Mandarin Chinese is one of the hardest languages to learn for English speakers, below are the 10 hardest languages in this series.
1. Mandarin Chinese
2. Arabic
3. Korean
4. Japanese
5. Hungarian
6. Finish
7. Icelandic
8. Polish
9. Thai
10. Russian
Mandarin Chinese
Each Chinese character carrying a word or idea.
Chinese characters have more than 45,000 characters, although three to four thousand characters are needed for everyday use.
So if you want to learn Mandarin characters you need to know 3 to 4 thousand character which is mass more difficult compared to other language.
Mandarin is a Tone dependent language where the meaning of words is determined by the pronunciation of the words.
A slight change in Tone can change the meaning of an entire sentence, which is very difficult for students to avoid inaccuracies.
Again, the same word with the same pronunciation can have different meanings in different contexts.
It is very difficult for new learners to understand and reproduce the subtle differences in the pronunciation of Mandarin words Although the Chinese language is difficult, it is very important in business technology and cultural fields.
Arabic
Arabic is a mimetic language while English is an Indo European language. As English and Arabic are two different families of languages, there are major differences in structure, pronunciation, grammar and writing style.
Arabic is written from right to left and English is written from left to right, the letters of Arabic writing are connected to each other which is different in English, Arabic is marked by vowel harakat which can create complications in reading and understanding.
Arabic has some richness that English does not have, such as throat sounds, Arabic grammar is much more complex than English language, Almost all words in Arabic have masculine and feminine forms. Plurals in Arabic are not regular and in many cases the word changes irregularly,
The gender of verbs in Arabic is considered to be singular, dual, and plural.
Korean
The grammar, pronunciation, and writing of Korean are completely different from those of English, making it much more difficult for English speakers to learn Korean.
Korean uses a subject plus object plus verb order, while English uses a subject plus verb order, for example, Korean I apples eat, while English I eat apples.
Korean is part of the Altaic family of languages, while English is part of the Indo-European family of languages, so the sounds and structures of the two languages are completely different.
Korean is much harder to pronounce than English.
Korean is written in the Hangul alphabet, which is not the same as the English alphabet.
Japanese
There is debate about which language the Japanese language belongs to, but it is certain that it is not an Indo-European language, so the grammar and structure of the vocabulary are in no way similar to English,
Japanese has three writing systems: hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Hiragana and katakana have 46 characters, while English has 26 characters,
The sentence structure in Japanese is subject plus object plus verb, while English has subject plus verb plus object.
Hungarian
Hungarian is part of the Eubalic language family, English is part of the Indo-European language family,
Hungarian grammar is very complex and has many rules and exceptions
The pronunciation of some words in Hungarian is unfamiliar to English speakers
Finnish
It is part of the Ugric language family, while English is part of the Indo-European language family, which results in structural and cultural differences between the two languages.
Finnish has 15 more grammatical features than English,
adding multiple affixes or parts of speech to change the meaning, which is more difficult than in English.
Icelandic
The words in Icelandic come from ancient languages, and they do not rely on English-based vocabulary to create new words, creating their own words without borrowing from other languages.
Polish
Polish grammar is very difficult because it has some additional grammar beyond English grammar.
It has different rules for males and females and its parts, which are difficult for English speakers,
Polish is a historical language with many regional words. The words are very different from English. The pronunciation of these words is much more difficult than the pronunciation of English words.
Thai
So it is a pronominal language in which the meaning of a word depends on the tone of the word. Thai has five tones, high, middle, low, rising and falling.
The Thai alphabet is different from the English alphabet,
Thai has some rich sounds that English does not have,
Thai vocabulary is completely different,
There are very few resources to teach Thai.
Russian
Russian uses a syllabic script that is unfamiliar to English speakers. Although Russian has some letters similar to English, it is completely different in pronunciation.
Russian has six grammatical cases that English does not have.
Different verb forms change for each gender and there is also a singular and plural form.
There are also some words in Russian that are the same but change in meaning depending on the context, which can be difficult for English speakers.
Top 10 oldest language in the world
Your valuable opinion is very important for us, if you notice any mistake, please let us know through comments.
Thank you