonal changes like some languages found in the Far East (Chineese anyone?). Obviously writing Japanese is a different story. Hiragana and Katakana can be memorized pretty quickly, but it seems like wrting Kanji is impossible for me to master.

If I was to give what I think is the hardest language, I'd say it's latin. Too many different word tenses, and the whole placement of words in a sentence just makes it seem difficult. On an equal level, I'd say Chineese is pretty bad too, for obvious reasions.

^^ more and more i would have to say that learning japanese is easier than other languages. sure, the grammatical structure is COMPLETELY different from english, but at least the rules stay the same, and there aren't all the special exceptions, like in english. more i think about it, im glad i was born in an english speaking country, so i didnt have to learn it as a second language.

This is ironic i know chinese but i suck at japanese. reading the kanji is what i have trouble with too many saying for one word in japanese.

chinese. it confuses me so bad!!

This is ironic i know chinese but i suck at japanese. reading the kanji is what i have trouble with too many saying for one word in japanese.

Nothing ironic about that, the languages are, apart from the kanji, totally unrelated to eachother.

true. but i meant since the meaning for most words are the same i should be able to learn quickly but i am not.

A lot of kanji are different, and Japanese doesn't really have Chinese words. Most kanji do have a Chinese reading (on-reading) but that's it. In fact, some Chinese people have trouble with Japanese because of the kanji meaning something else or having a different reading than in Chinese. It's a common misconception that knowing Chinese makes Japanese easy to learn.

Im surprised no one said the languge of india.

Well I said Tamil way back when, but past me I don't know how many people care, much less want to learn any of the Indian languages. (I think I met one guy who was studying Urdu in college, but I was at a school with a huge interest in foreign languages)

1. It's not 'cool' like Japanese/Chinese/Arabic
2. It's not as common as European languages (mind you, for Americans - I'm sure alot more people speak Indian languages compared to the European ones)

I do find it strange though that one of the largest countries in the world is ignored by so many people.

It depends on what language you already know... Since I know Latin, English, Chinese. Nothing is really that hard for me to learn... =\

no no there has to be a hard languge for you.right? like arabic?

Well if you know latin or greek or any other kind of root language, everything kinda just fits into place when you learn a new language I would guess...

Chinese
Japanese
Korean
French
Latin
TAGALOG (seriously)
Spanish
Greek

you actually tried to learn all those deadly love?

Chinese
Japanese
Korean
French
Latin
TAGALOG (seriously)
Spanish
Greek
Spanish?? No way, Spanish is pretty simple compared to some other languages. The grammar is straightforward enough. All the vowels only have one sound -- you can tell how a word's pronounced just by looking at it, which gives it a huge advantage over languages like English or French. There aren't even pronunciation guides in Spanish dictionaries, because they aren't necessary.

@ JF7X: Yup.
@ Latke: I dunno. A lot of the people I know have a lotta probs with talking in Spanish (the ones that aren't Mexican I mean)

Well I said Tamil way back when, but past me I don't know how many people care, much less want to learn any of the Indian languages. (I think I met one guy who was studying Urdu in college, but I was at a school with a huge interest in foreign languages)

1. It's not 'cool' like Japanese/Chinese/Arabic
2. It's not as common as European languages (mind you, for Americans - I'm sure alot more people speak Indian languages compared to the European ones)

I do find it strange though that one of the largest countries in the world is ignored by so many people.

I also said Hindi on way back... And im still sticking with Khmer, Hindi and the African clicking thing.

i some how feel lucky because on deadly loves list i think 3 are pretty easy.

and exactly which 3 r those? (well, 4 tagalog, thats easy 4 me, but 4 alotta ppl that ive taught it 2, none of them gets it)

chinese japanese and spanish.

It depends on what language you already know... Since I know Latin, English, Chinese. Nothing is really that hard for me to learn... =\

It's not like those three languages are the basic to learn all other languages. Try Dutch, you'll be surprised =P Or Japanese, nothing like those languages (although it does share similarities with arabic...)

Hm... I recall Finnish was one of the hardest languages to learn. *feel so very special* And Swedish is nearly impossible to speak fluently if you're not native.

say is this good idea? or a bad one? to start learning korean over the summer.

Why? Do you know any Koreans?

well i have a friend who is willing tot each me korean for free.( just like japanese.)

lucky