The World’s Hardest Language
Linguists, political bodies, teachers, travelers, scholars, and history buffs alike have long considered the question: which language is most difficult to learn? Of course, difficulty is very relative and subjective; learning Turkish if you know Arabic will not be as difficult as English, and English speakers have a harder time learning both as opposed to Spanish or German. You might hear French and think, “that word is similar to English,” and this is probably because much of English comes from French. You likely wouldn’t think the same about Japanese, a completely unrelated language. So, of course, the natural course would be to find the language that is furthest from English genetically. Referring to my post from last week, however, you’ll find that it isn’t so simple. There are more than thirteen distinct language families in the world. Mandarin Chinese is as far from us as Swahili or Irish.
In order to determine what language is most difficult to learn we need to define what it means to learn a language. Many would say that it means to become fluent, but what exactly is fluency? Sometimes I open an English dictionary and find five words on one page that I don’t know. Does this mean I am not fluent in English? Of course not! There are many factors that go into fluency and it is something that can take longer for different people and it does not mean that you know every structure or possible structure in that given language. Dictionary.com defines fluency as “being able to speak and write quickly or easily in a given language.” Many people never achieve fluency in more than one language, especially, it seems, Americans. Most find becoming fluent in a language very daunting and there is not a consensus on what the best way to learn a language is. Most linguists and teachers would likely say that immersion is the most effective in picking up and understanding a language. Learning a language means being able to act and communicate flexibly while using it.
A huge factor in whether or not one is fluent is their confidence in speaking and receiving the speech of their non-native tongue. Perhaps this is why some people would say, “I speak French best when I’m drunk;” lower inhibitions lead to lower anxiety which leads to successful communication. Once you sit through enough vocabulary and grammar classes, you’re going to have to generate messages of your own in order to feel an attachment to the words of a foreign language. So, while languages that are most similar to English have more cognates that make them easier to learn, we also likely feel the most confident when speaking them because they don’t sound as “foreign” to us. Because of this, we can identify the languages that would be “easiest” for native English speakers to learn.
The Foreign Service Institute has split language difficulty into four levels. Again, this is from a native English-speaker’s perspective. Level I is composed of languages that are fairly similar to English and can be learned in a more casual environment or shorter amount of time. Some languages here include Danish, Spanish, French, Romanian, Norwegian, Dutch, etc. Level II includes languages that are a little bit further from English, but still not particularly difficult, such as German, Indonesian, or Swahili. Many of these languages are not related to English, but their structures seem to be understood relatively quickly.
Level III and Level IV languages are where things get more challenging. Most of the languages in these categories are significantly different from English to the point where there is a large degree of cultural education that also must be taught in order to achieve fluency. Arabic, Mandarin, and Japanese are Level IV. Russian, Hindi, Thai, and Greek are Level III. These numbers are based on research, but they are not absolute. Depending on the specific cultural environment that the English speaker grew up in, these levels might shift, but on the whole they seem to be fairly accurate. So we cannot say that Level IV languages are inherently the most difficult.
If cultural understanding is integral to language fluency, maybe the best definition for the hardest language would be the one that takes the greatest amount of cultural education. If this was the case, perhaps the answer would be Arabic, which is very heavily connected to Islam. The most common greeting is “As-salaam ‘alaykum,” which translates to “peace be upon you.” There are also many different types of Arabic, the standard might not be so useful in colloquial conversation.
Maybe instead the hardest language would be the one which has the most dialects to study or take into account. Undoubtedly, Chinese would take the cake on this one. “Chinese” is not so much a language as it is an umbrella term for Chinese languages. Although Mandarin is the most spoken of the Chinese languages, it also has a huge amount of dialects. What would be considered “Chinese” in Northern China might be completely unintelligible to “Chinese” speakers of the South.
Consonant Inventory for !Xóõ
What about the languages that use the most unfamiliar structures, like the fourteen-tone system of the Wobé language or the 87 consonant, click-heavy inventory of ǃXóõ? Each of these languages would take a huge amount of practice for an English speaker who isn’t used to tone or clicks. It would take a while for many of these sounds to feel natural for a learner to produce, and even longer for them to adopt them fluently and use them generatively.
How about the language that is most unlike its orthography? Tibetan or Mongolian are good contenders for this one, but English is also hopeless when it comes to spelling. Why does “gh” sound like a “g” in ghost, an “f” in tough, a “w” in though, and nothing in thought? Ask a first-grader in any American school, and I’m sure they will let you know how weird English spelling is.
Even still, we could consider languages that are exceptionally difficult to access as outsiders. Languages that only have a few hundred speakers might be very hard to pick up since there aren’t many writings or studies done on how to teach them. Even languages with thousands of speakers can fall victim to this.
As you can see, language “difficulty” is not so simple. It is impossible to say for certain what the hardest language is. Every speaker has different life experience, aptitude, anxiety levels, and motivation. We can agree that no one is going to pick up Korean in a few days, but we also can’t say how long it takes for complete fluency. Depending on an individual’s dedication and access and how one’s brain works, it goes on a case by case basis. It’s the reason why some high school students become fluent in their learned languages and why some can barely remember how to say “I’m hungry” by the time they are 25. With that being said, learning a “difficult” language can be very rewarding. It can open your eyes to a new perspective to see the world and talk about it with. Give it a try, then come back and teach me how to say hello!
