Why there is no Hardest Language to Learn
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- Опубліковано 17 вер 2022
- Languages are a lot of things, and while many are a challenge to learn, there is, linguistically speaking, no such thing as a hard language, and there is no hardest language to learn.
#language #language #languagelearning
I think the hardest part is getting enough exposure to be able to use vocab efficiently and expressing your thoughts properly
I think it's what takes the most time, but i'd say it's easier compared to memorising vocabulary. It's not nearly as boring so you can do it in a fun way that doesn't grind down your will to keep learning the language, at least based on my experience.
@@MitordyADR for vocabulary, I draw pictures. Fun.
True! I know English quite well but my German and Italian are lacking heavily. I barely interact with those two languages outside of uni while I use English daily to enjoy content and communicate with people online
@@MitordyADR I would argue that saying your true thoughts on the language you are learning is even harder because it draws from everything you learned. You have to use clear grammar, clear pronunciation(not perfect, clear enough sometimes is harder than one may think) the vocabulary already memorized as well as cookie-cutter phrases(for example, in english one says "i'll go to the bathroom" to say that they are going to the bathroom. In japanese, they say "I want to go to the bathroom" to say the same thing. Saying it other way, people will get confused) and get enough vocab to spare(around 10000 words, one can't use all the words stored in the brain, we use about half we have) and train a lot to make it automatic. It is the hardest part. It's like saying "laying the last brick on a wall is easy". Yeah it is, but the preparation for finally laying the brick is hard.
can't agree more.
When I decided to learn German, immidiately almost everyone was against it: "german too hard", "why german but not japanese or korean?" (I live in Vietnam), "why not take an ielts course instead, you're already good at english?", still I went with German anyway.
Turns out I have a much enjoyable time learning German, the grammar can look intimidating but a lot of it is very similar to English so I understand it easily. The pronunciation is soooo much better than in English, I pretty much don't have to guess how a new word sounds (except french loanwords, f*ck them).
i feel you with the French loanwords... instantly
Hehehe. Try pronouncing Texas city names
Die französischen Lehnwörter irritieren sogar uns deutsche Muttersprachler. Am schlimmsten ist, dass man in der letzten Rechtschreibreform viele eingedeutschte Schreibweisen (z.B. Majonäse) wieder abgeschafft hat.
@@truegemuese Why they make it resemble French? To make it hard for the Germans and essy for the French people learning German?
Was this spelling reform part of the Treaty of Versailles? (I am joking)
@@Moses_VIINo, this was just some idea the people standardizing German orthography had around 2006 or 2008.
This was part of a reform rolling back some earlier and unpopular, but actually pretty good reform that made, besides other things, the use of more consistent.
Generally the German language is having a hard time which lots of Anglicisms ,including a lot unecessary ones, entering the language, as well as everyone suddenly having THE BEST idea how to make it more inclusive.
It's impossible to escape how english centric the entire "hard language" discussion is
Very true lol
Most likely because that discussion is held in English. I doubt the same discussion would be had by native speakers of a different language (who would most likely be having it in their own language).
I feel like that's a very silly perspective to hold when you consider that the discussion is being held in English and other languages have their own hardest language discussions as well.
Most DEFINITELY. I wish there was a way I could curb my anglocentrism when it comes to language learning
i feel like it probably has something to do with which language is linguistically more related to your native language to determine which language might be easier or harder
Agreed. Good video as always LingoLizard
This is a real language simp moment
I hope that he makes a video on why American is the best language soon.
i hope dude makes a video on canadian soon
OMG LANGUAGE SIMP?
language simp
I have made more progress in Korean and Japanese than in French because I was really enthusiastic about them. Motivation is the key factor in language learning.
True, motivation is the key for lots of things in life
Wow, I guess that means Korean is really easy and French is actually hard.
@@huguesdepayens807 nope cause I speak french, dont know about korean tough
@@amosamwig8394 *sarcasm*
@@ryou6453 L
I'd say there is a clear hardest language to learn: North Sentinelese. Not only does it have a grammar and vocabulary different from nearly every other language family, the only known speakers have been known to kill any outsiders they see. Learners are encouraged to gain some familiarity with Ongan languages and self-defense before attempting this challenging language.
You have a very good point. Because the island is inaccessible, you can't learn North Sentinelese without SEVERELY risking your life and your arrest record.
there was a dude who tried it, but he never came back....
.....alive.
I was browsing the Japanese internet and found that they have a similar list of difficult languages, with languages like Polish and Russian being hardest for them, and Korean being easiest
Which is not really a surprise, given that the shared vocabulary with Slavic languages is much less and that the grammar is complex (except for Bulgarian).
So an English speaker would be in a similar situation like a Japanese speaker learning these languages.
What about an English Speaker wanting to
Earn Polish? I’m currently slloowwyy learning Polish, and my Pole gf said I’m doing really well, but I do find it hard. Like rolling your R’s I found that insane as us English speakers do no trill our R’s now I can do it! My Pole gf and friends are very impressed with me and how “fast” I’m learning
@@Skulldruk616 Trilling is lame, Alveolar Tap is superior.
Where did you find it? I wonder where English was on the list.
Korean isn't too surprising as they have similar grammar rules. Hangul is also pretty easy to learn as well since it was created for anyone to learn it quickly. The more you are familiar with something, the easier it will be and the less familiar you are, it will take longer as you have to learn new things and get more exposure to it.
As a native Chinese speaker, I spend far less time and effort on learning Japanese than Westerners do. Since there are loads of Kanji in Japanese that we Chinese speaker can understand in first sight, though we may not know how exactly to pronounce them in Japanese. Even though some Kanji look slightly different from their Chinese character counterparts, I can switch between them with ease. To me, the most troublesome part is inflections of Japanese; there is no inflection in Chinese. I am still struggling to get used to them.
And unfortunately the JLPT exam is accustomed to Chinese learners, which means the reading part is too hard for westerners and the grammar and listening part is too easy for westerners 😝
I'm a native JP speaker learning Cantonese and yeah, the thing that is the problem for me in Cantonese is tones rather than having an inflection 😅
@@kamiyama-chairdesklamp 発音が変だとしても理解していただけますが、母語の感じで丁寧にお願いをするつもりだったのに、日本語となると違うニュアンスが出てしまう...こういうことは中国語母語話者として日本語を実際に使うとき一番頭痛の点です😂
@@Half_soda_half_milk 想像つきますね。発音の第一部なはずだった声調がいきなり感情を表す口調となると、難しそうですね、話通わせること… せめて逆方向行ってる俺が広東語の発音を歌うことに考えてみると、なんか、人のお母さんを「馬」と呼んでしまうような大ヘマがほぼ無くなるけど、中国語から日本語への方向なら、そういうアプローチ(話すことを歌うように考えること)なかなか使えないかな :(
What's Chinese? Do you mean a native MANDARIN speaker? Or are you referring to the 300+ different Sinitic languages found in China?
The hardest languages are the ones with lack of sources to learn from
I'm an American, I speak English. I've tried Spanish, French, and Portuguese. I've failed spectacularly at all of them.
I've found Russian to be incredibly easy compared to those 3. Yes the words are more difficult for me to pronounce compared to the others, however what I learn is actually sticking in my head despite me having less resources to learn from.
i've learnt all the ones you mention and still found russian to be the hardest but i understand what you mean since it depends on individuals and that's cool
I'm a native Russian speaker and learned English (because i moved to the U.S.)
@@Bread-O5-3 Я когда переехал в Канаду плохо знал английский и мне было тяжело контактировать, сейчас же из за того что я общался чаще с носителями этого языка мне было проще разговаривать(+Я многие слова переводил), так что на сегодняшнее время мой английский значился улучшился и мне легко говорить на нем.
@@fayevalentine2695
I learned it because I was a kid at the time, and so went to school. Thankfully I learned it when 3rd grade rolled around.
@@Bread-O5-3 для детей легче запоминать обычно языки, Я например в старшей школе но у английского есть очень много синонимов и я не знаю когда их употреблять, и это трудно.И да, Я заметил что в английском не особо уделяют внимание к запятым и точкам.
I agree with this so much. As a native English speaker, I found Japanese to be much easier to learn than Spanish. Even though I was surrounded by Spanish speakers in my daily life and most of my friends and relationships were Spanish speakers, I still picked up Japanese much faster and I enjoyed it much more. Once I moved to México, I noticed a huge jump in my proficiency, but to be honest, I still struggle with the verb tenses. 🤣
I lived in Georgia for almost a year and struggled the entire time with the language (the writing system is super easy though), but I'm determined to learn it one day. 🇬🇪 Now I'm focused on becoming fluent in Swedish and it's so easy it almost feels like I'm cheating. Studying Swedish is one of my favorite parts of the day and I love the language so much. The language you have the most passion for you always will find easier. At the end of the day, Spanish just isn't my favorite language and I learned it more for necessity rather than a genuine passion.
Japanese puts adjectives before nouns, like English. Even saying そうです (sō desu) is like saying "It is so" in English.
😅
@@Moses_VII Japanese grammar is honestly rather simple if you understand linguistics well enough, but for monolingual English speakers who haven't gotten used to the idea that you can't think of another language's grammar in the context of your native language, it can be very difficult to get their head around. Learners tend to have a hard time understanding the internal logic of the language and try to recontextualize it using the logic of their native language, which seems like it'd make it easier to understand but it instead leads to seemingly contradictory ideas and further difficulty.
oh jag pratar en litan svenska och jag er turkisk.
I find it dumbfounding how ya'll failed to state the simple fact that Japanese, Chinese and Korean take the longest to learn because of the chinese characters... Quite obvious
I've always found these "hardest language" lists to be interesting, because as a native English-speaker, I have found Arabic to be surprisingly easy to learn. (To be fair, I've long ago reached my proficiency plateau on account of not having time or opportunities to study.) I found Mandarin Chinese to be the most difficult--both reading and speaking--Castillian Spanish to be the easiest, and Hindi-Urdu not to be too difficult either.
I am also fascinated by the common term "hardest language", I remember being constantly warned about Mandarin Chinese (中文) being the "hardest language", "impossible to learn", etc. etc..
But as it ended up happening, I actually enjoyed learning Chinese quite a lot, regardless of what people told me to do, it seemed as if it were actually not so hard, 我有了乐趣学中文。
But at the end of the day, it just depends on where you are from and how willing you are to commence and enrol in the studying of a language.
Really? I find Arabic to be harder than Chinese and Japanese combined. I don't know why but Arabic words just don't stick... and the grammar is a nightmare because you need to memorize so many things (plurals, present-past forms, verbal nouns, etc.)
@@pia_mater especially in terms of grammar, Modern Standard Arabic is difficult to learn ,but Egyptian Arabic is very easy
I am a native mandarin speaker and I find English very easy to learn, despite it being a pain in the ass for most other Chinese. I guess I watch too much youtube.
Arabic is easy... if you are learning the colloquial version that is. Learning the fo97a is defo harder.
I am Japanese and I am studying in England.
There, people sometimes ask me, "Why are all Japanese people so bad at this simple English?” I get annoyed by it.
I have a hard time learning English at the same time you have a hard time learning Japanese. Why can't people understand this? When I compare my English, which I try my best, with my Spanish friend's English, which she doesn't study that much, it is obvious that she is fluent and it makes me sad. Sorry for my bad English.
This may be a small sample, but judging by what you’ve said here, you did a great job!
Sorry for making it too formal.
Anyways, have a nice December!
Japanese really are humble huh. Your English is amazing
I'm an english speaker (Not native, but still) your english alright! Keep it up.
As a language book I once read quoted in the introduction,
“Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.” - Leonardo da Vinci
Impressively comprehensive video for how short is- learning is truly subjective with so many factors as you mentioned. Nice
I tried to learn Japanese to see how difficult it really was. Having started that quest when I was in school studying Spanish, I was more busier than expected. Fast forward now, having graduated from education, and not much progress has happened because life.
I also got into Norse mythology thru the music of Wardruna and Gealdýr during my time in college, and I attempted to learn Norwegian to see how easy it was... Once again, not much progress had been made.
I have all the time in the world rn to learn a language that I've wanted to learn for years, but I still procrastinate on this and more and I feel miserable because of that. Writing this comment at least gets something off my chest, so here's hoping I find my love for those languages again and actually succeed in learning them to some sort of fluency, haha. Maybe I will find some use for them in my creations.
Edit: It's nice to be reminded of this comment I made from time to time. Thank you commentors!
As an update: Little progress has been made still, even after 9 months, altho I've began studying kanji again, and I've also found a growing interest in the Chinese languages (mainly Mandarin) because of a certain couple games I play nowadays. It may also be because of where I place my focus too and what I prioritise. I did find some fun in reforming spellings for the languages that aren't phonetic tho (esp. for English).
I have made fast progress with my target language by basically abandoning learners' materials very early on and just reading articles and stories i liked with google translate, and then after a few months watching native youtube videos. I could only partially understand them of course but what i could understand made me very enthusiastic, bc it felt like i am immersing myself in native culture right off the bat. And since i was consuming media i was interested in it feelt like entertainment more than anything. This way of learning is maybe not for everyone, i just wanted to share my experience - hope you find something that works for you and gets you pumped to learn!
Hey, I am currently trying to learn Croatian and I am kinda procrastinating. I learned Esperanto and it has helped me a lot though. I think the best way to learn is start off with something like duolingo, but quickly start finding advanced sources, eventually switching to reading articles and videos in the said language like the person above me said. Good luck!
Dw buddy This happens with almost all of us, I been procastinating a lot these recent few years nd now Im tryna learn Swedish bcuz it makes me feel good nd I believe it'll gimme a huge dose of motivation if I succeed doing so. Hope ya find yo path nd succeed in life 🤛
Google refold method
@@jen_sa this is how I learned English lol
There are no easy languages.
Agreed.
at least no easy *practical* languages, like facilish (literally facile in the name) which is a joke language with only + "good" and - "bad"
- -
Toki pona:ascend:
@@Hiljaa_ i mean natural languages
I refuse to believe that Japanese, Korean, Arabic, or even Chinese is harder to learn than Navajo. Navajo and Vietnamese are proof that languages with the Latin alphabet can be just as hard as Chinese or Japanese for English speakers.
navajo and vietnamese probably weren't originally supposed to be in the latin script
@@heisen-bones I think a lot of languages weren't originally supposed to be in the latin script, like english, for example (it originally used futhorc runes), arguably probably most languages that use a writing system weren't originally supposed to use that writing system
It's a list from the Foreign Service Institute. You'd be hard pressed to find a course teaching US diplomats Navajo.
@@heisen-bones well English too (runes) The script has always been a cultural creation, and it is only a tool used to represent how people perceive the language. It is essential, but it is not *the language* itself imo
edit: bruh i should read the other comments before, sorry xD
@@heisen-bones Vietnamese originally used the Chinese script
The fact that Japanese has a very easy pronunciation is actually what makes it harder for me to learn 😅 I forget vocabulary so easily because every word sounds the same to me, or way too similar. And since it’s so easy to pronounce a word, it doesn’t stay in my mind. In comparison, I’m also learning Chinese - it has 4 tones and a few hard pronunciations - and I actually remember words much faster than in Japanese. I still remember perfectly many words that I only practiced ONCE many weeks ago because I remember the struggle to learn how to pronounce them. Languages that have hard pronunciations can actually be better for your long term memory because your brain remembers the struggle
Honestly, I completely agree. 99% of my time spent learning new things from reading is simply new vocab. It’s way more numerous than grammar…
I've heard from various different sources that vocab is the key thing. Nobody cares if you get the verb tense slightly wrong. But if you don't know the word for something it might be more of an issue. I'm finding with Serbian at the moment that having got a little way into the basics I am now trying to read e.g. Serbian-language Twitter and understand as much as I can, plus looking up words I don't know.
And if the language is similar enough, some people don't even bother to learn much of grammar either and just focuses on the vocabulary
There’s also the fact that people’s brains are wired differently and so they learn in different ways. I’ve always struggled with rote-memorisation (therefore vocabulary is a struggle) however once I’ve learned a theoretical concept I find it easy to apply it (therefore sentence structuring is easier). For some people it’s the opposite. Also, 2 people from the same linguistic background may have completely different skills when it comes to learning new pronunciation. Language-learning is so different for everyone that these categories don’t make sense
It's kind of surprising how many people think japanese is harder because of kanji, because knowing common kanji and what the radicals represent makes learning new words a *lot* easier than it would be without, and knowing the theory of how a lot of kanji came to be can help a lot with learning new kanji. (I really like the book "read Japanese today" by len Walsh. It's a pretty old book, and entirely focused on kanji, but the way it's presented is very easy to understand.)
I guess it's a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy. Everyone says kanji is hard, so you expect it to be hard, get stressed, and have a harder time absorbing it. A lot of people just give up and decide they're incapable without really trying. But i actually think it's one of the most fun parts of learning the language.
You will have a lot of easier time if you already Chinese characters.
Learning kanji *is* objectively hard. It would be pretty easy to demonstrate that it takes much less time to master German orthography, with its small alphabet and pretty reliable ability to predict the pronunciation of an unknown word just by seeing it, or to predict how to spell a word by its sound, than to learn how to write idiomatic Japanese in two syllabaries plus kanji.
As a Chinese,I'd say Japanese is easy at first but got harder when you learn deeper, the grammar system is totally different from English.
I think the hardest part is really remember them all (the stroke order is really important and some are simple while others can be more complex) as you need to know at least 2000 to be considered somewhat fluent and need to know to really be able to read. Even for native speakers, it takes them awhile to learn them all and they are more familiar and exposed to it than we are. Plus there is hiragana, katakana (though are easier to learn; but still you are learning multiple writing systems, each on being more complex than the other) and there two different ways to read Kanji. On'yomi and Kun'yomi. This is just talking about learning the characters not the grammar, the topic markers, particles, forms, (such as honorifics), etc....I think you feel that is easier for you because it is something you enjoy.
@@foreverdreamwithinadream6871 No, the op is right, kanji is constructed in a way that the more you learn the easier it gets. You don't have to learn stroke order for EVERY kanji because they all follow the same patterns and rules, so after first 100 you don't find anything too challenging in this department anymore (much less than the 2000 you're trying to intimidate us with). Also after some time you break an interesting barrier where you learn knew kanji by just simply seeing it without a need of using a dictionary to know its meaning and even reading - because all this information is contained in the radicals. Crossing this barrier is so rewarding because from there learning new kanji becomes a piece of cake.
This is an intelligent and down to earth video that raises a great point about language learning. I've learned English, German, and French since a young age and I've heard countless stories of students finding Spanish classes torturous and unfun, since it's the most commonly taught foreign language in the US. But when I learned some Spanish for a trip last year, I had a lot of fun with it because I was very interested in getting to know the language, and it didn't feel that hard at all. It really does come down to enthusiasm!
I'm Malaysian and I grew up learning 3 languages at once, Mandrin, English and Malay. Unfortunately for me, I grew up consuming more western/ English media and now I'm struggling to learn my own language (Mandrin/Chinese). As for Malay, I find it easier to learn as it is similar to English. Right now I have a problem where I can understand English but unable to speak fluently, I can speak Mandrin but I have a big problem reading/understanding/knowing some basic vocabularies. My Malay is basically stuck in the middle where I can neither speak fluently nor understand somethings
Halo! Salam sejahtera rakan malaysia ^-^
I see what you mean! Arabic is supposed to be my native language but even i cant speak it :(
but what about Hokkien or Cantonese or Teochew or Hakka or Hinghwa or Hokchew?
@@xXxSkyViperxXx these are dialects which are varies in commonality depending on where you are. You usually learn by speaking and talking with people who already know it and It'll probably come naturally
@@drifty6666 if your mother tongue class was set to mandarin, which from hokkien, teochew, cantonese, hakka, hinghwa, hokchew did your ancestors originally speak?
I find this video and the “weirdest languages” video have similar points
because after all what makes a language seem hard or weird to an individual is how familiar the person is with it
so I’m a native Arabic speaker who got taught english at very young age (add to that I’m Libyan soo… I also have an italian twist) so I don’t find roman languages to be difficult and neither does Farsi or a language similar to Arabic
but at the same time I work hard on getting my brain used to different writing systems and languages I may find “hard/weird” sooo wish me luck? :)
I enjoyed learning Japanese. I considered it one of the easier Languages. I feel it's because Agglutination is easier to cope with, at least as an adult.
Japanese Pronoucation is pretty simple, the Grammar has a logical yet intuitive structure, and a lot of the Vocab is easy to construct. Japanese was easy to just casually speak; it was only hard when you were trying to 1:1 translate from English to Japanese.
Even the objectively hardest aspect, being Kanji, I felt worked well. I actually struggled more with Korean, because a page of Kanji is easier to read than a page of Hangul.
Meanwhile, I'm learning Polish and struggling significantly more. The case system and all the inflection and the esoteric pronunciations. Polish has been far harder for me than Japanese ever was.
" it was only hard when you were trying to 1:1 translate from English to Japanese."This is the easiest part with kanji. How good is your japanese?N3
@@FM-dm8xj Your ability to translate things to different languages doesn't really depend on your proficiency in a language, it mostly comes from practice
Kanji easier than hangul? Ok
Translating is always difficult. Especially when one language has a word that has no direct counterpart in the other.
I agree with the arguement that the relative difficulty of a language is directly conected to how similar a target language is to the specific language of origin taken into consideration. However, I think that while the other more individual arguments (enthusiasm etc) are important, they are circunstancial and thus don't really significantly affect at a higher level how difficult languages are
Agree. It would be defined as the learning time when conditions such as enthusiasm and abundance of teaching materials are virtually equalized. The essence of the problem is that the difficulty under this definition varies greatly depending on the native language.
However, I don't think this completely negates the absolute difficulty. This is because it is assumed that a language exists like a remote island, isolated from all other languages in the world. Such a language can be difficult or easy, no matter what your first language is.
Finally some sense on this haha I hope more people come around to seeing things this way
I've gone blue explaining that languages don't make a lot of sense in terms of "hardest", "easiest" etc
Japanese pronunciation is a lot more complex than what's taught in textbooks, especially if you want to work on reducing your accent. Most of the sounds are both different from the English sounds they're often taught as (う is not the English u, for example, nor is it always the same sound), but there are actually a lot more consonant sounds than the writing system lets on, and though these secret extra sounds are allophonic to the ones taught in class (が always means が whether it's pronounced ga, ɣa, ŋa, or ŋga), the fact that people aren't taught these sounds can make listening harder
And of course that's not even getting into pitch accent
Sure, there's more to Japanese pronunciation than a lot of people think, you are right to point it out.
It's still a lot easier than most languages. My japanese accent clearly isn't perfect but when I speak to a Japanese, I'm always sure they know what I'm trying to say (even if I can't say much). Compared to this, my english accent is awful and even if I can easily consider myself fluent, I often need to repeat myself a few times.
I'm fairly certain that I'll end up mastering Japanese accent far quicker than its vocabulary, while English pronunciation is just a lost cause, haha.
Japanese is still the easiest Asian language for westerners to pronounce compare this to mandarin or Hindi or even Farsi
@@NeostormXLMAX If you knew how learning pronunciation actually works, you wouldn't think this way. I've had multiple Chinese and half-Chinese ( half-Japanese) people ask me why my Mandarin accent is better than my Japanese accent. They often say my Mandarin pronunciation is apparently very impressive, one of the best accents they've ever heard, "despite the fact that your Japanese accent is so thick"
@@NeostormXLMAX I have to agree that Japanese was actually easier for me when came to pronunciation at least. Knowing a bit of French, and Japanese (also dabbled a bit in others), a lot of languages, if not most, will have different sounds or even sounds that don't exist in English., so that isn't really new to me. You just have to become more familiar with it and practice really. For me, the hardest part is usually the r 's in general as they are often tapped, rolled (and in French, you pronounce it at the back of your throat), etc...which as a native English speaker was new and different for me but been working on that. So yeah, French, Spanish, etc...is a bit harder for me to pronounce at times yet found Japanese a bit easier in that regard. It was why for a long time I didn't want to learn Spanish as it was the r's were really frustrating for me. Mandarin has it's own set of challenges due to the different tones and sounds.
It's not really possible to learn pronunciation of any language from a textbook. You need to listen to, and, if possible, get corrected by native-level speakers. As early as possible in your learning process.
English should, objectively, be a very difficult language to learn because of our massive vocabulary, inconsistent grammar with numerous exceptions, spelling system that is all over the place, and numerous regional dialects. Yet BILLIONS of people learn it anyway. It's the most universal global lingua franca in business, science, and diplomacy, and thanks to the cultural dominance of the Anglosphere, English-language media is available almost everywhere. I think this is a perfect example of how there are factors beyond the language itself that can influence how many people will learn a language and how quickly.
I agree. English has so many rules on pronunciation that have dozens if not hundreds of exceptions, has inconsistent spelling, and more synonyms for words than humans have fingers on a single hand.
It’s actually impressive how a language which, by all accounts, is very obtuse, is learned by entire nations. People say Japanese is hard, but it’s actually incredibly consistent when you compare it to the monstrosity that is English (like being phonetically consistent). Not that I hate the language, I actually like English a lot. Kind of a shame that it didn’t keep the strengths of Old English (Anglo-Saxon), though.
Nah, it is easy
I am a non native speaker btw
Americans desperately trying to prove that their language is hard, a classic
English is easy.
just the pronunciation can be difficult
@@DaviFigueiraChavez and what language do you speak natively?
in reality, the "difficulty" of a language could completely boil down to your motivation and research.
i'm a native english speaker from the united states.
from late 2020 to early 2021, i just picked up a slight interest in german and started learning it on my own for like 2 months before school started and i used it as the second language class credit i needed.
as i lost a little interest, having school start made my motiviation disappear ENTIRELY and i ended up quitting personal efforts 137 days in and retaining enough german to be able to pass classes.
now, fast foward to april 26th of this year. i picked up an interest in japanese, and i've found it WAY too easy for some reason. my motivation for it is that i want to connect with communities such as the splatoon one way better than i ever have before while reading official nintendo announcements and being able to translate them for my friends.
i'm only about 30 days in, but simply having a clear goal and good motiviation while doing tons of research has lead me to already be able to communicate events happening in a specific game with my friend.
japanese... Is really hard unless you're korean or chinese. Sorry that's just the truth. As someone who's passed N1 and realised that was the bare minimum of knowing how the language works and how much more there is after and how i could barely speak after passing "the hardest japanese exam" I can attest to that
That is not to discourage you. Just be prepared to channel your passion and keep going. I have been very passionate about interacting with Japanese people and the culture and i have gotten much better since passing the N1 and i can hold a decent conversation nowadays. It took me about 3 years and a half(actually 6 but i took a 2-3 year break in the middle). Just do not underestimate it, the lack of common words with your native language makes the vocabulary to discover feel almost endless. But i hope we'll all get there eventually
@@vladys5238 i mean yeah, languages that are more distant obviously require more work to get to.
but i understand what you mean, so thank you anyway.
I'm an American learning Hungarian, one of the "hard" languages according to the videos mentioned in this video. People often ask me why I don't learn a more "useful" language like Spanish, as I am much more likely to encounter a Spanish speaker here in the U.S. than a Hungarian speaker. Thing is, I tried learning Spanish, but after some time I lost a lot of my motivation to learn it. Since I have a personal connection to Hungary, with some of my family being from there, I have a more personal connection to learning Hungarian, and even though it is much more difficult to remember all the weird grammar rules, cases, and words compared to Spanish, I find myself more motivated to learn it as time goes on compared to being burnt out like before. Maybe in the future I'll go back and try Spanish or another "useful" language again, but for now, I think this is the best language for me to learn.
Any language is the hardest for me to learn solely because I no longer have any passion for any language.
However, your video is an interesting look at the many subjective factors that contribute to why some people pick up some languages more easily than others.
I’ve found that languages “similar to English” are actually much more difficult for me to pick up on. And it’s because of my method of learning.
When I was first learning the Japanese kana, I forced myself to forget English and romanji entirely, pretend they didn’t even exist, and only let the Japanese stick. I pretended I was a little baby learning how to talk all over again. I find it to be the most natural way of learning, bc babies didn’t have English to refer from, neither will I.
So when I come across a language that resembles English, or even just uses the Latin text really, I can’t shake off the English as easily, if that makes sense. こんにちは is so much easier to read as it is rather than “Guten tag” or “bonjour.” Idk what it is, but straying away from familiarity as much as possible just... helps so much.
Have you tried using only the 1 for 1 translations of Latin based languages? For me I find that it makes it easier because my brain distinctly remembers the grammar for a sentence in a certain language.
presonally i dont find reading german or french hard even though i dont speak either. i just use the accent to pronounce it and imagine a german or french person pronuncing it
Here are some more examples
If your Finnish, you can learn Estonian
If your Norwegian, you can learn Swedish or Danish
If your Thai, you can learn Lao or Khmer
Khmer is not related to Thai or Lao but it is to Vietnamese.
I'm Chinese and I want to make it clear that we Chinese hardly associate '4' with 'death' now. Actually we never avoid saying 'si' at any time.This may be something like a stereotype, I guess.
There is a hard language actually, it's incredibly difficult. Wanna know what it is? It's the one you don't want to learn, especially if you don't really have to.
French was ridiculously difficult, and I gave it up.
Italian ended up being far far easier, I imagine if I hadn't been forced into Spanish that next semester, I would've kept going. Alas, I forgot almost all of it beyond cognates. I'd need to visit Italy again for a long time to get a handle.
Spanish was also really difficult, only truly becoming okay recently just because of my job.
German was fairly easy actually. Russian has been pretty reasonable too.
I hear that french is very hard ( at least fir English speakers, wich is ironic becouse English how we know it wouldn’t even be a thing with out it )
@@potatoarmadillo8531 french is not hard! :/
you just need to surround yourself with french people and think logically and with logically is just speak, dont think about grammar, speak potato speak
@@potatoarmadillo8531 French is soooo easy im a native arabic speaker and i speak french better than my arabic its cuz u can never learn it 100 % (probably u wont understand cuz u dont speak it and ur not muslim) i even have english as my 3rd and i speak it even better 😭 arabic is for sure the hardest to me at least anx everyone who speaks it .
I think the hardest part with French is mainly the guttural r's since it pronounce through the back of your throat and learning all the tenses (though that issue is less about pronunciation and just remembering everything). The rest isn't too bad, even the nasals sounds are kind of easy as we sort of use them at times already. R's in almost any language will always be the bane of my existence, especially thrilled r's.
@@foreverdreamwithinadream6871 only for English people, the hardest part about French is how to conjugate and grammar and vocabulary
I would agree that there is no hardest language if you are talking one of these things:
-standardized languages (usually, over time the government "regularizes" the most insanely difficult features)
-grammar (on the axis from analytic to polysynthetic, it just depends on what you're accustomed to)
-learning pronunciation via full immersion and unconscious imitation (like all babies do)
However, on the matter of "learning pronunciation via rules and logic" there are some languages where this is downright impossible. I'm not even talking about large or unusual phoneme inventories like Danish or ǃXóõ, one could look up the IPA in a dictionary. In the Chinese language families of Wu (eg. Shanghainese) and Min (eg. Hokkien), there are insane processes of contextual tone shifting, or tone sandhi. This means that actual tones in a sentence do not match the ones listed in a dictionary, because they shift chaotically according to the position relative to words and phrases. You CAN look up the rules for the shifting, but they are SO utterly long and complex that no reasonable person, not even speakers of other Chinese languages, can learn to pronounce Wu/Min through logic and textbook-like methods. The only way is to immerse and absorb the tones unconsciously. These are objectively hard and I'm sure there are other examples in other language families.
Superb post, none native speakers face a very similar dilema when they learn Swedish, there's no such thing as standardized pronancation, and every dialectal groupe have its own phonetic structure (sometimes there's even a great deal of variation inside those groupes), its fairly common for a dialect to have something like 45-60 distict phonyms, but these can be radically different depending on the region, so if all dialects are taken into consideration we have the largest phonym inventory in the world at somthing like 200+ and no IPA chart or textbook will accuratly teach you about this
So the only way to learn swedish pronancation is through full immersion
I find that besides motivation, flexibility in how you perceive, think and feel about a language in learning a language is more influential, and don't forget love/culture.
The best way to learn a language is to take in as much of the language as you can. For example, English content and English speakers are everywhere, but for Arabic, content for specific dialects can be scarce, and not many people speak it, to begin with. Take my dialect, Bahrani (not Bahraini, that is a different dialect) for example, there are about 730K speakers with little to no content or even textbooks to learn it, so your only choice is to literally fly to Bahrain or the Eastern Region of Saudi to learn it, which is not ideal unless you plan to live here. It is all relative.
Also, what people struggle with in a language is different. For me, as a native Arabic speaker, English is easy apart from one thing: spelling; it took me years to get it down because of its inconsistencies. As for people learning Arabic, the thing I've noticed they struggle with the most is the morphology of the language, especially when it coincides with the grammar.
بس يمديك تقول الخليج و الشام كلهم يفهموا لهجتكم حتى المصريين و السودانيين
How there's no so many people speak Arabic? All north Africa and the Middle East speak Arabic.
@@BK2410 there are about 330 mil native speakers, but there are tons of dialects that can be widely different in vocabulary that communication is basically impossible.
@@sadiq_op7800 as a native Arabic speaker (sudanese) yes I struggle understanding people from other countries especially the gulf and shami dialects
And for some indigenous languages like Haida, it could even be harder than Bahraini Arabic, since their homeland doesn't exist anymore, or only extremely small territories exist of it, so even if you wanted to learn it from the Haida people, it could be very hard
I've tried learning several languages and can attest to the power of enthusiasm. When I went through the Finnish course on duolingo, there was basically no retention and I gave up roughly at the point of getting every lesson to level 2. Chinese, on the other hand, I'm learning across several apps for an hour a day with little burnout and I'll probably be well into HSK4 by the end of this year, only about a year and a half after it became my focus.
Yeah same with me and Japanese if you do not like then you will not keep at it plus unlike Chinese there is a lot of good content.
"Good content" meaning anime? There's a fair share of good donghua, but definitely not to the level of anime, I agree. If you're curious, livechart lists all donghua as OVAs for some reason.
@@MegaMinerd JRPG, Manga, Music, Weird TV programs but hey it your choice plus if you every change your mind at least you will already know a bunch of Kanji. Win win I say.
Actually I already tried learning Japanese. I wanted to be able to play all those unlocalized games. I got to just about N5 before losing interest. A bit later I got back into language learning but decided to do French. I later added Swedish because I heard it was easy and Chinese because I still wanted an Asian language and it didn't have onyomi kunyomi nanori nonsense. Finally, I recently gave up on French because it's French and does French things.
@@MegaMinerd Well if you ever get back into learning Japanese you should check out Game Gengo which teaches Japanese through gaming. As far as onyomi kunyomi nanori I just ignore that stuff and learn the words. Good luck on your studies.
Also online immersion depends. Someone trying to get more exposure to English or Japanese can just listen to their favorite musician, or watch their favorite movie in that language. Quality English, Spanish, Japanese media is very easy to get into. Won’t be as easy to find swahili movies you like
Exactly.. I'm a Bengali and I'm trying to learn Japanese but it doesn't seem to be as hard as the English people say
I think writing systems play a big factor. just consuming media in another language requires you to know the writing system and this creates the illusion that the language is easy or hard to learn even though when your speaking it, it's much simpler.
I agree. Chinese may seem very intimidating with the writing system, so I was shocked to realize how simple the grammar is and how straight forward most of the sentence structures are.
I come from a language with gendered nouns, conjugations and cases and was pleasantly surprised by this.
People said learning Thai would be difficult-especially spelling. I started with the writing system first and had decent reading and writing fluency before I even knew 50 words. What I found great about this though was because in wasn't a Latin script I had no preconditions about what sound that letter makes and it made it a Lon easier to pronounce accurately-especially after memorizing that tonal chart because most Romantizations don't bother with tone *or* vowel length.
Id love to see an FSI style ranking of the worlds languages from the point of view of other languages not just english.
The part about vocabulary is very true. For all the languages I've tried learning, the biggest barrier is the huge amount of vocabulary needed to even hold a basic conversation
Vocabulary is indeed the key.. and with Japanese it hits me hard, for three main reasons: a) None or very little (only loan words) shared with my native language, unlike just about any European IE-based language, b) My vastly reduced ability to memorize, compared to 30 years ago, c) I can't just absorb vocabulary by reading books I like, due to Kanji and point 'a)' which makes it harder to get enough of the content to infer the meaning. I learned English 100% without a dictionary simply by reading. Lots and lots. No can do, with Japanese.
Even though I know a not insignificant amount of Kanji at this point, in practice you still have to learn every word even if it incorporates Kanji you "know" from other words already. So that way of getting vocabulary is giving me only a tiny fraction of what I can get by reading IE languages.
Vocabulary is really what is still blocking me from getting past the simplest level of communication, even after years. Particularly as rote memorization didn't work for me even when I was young, for anything. Every language I've been able to learn, or at least read, I've done purely by reading without a dictionary. When the 'understanding' clicks then it sticks, forever. With rote learning it doesn't. Even if I can hold it, after numerous repetitions, it fades away, unlike if learned by the association method.
I can say as a Hebrew speaker I had (and still have) a hard learning arabic and it takes a lot of time. But I do agree with you're video. Great job! Keep it up!
Japanese is not a difficult language.
But it's a crazy language.😂
From Japanese
I've looked into japanese a bit, and the thing that I found most confusing is the three writing systems as well as the "backwards" sentence structure compared to my own language (norwegian).
But my opinion is still that anyone can learn ANY language if they have the desire and motivation to do so.
as a swedish native speaker, ive found japanese to be way more understandable than even english at some points. i can hear and distinguish words and even pick some up on occasion. for english at times it sounds like a complete mess even when i know what its supposed to say
yeah i'm going to be honest, i don't even know how we interpret ourselves. as a native english speaker, sometimes i can't even hear what someone's trying to say if it's not said clearly enough.
going to have to agree on japanese being clean and easy.
EDIT: my brain skipped over a word
NOTE: also, english pronounciation is REALLY stupid! you literally just have to KNOW!
Thank you very much for the video! I agree with you for the most part!! I personally study languages because I have the necessity to read more references about things & because it is so much fun! I also want to speak to more people in this world, and knowing about how they live!
That was really good. As a beginner learner of Japanese I got very intima intimidated by all those videos saying that it will be so hard and I won't make it and all those rankings that say Japanese is basically impossible to learn.
I mean it is difficult, but I can take it step by step if I don't let myself be influenced by polyglots. I'm currently learning Japanese with Georges "Japanese from zero" video series. He manages to really take you by the hand and explain you why things are happening or how they work. It's baby steps, but that makes it manageable and thus fun.
I watched a video where they ranked the top easiest languages for Arabic speakers to learn and Amharic was high on the list. I never would have thought of that but it makes sense.
I think you should make a linguistic myths debunking series.This is the first one.
enthusiasm is the most important part of learning languages. I heard a joke from a language teacher: if you want to learn a language quick, date someone who speaks that language.
*cries in ugly face
Dude you put my thoughts into words. I had thought of exactly what you talked about plenty of times to myself. Awesome video.
Btw this is just speculation on my part (based on the langs i know and have heard of) but i think that in general, languages are more or less as complex as any other. Like if they have simple grammar they will usually have other areas of the language be more complex like the writing systems, with the opposite being true too.
Maybe it has to do with the fact that too simple doesnt convey enough information but too complex is not wieldy enough to learn, so they naturally gravitate towards a balance.
Everybody said to me that Japanese were so hard, but i am starting to learn it right now and i realized that Japanese it's not that "hard" it's just different, obviously this language have the most hard things to understand, but every language have this. I was so scared when I heard: "Japanese have three alphabets" but now i'm so inspired to learn this language principaly because of this "hard alphabets"
My friend is an ethnic Korean Chinese who lived in Japan for 5 years. The dude speaks all three languages natively. He once told me he grew up speaking both Chinese and Korean, and being so familiar with Korean grammar and Chinese characters make learning Japanese almost seems effortless for him. I'm so jealous but at the same time have mad respect for him.
Excellent video, every single language on earth has both easy and difficult elements. There are lots of videos online showing that Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia) is the world's "easiest" language but I've yet to meet a non-Indonesian person here in Bali who is able to speak the language at anything above a beginner level.
japanese and chinese are factually still among the hardest because of their writing systems.
yeah languages might be as diffucult but some are really more time-consuming such as these
Realmente. Para quem fala português, japonês pode ser fácil de se pronunciar, por exemplo. A dificuldade seria obter vocabulário. Idem russo, temos praticamente os mesmos fonemas.
damn, he was right. understanding written Portuguese really is easy when you know English and Spanish.
@@kurisuj1421 É mais fácil do que pegar uma língua muito diferente. Mas tem muita gente que escolhe aprender espanhol pensando que vai ser mais fácil do que inglês e depois quebra a cara, porque a língua ser mais fácil de entender superficialmente não significa que vai ser fácil de dominar a outra.
@@kurisuj1421 Portugese and spanish have a lexical similarity of 90% so
5:08 THIS. Now English is natural for me. But when I was younger I constantly felt that I wasn't saying enough. Because as a native Spanish speaker, I am used to the constant repetition of information such as gender and number throughout sentences. For English speakers this is feature is considered "hard"
I agree with your assessment that labelling a language as hard can discourage people from trying to learn it, but for some reason it's the opposite for me. Someone labelling the language hard makes me want to learn it and find out why they think so and often find that what other people find hard is easy for me and what some people find easy is hard for me.
Also some languages are easier to speak on a basic level but hard to master. Others can be harder to get even to the basic communication level, but once you do it gets a bit easier trying to improve it.
Interesting. All languages are hard for me as I have no formal experience learning them
Not the case for me. As a Russian speaker, Belarusian and Ukrainian seem relatively easy, since I can already understand at least half of it without ever learning it.
That's actually a very important point in my opinion. I've often heard from native English speakers that they didn't learn a language in school because there is no obvious language to pick from them as they already know the one language that's the obvious pick for the rest of the world.
I think the language you learn at school doesn't matter. You will learn how to learn a language regardless which one you pick and if later in life you find a language that you want or need to learn you know how to do it.
I’ve watched a few of those “top 10 hardest languages” and they all specified they meant for native English speakers. I think they were just trying to clickbait with their title, not say there is a definitive list of objectively difficult languages that applies to everyone regardless of their mother tongue. That’s not a very common opinion.
Idk.. this just feels trite because of how obvious it is. I don’t think people who say “Chinese is a hard language!” are ignorant of anything mentioned in this video.
Wouldnt they have to study native speakers as children and see how long it takes them to reach a certain proficiency to tell? I've seen a study like that with danish and swedish, where swedish kids learns quicker, because the phonology is clearer than danish
The difficulty varies between languages until the advanced level from which all languages are just an equally difficult task of expanding vocabulary and refinining your expression to a native level. From advanced to native level is the largest chunk of time in your learning, so there is no real difference in difficulty between languages. As a Korean I had much harder time bringing English to an advanced level than Japanese, but I'm still struggling to get Japanese to native level as much as English.
That's actually really true and I strongly agree with you , i started learning Spanish because it's the second most Learned language in the world, in the beginning it was easy but a little bit later I saw myself getting unmotivated and not euthanized anymore so I stopped my courses , I started Portuguese instead and I found them a little bit easier than Spanish, I was talking with some Portuguese friends that I made through a program too it really helped me , I also started Finnish too and most people asked me " why do you learn this language?" " No one speaks Finnish, Finnish are useless" it really irritates me , maybe they say finnish is one of the most hardest European languages but I found them really easy compared to German that I wasn't and never be interested to learn them.
Maybe I will never actually use these languages or maybe I will never go to Finland for example and live there but you never know ,after all I love these languages and cultures so I don't waste my time and personally I love learning languages that I am actually interested about ☺️
I have to agree with you on this. I have learned so much Japanese in such a short time and my god, it is actually soooo easy. The kanji is also super cool as well and it actually makes sense more than using hiragana. I think what helped me a lot too is being interested in the language bc I have family members that are Japanese and because it’s a phonetic language like Spanish. So far I can say I speak 2 languages fluently, one is on the way there, and Korean is still intermediate level. Enthusiasm is key guys, motivation 😊.
나의쓰 ないす
There is a “hardest language for me” definitely , but not for everyone
It's really cool to know a lot of languages but as a native Russian speaker I have no reason or motivation to learn any language but English. And I learned it well within 1-2 years by just watching videos, movies, tv shows and reading books in English. And I also know one pretty rare language - Kubachi language, I don't think anyone here heard about this language. Basically it's my first language but since Russian is the official language of Russia, I consider Russian to be my native language.
I've heard about Kubachi, my dear friend) And I am really jealous because my father is Dargin and my mother is Lack so I've never had the opportunity to learn any of them..
I am a native Arabic speaker and I still find Arabic hard.
Thanks for that list of words at 5:42. as someone who takes pride in spelling and reading, it honestly broke my brain!
Underrated video about langauges.
I agree, there really isn’t any such thing as a “hard language” it all depends on what your native language is. When I told people I was learning German they told me why do that when I could have decided to do French or Spanish (Spanish especially since it’s more popular where I’m from) but the thing is I hate both those languages💀 I mean don’t get me wrong they’re both extremely beautiful but they’re just not for me. German on the other hands goes so well with me and some of the things come like second nature to me. Some times I’m sometimes convinced I was German in a past life🤣 but Yh moral of the story is everything is situational.
For me in my personal experience as a native English speaker. Japanese is easier for me to remember than languages like French, Irish, etc. I think it is because I am a primary visual learner and kanji is very useful in that aspect. Though, the more I think of that I question ''why can't I remember Arabic?'' and so on. I think it's because of it's general phonology and the patterns of the Japanese language. It's more like remembering receptive shapes and using them in a sentence constantly than a new word for every sentence. I may have been more fortunate at a young age and now because of family I am used to being exposed to multiple languages at once(English,Spanish) so it's easy for me to recognize patterns. In my school right now I am also learning ASL. Whatever it may be, language learning is such a fun and beautiful thing :)
Yup, we all need motivation in learning a/the language
Hear hear! Absolutely love this take 💜✨
I told some people I thought Welsh grammar was harder than Japanese grammar even though Japanese kana/kanji takes more time to learn than Welsh spelling/pronunciation, but despite that I found that I was having about the same amount of success studying them on my own. Why? I love both of them, Welsh is a beautiful language (as well as one of my heritage languages!) and I'm very fond of Japanese culture (besides the anime and manga, which I also like. I was actually first exposed to Japanese through Godzilla movies but my first anime movie was Spirited Away about a year or so later). I also had similar enough enthusiasm for Arabic that I was able to pick up Arabic enough to pass my class on a very busy schedule (like, maximum amount of credits busy). Arabic is one of my favorite languages so of course I want to learn as much about it as possible and maybe even actually use it some day.
Welsh looks intimidating when coming from english, because some letters have a different function.
@@HappyBeezerStudios The letters are the easy part, because unlike in English the letters and digraphs all have distinct sounds and functions (for example, double L always makes an airy hiss sound and you can always tell what R you're supposed to pronounce based on if it's followed by an H). Mutations are what made me overwhelmed.
Basically Welsh pronunciation in an entire sentence can change into softer, nasally or breathier versions partially on vibes (such as asking nicely) and partially on grammar (even for the word "the") while maintaining a nearly consistent VSO word order (for context, English is a SVO language that uses VSO for question sentences, and Japanese is strictly SOV). Changes are consistent, for example the soft version of the "K" sound is a "G" sound (this is also shown in writing, so "cath" and "gath" are the same word, "cat", in different mutations), but it doesn't make the rules less overwhelming to learn. Welsh is unlike any other language I've seriously attempted studying in both a good and mind-numbing way.
Why there is no Hardest [natural] Language to Learn*
Natural languages get more simple if theyre too complex and more complex if something takes too long to say. But you can absolutely make an artificial language that is just a nightmare.
I think I'd say that inflection isn't hard in and of itself - understanding that an instrumental case ending = with isn't the hardest thing to wrap one's head around. The only difficult thing might be memorizing endings. As to more verb endings, the difficult thing is the concept itself, not necessarily the fact it appears as a suffix or individual word.
Thank you for an awesome video! There is one point I really got interested in though. How does actually lack of sanity help in language learning? 😁That sounds very interesting. Are there any resources on that?🤔
A major difference is also what you actually mean by learning a language. Reaching casual verbal proficiency is totally different than achieving a high level of literacy, or the ability to write in a professional context. Chinese and Japanese are probably bumped much higher on the difficulty scale because their difficult writing system… but if you don’t really care about being literate you can probably learn how to speak relatively quickly.
Also languages are not always just “one language” with a consistent level of difficulty. Arabic has many dialects, and those dialects are what you’ll be using if you actually were talking with regular people. And they’re way simpler than formal Arabic!
The rest of what you say rings true. Probably Japanese learners have a great benefit just by anime being popular and widely entertaining.
While I do agree that even a supposedly “hard” language can be overcome with more exposure and practice, the problem is that people have limited time and not all languages are spoken by millions and have thousands of texts written about it or in it. If I want to learn Chinese as an english speaker, I can do it eventually, but I could just learn Italian in nowhere near the same amount of time. It is hard not because the language is objectively hard, (Every language is easy to someone else), but because it is hard for either because it is difficult for many languages, or is difficult for one language many speak. The other point is accessibility. Learning Hawaiian is objectively harder than learning German. A non-Hawaiian speaker will have less texts, less resources, small enclaves in mainland America, or a small island chain with a few people to learn the language. Meanwhile German was the language of science for a time and is one of the core European countries. Hawaiian itself is probably rlly easy for most austro/poly/micronesian people, but a Hawaiian speaker who tries to learn german will most definently learn it faster than a german learning Hawaiian, there might even be german books in Hawaiian, when’s the last time NASA made a report in Hawaiian. Languages in a perfect vacuum cannot be hard or easy, but currently there are easier languages to learn due to circumstance and current world language populations.
another thing to consider here is distinguishing between ‘hard to learn to speak’ and ‘hard to learn to understand’.
if a language is very rich in grammar than it is easier to speak because you have more tools available to communicate with limited vocabulary. otoh it becomes harder to understand because when you just grasp the vocabulary of a sentence you still have to figure out the relationship of the understood vocabulary
When I saw the title, I decided to make a comment, but I was pleased to see you mention it in the video.
Being motivated is, by far, the biggest factor.
Your example of kpop stans learning korean much faster is dead accurate. Also, it allows them to be exposed to the language a lot more, through music, variety shows, reality shows and other content.
Having a strong desire and passion for the target language will make a "hard" language easier.
And on the flip side, learning an "easy" language can be hard if you dislike learning it.
I am norwegian, so learning german shouldn't really be that hard. However, when I was in school we had to learn german, and I disliked the subject a lot. Poor teachers, poor learning materials, and add to that the ever-present factor of being overwhelmed as a student. I sucked at it and was so happy when I was done with it. I learned german for four years, but never really got anywhere.
A few years later, I picked up german again as a hobby, and suddenly things were much easier, because I found joy in learning it (and had the time and energy to actually focus on it). I also realized that i HAD actually learned a bit at school. Language learning is so weird, you may feel like you learned nothing, but then, weeks, months or years later, you realize that you still remember a lot, and even more than you thought.
Now, I'm working on my fourth language, chinese, and I am highly motivated because I love chinese culture, movies, music and more. And I even have a desire to travel to China in the near future. So learning it is really rewarding and fun. Yes, it is a "hard" language and very different from the three I know, but being motivated makes all the difference.
hmmmm. I'm not sure that inflectional morphology is /the/ main determiner of complexity, like you've asserted here. i feel like if that were the case, Cantonese and Thai would be a lot easier to learn.
there's other elements of a language which can add complexity: particle usage, context-sensitive vocabulary, speech register, counter-words (think three bales of hay, two head of cattle) for like every noun, word order and clause organization, off the top of my head, idk man u might be selling analytic languages short
honestly i just dont buy that they can be viewed as less complicated, as you put it
As an English speaker, save for learning the characters which still proves to be time consuming, Chinese is one of if not the easiest languages for me, and that's coming from someone who has gotten 100%, 99%, and 96% on each of the three language tests I've taken this year.
These lists would tell you I've probably been learning French, Italian, and maybe Dutch, but that was Chinese, French and Japanese respectively.
THERE IS NO HARDEST LANGUAGE; IT IS A PERSONAL THING.
I’m interested in learning Chinese how long did it take you ?
First time I've heard people say Chinese is the easiest language
As a native English-speaking person learning Mandarin, I can attest to the power of enthusiasm. I find it engaging to learn the language when I'm the most engaged in it, immersing myself into Chinese culture and stuff like that.
I also feel that learning the characters helps me understand Japanese Kanji a bit more, as they are just unsimplified Chinese loans. (Well, aside from Shinjitai reforms, but the point stands I guess)
As a native English speaker who has SEVERE ADHD that isn't helped by medication, who has been trying to learn Spanish off and on for literally over a DECADE a this point, that point about vocabulary REALLY fucking hit hard. Even during periods where I'm actively trying to learn new words in Spanish EVERY DAY, I've ALWAYS ended up forgetting old words faster than I learned new ones. The grammar and pronunciation have never been an issue for me AT ALL. It's always been the goddamned vocabulary. Hell, even nowadays, I know enough Spanish grammar to generally communicate quite well with native Spanish speakers in text, but ONLY if I'm constantly looking up vocabulary that I keep forgetting constantly even as I'm trying to type my messages. I've NEVER had this problem with learning new words in my native language, and it REALLY pisses me off that I've been having this problem for so long with Spanish.
Also, has anybody else found that any attempts at immersion learning while learning a language actually HARMED their learning experience? Because I have, because it makes me stress WAY the fuck out, due to not giving me an out, to the point that I have to drop any course that tries to pull that shit on me, for the sake of my own mental health. It fucking SUCKS that literally fucking EVERYONE seems to swear by it to the point that it's legitimately hard to find a structured in-person language learning course that DOESN'T pull that shit ;-;
I'd still consider FSI classification as a base regarding which is the most complex language in the world. Ofc it's not accurate like you explained in the video.
Since 45-50% of the world speaks indo-euro languages as their native language, it kinda makes sense to classify a language toughness based on the above mentioned language family(Because english belongs to Germanic family). Sure each language has different groups and sub groups but still they have the same language structure as far as I know
Also like you said most of the world is bilingual and most of the people knows a minimum of English. Based on their english speaking skill we can scale how much it'll take to learn a foreign language. It's not sophisticated method but definitely it'll give a rough idea on a particular language complexity.
It's just my opinion
And for a native Hindi speaker, it is very easy to learn Hangeul. The variety of phonetics in Hindi can easily be traced on the alphabet of multiple languages. The cultural thing is still a slight hindrance as Korean has a hierarchical structure in the grammar. Still being Asian also counts as the culture of "respecting elders" is quite common across the continent.
*hehe* I keep telling Koreans that Hangeul was definitely sourced from Devanagari or something based on that - but they don't want to hear it. 😅 (And w all while there's not the least doubt that the standard Japanese letter table is based on Sanskrit/Devanagari 😅)
And yeah, I'm so jealous of Hindi (and I guess other Indian language) speakers for rocking all those consonants from birth. And then in school, with the writing system, you are basically taught linguistic categories (I mean, aspirated, voiced, dental, nasal, that sort). 😮👏👍
@@simonspethmann8086 uhm, in the Japanese writing system: Hiragana and Katakana are both derived from *Kanji* (Hànzì in Chinese, “Chinese characters”) and as time passed it became a simplified form of Kanji, which itself was borrowed from China, because Japanese had no written form before Chinese characters were introduced to them. it has nothing to do with Sanskrit or Devanagari lol
@@_Vezz 🙄 Lord. The ARRANGEMENT of the characters (hiragana and katakana) is in the order of the Sanskrit letter tables that Kûkai saw in China. This is not up for debate, never has been. There's no legend around it, no sage kings, nothing. It's literally a monk learning new stuff and coming back to Japan going: "I've got this brilliant idea that's much better than the poem we've been using." The end.
@@simonspethmann8086 क्या?
@@simonspethmann8086 what do you want to say
Been wanting to make this video myself. It's very good ❤
My mom speaks spanish to me at home ever since I was a baby, and I live in the US, so im fluent in both. I started taking chinese mandarin classes 2 years ago once I got to high school and language classes were mandatory. Even though mandarin ranks as "hardest" language on many lists, and even though there are almost 0 similarities between english and mandarin, I am still able to learn it pretty effectively with little difficulty. I believe any language can be learned easily if you are placed in a good learning setting, some may just be less similar, not any more difficult
I'm American, and have found that most languages I've tried learning haven't been too difficult for me. I started from a really young age, which I believe is what plays such a big factor in my understanding of other languages. Most of the reasons I also wanted to learn languages are for either "cause I want to" or for dumb reasons. When I was 5 I tried to learn Italian because of that one peppa pig episode where her family goes to Italy. (I didn't get very far with it.) When I was 7 I started learning Japanese. While I can't remember the reason why I chose Japanese, it must've been a really good reason because it stuck with me a lot easier than Italian, and I've been working on it since then. Once I tried to learn Brazilian Portuguese because I wanted to talk to the people in the Portuguese Animal Jam servers. Though I do now have a friend that is Brazilian and I've been thinking about trying to learn it again. I also have started Norwegian in the past, and restarted it because I'd like to live in Norway. Spanish was a language I kind of grew up on but never grasped, and don't plan to do much with it outside of highschool classes. However, I hate Hebrew. Sorry Israelis, Jews, Muslims, and anyone else who speaks Hebrew, but this language is pure ass
Muslims speak Arabic
@@Arcamoy There are muslims living in Israel that have to learn Hebrew. Same for palestinian muslims.
Whyyy Hebrew is not hard, there are only 75,000 words and you don't use half of them
@@retsevlys Yes but Muslims in general don't speak Hebrew you genius.
i disagree, c++ was way harder to get down than python
Yeah, but python is mid
Thanks for the video. Well done. I've always said there is no such thing as the most difficult/ the easiest language, it's all just a personal opinion. I myself grew up speaking English and Polish. The latter made it easy for me to learn Russian (which I was able to speak in fluently after less than two years of studying) never mind it is considered to be one of those hard languages. On the other hand, for the last couple of years I've been learning Spanish - a language that is generally believed to be easy- and I find it more difficult than Russian. Sure, some aspects of it will be relatively easy but it heaps of other things that are complex & difficult (which my classmate who is Italian finds easy)
your videos are fantastic i'm very surprised you don't have millions of views on every video
For Greeks, Chinese is probably the most difficult language.
It is common to call "Chinese" anything that looks or sounds difficult or hard to understand.
same where I live
Lol you can now add the “ unnecessary, artificial, psychological barrier” to the list and cross out “willingness to learn“
e acho que o termo "demorado" se encaixa muito melhor do que "difícil"
Esse vídeo é essencial para as pessoas que são apaixonadas por idiomas , mas que são assombradas por esse papo de idioma mais difícil
Good point. It should be really be what is familiar and unfamiliar to you. If something you are unfamiliar with, is going to take a bit more time and exposure to the language to learn it where as something that is familiar in some way would take less time as you already know a lot about the grammar rules or see words that are similar but have a slight different in how they are spelled or pronounced. Some languages might be easier to find resources for in others. I often see English, Spanish, Japanese, Korean and Mandarin on instructions or notices and tons of shows are in Spanish here. Since these languages are a bit more common, you might have a bit easier time to find resources to learn with-books, classes, maybe know someone who speaks one of those languages, etc...compared to say Icelandic for example as that isn't something you would probably hear or see. Immersion can play a huge part in learning as you start to get used to hearing and reading which eventually you can start speaking. Of course it takes on your part to learn it still; but this gives you more a reason to learn or help you to become more familiar. The hardest thing for me is usually the r's as they are often different and even rolled in many languages. With Mandarin, you need to pay attention to the tones, with French and Korean, writing and speaking is different as sometimes where would be sound changes in Korean or elisions (part of the spelling or sound of the word is omitted to make it easier and shorter) in French or the ending on one word is sort of linked to the beginning of another depending if it starts with a silent h or vowel (sorry, I am kind of bad at explaining things).