Hardest Language

[Zoris]

according to some study done by the CIA, romanian is the hardest out of 322-some languages to learn by an english speaker.

Well, at least on average it takes longer.

[Zoris]

If you want the hardest language for an English speaker to learn, you will probably want to look at;

African Tonal Languages
Austronesian Languages
Native American Languages

In fact, there are thousands of these languages that most people have never heard of.

I for one think its silly to say one language is plainly the hardest. Languages are dynamic things; certain languages could be harder for expressing different things. It also depends on the learner, what learning environment they are in, their teacher, their native languages, etc. There are so many factors that it should be understood that different languages are different difficulties for different people.

[pauce_goant]

Anyone said that spanish is a hard language. I'm a native spanish speaker and I think it's very complicated for the people who is not a native speaker. I think all the languages that come from the latin are difficult for people who speak a german root language that doesn't have many verbal conjugations.
Asian languages can be very hard too, specially mandarin and korean, but japanese is easy.

[welshnerd]

Well i'm learning Polish just for the challenge (also there are a few Polish Girls who offer a nice incentive!!). It's very difficult.

It's alright to speak, impossible to read and write. Well at the stage I am at!

I also asked one of the Polish girls ''Do you dance?''. When she said Yes I said ''Does that make you a ...................'' (you get the idea!).

[Dr J]

I think latin would be easy because it is just the root of english words.

Yeah but the there are copious amounts of Latin words that do not have roots which English has borrowed.

Plus, English is not a particularly hard language to learn. There may be exceptions to rules and it may have a strange orthographical system, but something like German is much more difficult.

I'd say amongst the hardest languages are Ancient Greek, Latin, Hungarian, Japanese and Chinese.

Many of the more exotic languages are harder for us because they are so different.

[welshnerd]

Is it true that in other cultures you are taught how to say multi-syllabic words differently and taught how to read multi-syllabic words differently?

This is because in some speed reading manuals they say that people who learn English as a second language after a Language like Polish or German can speed read faster than those who are English only speakers.

[Kobra]

But I am like Half Finnish, Half Native American and some other little things mixed in and they say that Finnish and Native American are two of the hardest languages to learn... Finnish being the hardest..

[Dr J]

Finnish being the hardest..

Maybe rather than saying 'which language', we should say which language family?

Because both Finnish and Hungarian are both Finno-Ugric and both very hard.

Icelandic is also exceedingly difficult for native English speakers.

I say native English speakers because Icelandic isn't that hard for e.g. Norwegian speakers.

It's all relative. Finnish won't be too hard for Hungarian speakers, Spanish won't be hard for Italian speakers etc.

[Kobra]

Finnish being the hardest..

Maybe rather than saying 'which language', we should say which language family?

Because both Finnish and Hungarian are both Finno-Ugric and both very hard.

Icelandic is also exceedingly difficult for native English speakers.

I say native English speakers because Icelandic isn't that hard for e.g. Norwegian speakers.

It's all relative. Finnish won't be too hard for Hungarian speakers, Spanish won't be hard for Italian speakers etc.

There are a group of people in Finland called the Saami (In fact the Finns call Finnish Suomi) But the actuall language of Finland is Saami and Saami is not known to be connected to ANY other language. It is also said to be the hardest it is in fact what J.R.R Tolkien based elvish off of for the lord of the rings.

[welshnerd]

Finnish being the hardest..

Maybe rather than saying 'which language', we should say which language family?

Because both Finnish and Hungarian are both Finno-Ugric and both very hard.

Icelandic is also exceedingly difficult for native English speakers.

I say native English speakers because Icelandic isn't that hard for e.g. Norwegian speakers.

It's all relative. Finnish won't be too hard for Hungarian speakers, Spanish won't be hard for Italian speakers etc.

If I remember rightly J.R.R.Tolkien based one of his two elven languages on Finnish, and the other on Welsh as both were very different to English and had something he found romantic and magical about them.

[Dr J]

[color=violet]There are a group of people in Finland called the Saami (In fact the Finns call Finnish Suomi) But the actuall language of Finland is Saami and Saami is not known to be connected to ANY other language.

Hmmm...

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

[TheFriend]

Dutch '96 nobelprize winner Paul Crutzen (chemistry), married a finnish wife years ago, but doesn't speak finnish (they speak swedish at home):
finnish is impossible to learn, he says.

It is the hardest language in the world to learn. The very long Finnish words are because they take the very short Finnish words and combine them to maketheverylongFinnishwords long. It is related to Hungarian (the second hardest language in the world).

[Dr J]

Dutch '96 nobelprize winner Paul Crutzen (chemistry), married a finnish wife years ago, but doesn't speak finnish (they speak swedish at home):
finnish is impossible to learn, he says.

It is the hardest language in the world to learn. The very long Finnish words are because they take the very short Finnish words and combine them to maketheverylongFinnishwords long. It is related to Hungarian (the second hardest language in the world).

Long words do not make a language hard.

If Paul Crutzen spoke a language that was related to Finnish, e.g. Hungarian, he would not find Finnish so hard to learn.

Hence what is the hardest language to learn is totally relative.

[Kobra]

Dutch '96 nobelprize winner Paul Crutzen (chemistry), married a finnish wife years ago, but doesn't speak finnish (they speak swedish at home):
finnish is impossible to learn, he says.

It is the hardest language in the world to learn. The very long Finnish words are because they take the very short Finnish words and combine them to maketheverylongFinnishwords long. It is related to Hungarian (the second hardest language in the world).

Long words do not make a language hard.

If Paul Crutzen spoke a language that was related to Finnish, e.g. Hungarian, he would not find Finnish so hard to learn.

Hence what is the hardest language to learn is totally relative.

My friends Father worked for Military Intelligence and was a linguist... The first language they taught him was Hungarian and after he was done with the military he moved to Hungary and then went to Finland.. He said that after living there for 3 years and speaking fluent Hungarian he still could not figure out the Finnish language. The problem with Finnish is exactly what TheFriend said, when speaking Finnish you have almost 5 words for everything and you have to figure out which one to use and they like to make a couple of words into one really long word but it is done differently it is more like this Nightwishlovebandthe greatest is ever and I them You try to make sense of that.... Also Finnish has no future tense... You dont say Hey I am gonna get married to a girl named Jackie someday.. You say I got married to a girl named Jackie I hope. Not even Hungarians can follow that... And by the way that link to wikipedia about Saami the thing you missed is that now professors and analysts are saying that it is in fact not connected to any Finno-Uralic language. I know because a few of my family members speak it and it dosnt sound anything like Finnish.. In fact there are alot of words that dont exist and so Saami speakers make up words to go there..

[Dr J]

"All of the Finno-Ugric languages share structural features and basic vocabulary."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finno-Ugric_languages

If two languages share common features, a native speaker of either language obviously more easily learn the other language.

And obviously people do learn Finnish, so the point that one linguist and one Nobel Prize winner didn't manage to learn it is redundant.

Besides, have you taken a look into the every single other language? There's over 200 in the world, and I believe anyone making ridiculous superlative statements about language should have taken a look at many other languages to compare them.