Which language is the hardest (for a native Chinese speaker) or an English speaker

[atitarev]

Hello,

I hope you don't mind taking part in this poll.

I learned and dabbled in a number of different languages and I won't include languages I have no idea about (like Suahili, Hindi or American Indian languages). Please vote using your feeling, experience or knoweldge.

My feeling is standard Mandarin (and other dialects) are almost complete opposites to standard Arabic. (I saw a few Japanese forums for learners of Arabic but couldn't find many Chinese of those, is there any interest to Arabic in China?).

(The vote is public - you can see who voted), multiple choices are allowed.

I voted for 2 most difficult ones in my opinion, although each language has easier aspects.

Regards,

Anatoli

[gato]

I don't quite understand the question. Hardest for an native Chinese OR a native English speaker? Chinese wouldn't be hard for the former, and English wouldn't be hard for a native English speaker. I don't see the logic for setting up the question this way.

[atitarev]

If you're English native speaker but you insist that your native language is the hardest (your objective opinion), you can still vote that way, I thought about such questions but allowed to vote in any direction because I know such opinions exist and they have some merit.

[flameproof]

I have some doubts that there are too many people out there who learned a large number of languages and could say which one the hardest is.

I think you should have knowledge of at least 10 languages to take part in the poll.

And then the term "hard" is relative in itself. Hard to pronounce would mean many phonetic elements which are not used in the native language. Or you can refer to writing, sentence structure, etc, etc.... And last not least the impression of the learner itself.

In short, there is no answer.

[atitarev]

You take it too seriously guys, I know it's all relative to your background and you need to know other languages so you can compare but people have different life experiences and why not share some ideas about diffculties learning a language? I haven't heard much from Chinese speakers, especially about their experience learning a language other than English, well this is an English-speaking forum, but still, there might be some around.

I want to meet more people who are interested in a few languages, meet some polyglots, hear what they have to say, etc.

[nephridium]

Actually, to have an objective survey about 'language difficulty' we'd have to use an ideal "empty" model (akin to the 'black body' in physics). The results may not be very practical; creating a relational graph between the languages might prove more useful.

How fast babies aquire certain language skills may be an indicator, but is affected by lots of surrounding factors (such as education of parents, efficiency of school etc.).

Ok, enough of the preliminary blabla. In your list I'd go for Mandarin if you include the writing system, seeing as even adults have considerable problems writing many words.

Korean and Japanese could be considered difficult because they don't show many similarities with most other language one might know beforehand (whereas learning Chinese with a Korean/Japanese/Vietnamese background will be easier). They are categorized as 'isolated languages' or as the members of the 'altaic language family' (which is a very loosely-knit family). The writing systems, especially the Korean Hangeul, are very intuitive and easy to learn, which in turn facilitates easy learning and pronunciation of new vocabulary. Thankfully we nowadays have Pinyin for Mandarin, even Chinese children in school use Pinyin to learn the pronuncation of words.

Pronunciation can be a hurdle complicating the learning process. In the list I'd go for Japanese as the easiest one to aquire followed by Mandarin and Korean. The other languages all used alphabets for centuries and thus created a wider range of phonemes per syllable. This makes it hard e.g. for grown up Chinese to learn the correct pronunciation of "tent" (often resulting in "tente").

"Arabic" has a special role here, because similar to "Chinese" it encompasses a family of dialects that historically had the same writing system (which didn't encode vowels), but have created strong regional diffrerences (especially in terms of pronunciation). An Arab from Syria will have a huge problem trying to comprehend an Egyptian talking.

Arabic is also special in that many of its words (as well as the numbers) have found their way into languages like Spanish and even English (e.g. alcohol, guitar or coffee).

Within the alphabetical languages there are also differences between the difficulty of orthography. E.g. in English you have words with the same spelling but different pronunciations (e.g. route) and vice versa (e.g. 'plane' and 'plain'), whereas German for instance sports a less sloppy use of the alphabet. On the other hand this makes English spelling bees more interesting than German or Spanish ones. Another example I read about recently was the word 'polish', which changes its meaning AND pronunciation when you capitalize it.

If we disregard the writing system Mandarin becomes one of the easier languages, the number of phonemes and tones e.g. in Cantonese or Vietnamese is considerably higher. Solely looking at the phonology I believe Russian is the most complex of the languages listed.

Argh, this reply has gotten longer than I thought.. Suffice it to say that this is a very complex question and even if we use the "black body model" from above the answer varies from individual to individual. Some may find aquiring grammar is easy, some may find it impossible to twist the tongue in a way the native speaker does etc. In any case it's an interesting discussion. It leads into equally interesting questions such as "How does the language we are thinking in affect our thinking?" or "What effects does a certain language have on culture and philosophy?"

[HashiriKata]

Nice post, nephridium!

"How does the language we are thinking in affect our thinking?" or "What effects does a certain language have on culture and philosophy?"

Difficult languages lead to difficult thinkings ?

[gato]

If we disregard the writing system Mandarin becomes one of the easier languages, the number of phonemes and tones e.g. in Cantonese or Vietnamese is considerably higher. Solely looking at the phonology I believe Russian is the most complex of the languages listed.

That's a big "IF." The writing system is a big part of the language. I assume that you mean reading as well as writing. If you can't read the language you are trying to learn, it would be very difficult to acquire new vocabulary in that language. You would have to learn everything orally (or, let's say, by pinyin in the case of Chinese). While it is quite feasible to learn enough survival Chinese without being able to read characters, I doubt that anyone would be able to speak Mandarin like an educated adult (say with a high school-level vocabulary) without being able to read Chinese characters.

[wushijiao]

Nice post nephridium.

I think that all spoken languages are equally complex. Part of that reason is due to Steven Pinker's The Langage Instinct. In that, he writes:

"Language is not a cultural artifact that we learn the way we learn the way we learn to tell time or how the federal government works. Instead, it is a distinct piece of the biological makeup of our brains. Language is a complex, specialized skill, which develops in the child spontaneously, without conscious effort or formal instruction, is deployed without awareness of its underlying logic, is qualitatively the same in every individual, and is distinct from more general abilities to process information or behave intelligently.” He then goes on to term language an “instinct”. And the term “instinct”, “….conveys the idea that people know how to talk in more or less the sense that spiders know how to spin webs”

So, from that point of view, all languages created by children are equally complex because our brains our equally complex.

If all spoken languages are equal, then what could make one language than another?

My personal opinion is that there are few important factors:

1) Difficulty of the writing system. Chinese, of course, is more difficult than the fairly straight-forward systems like Korean or Spanish.

2) As far as speaking, the degree of standardization makes a big difference. For example, some countries have hardcore diglossias in which people speak a standard at official events and places, but then speak a colloquial dialect or language at informal gatherings. These two types of speech are sometimes merged as well. Arabic and Chinese are examples of this. Other languages have basically completed the process of standardization. It seems that Japanese and Koreans have accents, it isn’t too common to completely not understand someone who is a native of those languages. The case is fairly similar with English and Spanish.

Another notorious example of the spelling of a language being hard to learn is Tibetan. They do have a phonetic alphabet, but it was fixed over 1000 years ago. English, in contrast, (I think) started to become set around 500-350 years ago. So, it is hard to learn the contemporary Tibetan spoken language and the writing system at the same time, while the Spanish alphabet almost always reflects the sounds of spoken language.

3) As Gato mentioned, to what degree does the written language influence the spoken language is another factor that is worth considering. Mandarin has the unique situation in which most of the spoken language consists of two syllable words but the ancient written language mainly consisted of single characters. Similarly, Chinese words can be abbreviated in ways that are not obvious. In most European languages, to my knowledge, words are abbreviated with letters (USA, YMCA, NBA, UN, UK…etc). While listening, you mat not know the specific abbreviation, but because it is in letters, it’s not hard to realize that someone just said an abbreviation. With Chinese on the other hand, you may not know what běidà, zhōnggōng, máoxuǎn, wéngě…etc. are abbreviations when listening to them for the first time because they sound more like plausible words than abbreviations using letters do.

My point is that the terseness of the Chinese written language can sometimes carry over into the spoken language, especially when talking to people who read a lot. Of course, every language has a written language that differs from the spoken language, but in Chinese that difference is stretched pretty far.

So, in absolute terms, I think because of the character system, widespread diglossia, and the influence of the characters system into the spoken language, there is a decent case to be made that Chinese is one of the hardest languages in the world to learn. But even with that said, I still don’t think it is that much different than other languages, just slightly harder. (By the way, I’ve heard from some people feel that Japanese is harder because it contains the a difficult grammar combined with the difficulty of kanji. I don’t know.)

In terms of “what is the hardest language” for an individual person, that mainly depends on that person’s native language and what that person is good at. If you native language is Dutch, it will be easier to learn German or English than it would be to learn French or Korean. Or to use another example, for me, a native English speaker, it is easy to remember the Spanish word universidad because it is similar to the English "university". Also, when learning Spanish, I had a much more difficult time remembering the words that weren’t related to English, via Latin or French

Also, some people like grammar. Some people are good at mimicking foreign sounds. Some people can do both well. All languages require a combination of those skills, but some languages are more grammar-intense than others, while others require more agile tongues. From that personal, subjective point of view, it’s hard to measure what the hardest language is.

[bhchao]

The grammar structure of Mandarin Chinese is similar to English, SVO, while the grammar structure is SOV for Korean and Japanese. Therefore some people may find Mandarin easier to learn than Korean and Japanese because its grammar pattern is "straightforward" and similar to English.

Japanese has the verb and adjective conjugations that Mandarin doesn't have.

Korean has the honorific verbal endings that are used to indicate politeness, casualness, or bluntness. This social hierachy influence found in Korean is also lacking in Mandarin. Examples like "sarang hae" and "sarang haeyo", or "odi ga" and "odi gayo", or "adasu" (I understand) and "adasumnida". How you include these endings have a big impact on the level of politeness perceived by the listener. There are also the difficulties in pronunciation regarding aspirated and unaspirated sounds. Also dual counting systems are another issue; one set of numbers ("pure Korean") for counting purposes; and another set of numbers ("Sino-Korean) borrowed from Chinese numbers that are used for expressing years, months, days, and currency.

Mandarin has the complexity of the written language (no alphabet versus an alphabet writing system for English and Hangul), the difficulties of Classical Chinese, and the tones. But once you get past that, I think the rest is a breeze compared to Korean and Japanese when taking into account grammar patterns, conjugations, and honorifics.

[atitarev]

Thanks for interesting posts, guys!

Some words about Chinese vs Japanese (or Korean). Although Japanese and Korean grammars are more complex than Chinese, it's not that you have to memorise a lot, understanding patterns, endings is not that time consuming and with a proper exercise or two it sinks in. A difficult grammar, IMHO, is when you have a LOT of patterns to deal with. I am Russian but I think Russian grammar has too many plural patterns, declensions and conjugations, so objectively, Russian is a hard language to learn, phonetics - no it's not that difficult but native Japanese and Chinese learners have more difficulties with consonant clusters. So, I think Japanese and Korean grammar is strange and unusual from European point of view but not too difficult.

Arabic grammar is also difficult, after some exposure, I think it's not as difficult as Russian but you also have to memorise a lot of plural patterns, declensions and conjugations. Arabic words change the middle of the word a lot:

bayt - buyuut; house - houses

waziir - wuzaraa'; minister - ministers

madiina - mudun; city - cities

kalb - kilaab; dog - dogs

Like Russian Arabic has cases - 3 only (Russian has 6!)

haadha bayt-un - this is a house

fii bayt-in - in a house

adraka bayt-an - saw a house

But there are different endings for definite/indefinite nouns

Verbs have conjugations and have more forms than, say Russian or German - adding the feminine forms vs masculine and dual plural. (All nouns have singular, dual and sound plural forms).

Diglossia is more of a problem with Arabic than with Chinese, since there are no native speakers of the standard Arabic, everybody speaks a dialect and there is some resistance by learners to actually learn it before getting any education at all.

As the short vowels are not written, very often learning Arabic is somewhat similar to Chinese, since you have to know the words or their forms, to know how to read them. You can guess the meaning by their root letters (similar to recognising radicals) and sometimes, guess pronunciation (of vowels or absence thereof) if you know a lot of patterns and know the grammar well.

d-r-s (learning) - root letters

madrasa - school

mudarris - teacher (male)

darasa - to study (or he studied)

I now find easier to learn Chinese with so many resources available. Characters are the biggest hurdle, of course but good audio courses with character texts help to overcome at least the recognition problem. When you know the characters, in many cases it's just putting the building blocks together to make meaningful sentences

A huge factor in making learning a language is what you have on hand to learn it. Good textbooks, teachers and exposure. Some complex gramamr points can be explained well and using good examples, so it no longer seems difficult.

[rmdavis82]

I came across an article in a Newsweek from earlier this year. It had an article about learning Chinese and it sited it as being one of the most difficult languages to learn. It claimed that Putonghua/Mandarin, Cantonese, Arabic, Korean, and Japanese are believed to be the 5 most difficult languages to learn. But this is from a Western magazine's perspective, so the question still remains. . .

[Weronika]

maybe somebody knows which newsweek was that? I'm interested to read that article.

[Quest]

From a Western perspective, Chinese is hard because there's too much irregularity in its grammar, and you have to relearn all vocab. That plus the annoying characters the Chinese just wont give up on. And oh, the pesky tones! AND the fact that Chinese people won't talk to me in Chinese.

From an East Asian perspective, Chinese is easy. It has simple grammar, many of which we share in our own language. We know most of the vocab. We know the characters or we think the characters are fun to learn, and one of the best things the Chinese have invented. Everyone speaks to us in Chinese, and since our English is bad, we have to use Chinese to communicate, that gives us a little more push to pick up the language asap.

From a Chinese perspective, any dialect is easy, you just have to live there for a year or less, and start speaking to people in their dialect. don't even bother to get rid of your accent though, because you will never succeed.

[Ncao]

From a Chinese perspective, any dialect is easy

I have to disagree. I heard many northern Chinese say Cantonese is hard,and think Cantonese,Shanghaiese and Minnanese sound like foreign languages.

[HashiriKata]

I heard many northern Chinese say Cantonese is hard,and think Cantonese,Shanghaiese and Minnanese sound like foreign languages.

By "northern Chinese" do you mean Mandarin native speakers? I can understand why Mandarin speakers would say so about other dialects, since - generally speaking - speakers of the standard variety often don't have a very strong incentive to learn (or frequent exposure to) the non-standard varieties. Similarly, English speakers often consider other languages difficult.

[Ncao]

Yes I meant native Mandarin speakers.

[Quest]

I have to disagree. I heard many northern Chinese say Cantonese is hard,and think Cantonese,Shanghaiese and Minnanese sound like foreign languages.

Any language you don't understand sounds like a foreign language. Those that say it's hard are the ones that never tried or intended to learn. "yea, it's hard, because I don't understand it..." "are you gonna try and learn it?" "no, why would I?" I don't know about other dialects, but I've seen northerners, southerners alike settling in GZ/HK/overseas, and picking up the language in less than a year.

[gato]

I don't know about other dialects, but I've seen northerners, southerners alike settling in GZ/HK/overseas, and picking up the language in less than a year.

It really depends on what proficiency level one is aiming for. The Western European languages are still easier to learn, in my opinion, because the written text being phonetic makes it easier to learn and having the written text makes it easier to learn the spoken language. The difficulty of the Chinese written language makes it harder to learn the spoken language -- harder meaning that it takes longer (not hard like quantum mechanics, which is impossible for most people to learn).

I think most Western European langugages can be "picked up" (i.e. reaching conversational level) in a matter of two, three months in a full-immersion environment. If one studies full-time, conversational proficiency can be achieved in about a month.

That may also be true for non-Mandarin dialects, though I suspect it would take much longer because of the lack of a written language to serve as a visual aid, in most cases.

[rmdavis82]

I checked my magazine. . .it was actually TIME and it was from June of this year. The cover story is about the new trend and the importance in learning Chinese.