I have been told by a few different people that the two most difficult languages to learn to use is English and Japanese. What language do you think is the hardest to learn to speak and understand and everything?

My background is french and I have been taught for almost every year of school in my life to speak that language, but I still have never been very good at it. I have heard that french is supposed to be pretty easy to learn. If that was hard for me, then, to me, I think others would be impossible to learn.

Anyway which language in the whole world would you say is probably the most difficult to learn? Thanks for your time.

IMO, chinese is the most difficult language... well for someone that's most used to the roman(?) alphabet. I hate the different intunations, that's also why I think japanese seems easier compared to chinese.

I share your point of view about french, it's really more difficult than english. But I think there are more difficult languages.

But I'm quite sure there was already a thread like that.

It's Czech language is sure...

They say that English is the hardest language to learn and I think that's true. My mom's been trying for a couple of years but she still gets her "am"s and "are"s wrong. Next to that, Chinese is pretty hard. Any language not based on Latin. That's why some schools teach Latin before Spanish or French.

Quote by fawna-chanThey say that English is the hardest language to learn and I think that's true. My mom's been trying for a couple of years but she still gets her "am"s and "are"s wrong. Next to that, Chinese is pretty hard. Any language not based on Latin. That's why some schools teach Latin before Spanish or French.

And what other languages your mother has tried to learn too ?

I don't remember having any problem with am/are (probably cause my native tongue has 6 different verbal endings corresponding to pronoms while english has only 3 (I, you/we/they, he/she/it)).

In the other hand, my sister thinks english is one of the easiest language since she only needs few lessons to understant a movie. While I'm pretty sure that with all her years of japanese or chinese, she can say the same of these languages.

from a person who speaks english everyday, i think chinese is the hardest language to learn. that's what most people in america think too. japanese i spretty easy, since it is similar to english a bit.

Geez, that's an easy question. Out of all the languages, Chinese is SO the hardest to learn, besides English. My neighbour, who's Chinese, speaks it all the time. (She's like tri-lingual in English, French and Chinese, and she's learning Japanese!) I've no idea how she speaks it! Though my native language is English, and I speak almost 100% of my words in it, I do think English is the hardest language to learn. With all the slang and all, it must be hard for a foreigner to learn it! o_O

for me...I think is japanese

imo the hardst to learn is chinese.

does this not depend entirely on your native tounge?, english and french are nearly identical but bear no relation to korean/japanese. its harder to learn a language from the other side of the world basically

Try and learn, hungarian you will know what's hard :p

Chinese is annoying to learn for a foreigner because not only is the vocabulary COMPLETELY different from English...the writing system is impossible. After all, my cousins are still learning all the words up in college. Actually, I cant say chinese is just hard for a foreigner since I have trouble with Chinese and I've been speaking all my life (moved to the US when I was 6)....=p

Yea I would think that Chinese would be the hardest language to learn cuz its impossible to write and there are like 10 billion characters in the Chinese language but I could understand why English would be hard cuz of all those stupid rules with English that's always changing

English is not hard at all imho. At least I don't recall actually learning it... I was just watching tv and one day I noticed that I can understand what they're saying
I don't know about chinese, but others say that aside from the reading/writing part, it's not that difficult at all.
Our native language, Hungarian, is difficult as hell. At least all my foreign friends who started to learn told me so. Main thing is that our language is kinda unique and doesn' really resemble any other - aside from Finnish maybe. And we also use our names the same way as .jp people do.

hmm....for my might be russion or japanese...>.< havnt learn them though. O.o chinese aint tht har d4 me...except i havnt been reading too much tht i 4got most of my characters.... Oo

Sorry guys u_u but I will have to say Spanish is the hardest to learn, and Chinese, and then maybe Japanese....don't really know about the other languages though....

English is rather easy, there is few to take care of in English, whereas Japanese has different words for the same thing....which change depending on who you are speaking to...that is kinda hard >< Chinese just has a ton of symbols....and Spanish has a ton of ways of playing with verbs =p...Spanish does have a lot more gender-based words......but that's just me...I'm a spanish speaker...and learning English was not hard at all @.@....

It all probably depends on the person, in the end...I read somewhere that a language shouldn't be compared in this way, a language is created to satisfy the needs of a certain community, and whatever works for them is best for them...so we can't really speak of a more developed language, or a more complicated one.....languages cover communication needs....and some countries do have different needs, and in those...you might find it hard to learn their language..

chinese is definitely the hardest language to learn. you need to get the tones for your vocabulary right or else you're gonna say something completely different.. and then you might see a confused facial expression to the person you're talking to like what happened to me before when i visited china. but they say that if you know chinese, learning other languages would be a lot easier, rather than when you learn english, then other languages would probably be harder to learn.
i can speak a bit of chinese (mandarin), and a bit of japanese from what i can remember in primary school but nothing will be harder than chinese - the most advanced language in my opinion.

Quote by Nariko-ChanThough my native language is English, and I speak almost 100% of my words in it, I do think English is the hardest language to learn. With all the slang and all, it must be hard for a foreigner to learn it! o_O

I don't think that learning slang is an obligatory step at all... After all, I don't know most of the slang of my native tongue even if I think I'm quite skilled with it. Knowing how to make elaborate sentences, having a rich vocabulary indicate better a good knowledge of a language.

My sister didn't like that in japanese there are many and many rules for grammar but I indicate to her it was either that to show politeness, either it was having several wrods for the smae meaning... or a mix of the two.

I think it depends in the person and ur native laguage. My native laguage is spanish and for me is really hard to learn English and Japanese. it hard to learn English because of the pronuntiation and the grammar, specially the verbs, they drive me crazy!, and I want to learn Japanese but the grammar is way to difficult for me.
I've talk to other people about this subject and they've told me that the easier laguages are French and Italian and the most difficult laguages are Spanish, Chinese, German, and Russian.

I believe the most difficult would be:
1) Known as the language of many "clicks", the Zulu langugae used by the Zulu tribe in Africa
2) Russian. Looking at the alphabets alone kills me...lol xD

i say chinese!

Me too! Chinese seems VERY hard!

Yep, chinese and france...i think Japanese is rather easier than chinese cos japanese is a bit similar with my native language malay and my mother tongue KaDus . English is hard when it's comes to grammar usage...i think

I say French.... I have studied it for 2 years and I quit it this year I still don't speak it well and it's utterly hardest subject ever... I don't think chinese is hard.... then again I am chinese myself ! Japanese and English are piece of cake for me... Is it really that hard to someone?