# In your opinion , what is the toughest language to learn?



## Stehay (Nov 11, 2016)

From personal experience

I would say Spanish.


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## john.margetts (Nov 11, 2016)

English. For two reasons. 1) few rules and those rules we do have are not obeyed all the time. 2) we have a lot of words for the same thing. My friend Kampien complains that when she moved here (England) everyone she met used a different greeting while in Thai there is just the one.


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## 480sparky (Nov 11, 2016)

Wimmin.


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## Piccell (Nov 11, 2016)

English, by far.


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## The_Traveler (Nov 11, 2016)

for an English speaker, any of the inflected languages, IMO.



_Japanese. According to the Foreign Service Institute, Japanese is the most difficult language for a native English speaker to learn. ..._
_Korean. ..._
_Arabic. ..._
_Polish. ..._
_Georgian. ..._
_Mandarin. ..._
_Hungarian. ..._
_Thai._


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## Piccell (Nov 11, 2016)

They can't all be the 'toughest' there has to be only one.
For everyone I know, it was English.


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## 480sparky (Nov 11, 2016)

Piccell said:


> They can't all be the 'toughest' there has to be only one.
> For everyone I know, it was English.



For you, maybe.  For others, it could easily be something else.

So yes, there _can_ be more than one.


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## pendennis (Nov 11, 2016)

By and large, the "Romance" languages, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian, are the easiest to learn.  The tenses, sentence structure, etc., is fairly consistent across all them.

My wife can still speak some Russian, and she thinks it easier than French, because it's a very literal language.  She majored in Russian and French in high school and college.

I had three years of French, and when I was on assignment in Mexico in the early 1990's, Spanish came fairly easy, since it was similar to French.

I agree with others; English is by far the toughest.  English is an amalgam of Anglo Saxon, German, Latin, and Romance; along with the bewildering number of grammatical rules.


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## Designer (Nov 11, 2016)

Chinese

But your question could be refined thusly:  "What is the toughest language in which to become proficient?"

Assuming we all begin from the same point; that of being native English speakers, and from there, learning the inflections and nuances as well as a working vocabulary, of a second language, including, of course, the ability to read it.  In that case I would pick Chinese.


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## Piccell (Nov 11, 2016)

480sparky said:


> Piccell said:
> 
> 
> > They can't all be the 'toughest' there has to be only one.
> ...


The question was "In your opinion what is the toughest language to learn?"...where does that say anything about for others?

There can only be one toughest in an individual's opinion whoever that person is. The "est" on the end indicates there is only of that is the most extreme. Now if it asked what is a tough language there could be more than one per respondent.


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## Piccell (Nov 11, 2016)

Designer said:


> Chinese
> 
> But your question could be refined thusly:  "What is the toughest language in which to become proficient?"
> 
> Assuming we all begin from the same point; that of being native English speakers, and from there, learning the inflections and nuances as well as a working vocabulary, of a second language, including, of course, the ability to read it.  In that case I would pick Chinese.


Not all Chinese are native English speakers though, so that assumption is incorrect.


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## 480sparky (Nov 11, 2016)

Piccell said:


> 480sparky said:
> 
> 
> > Piccell said:
> ...



The question is not directed solely towards _you_.  It is directed towards anyone who reads it.

Since my opinion may differ from yours, there's at least two answers.  But if you want to continue arguing semantics, go right ahead.

Solo.


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## Designer (Nov 11, 2016)

Piccell said:


> Not all Chinese are native English speakers though, so that assumption is incorrect.


Apparently English is beyond your capabilities.

How on earth could you jump to the conclusion that I assumed we were talking about Chinese people?


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## Piccell (Nov 11, 2016)

We were talking about people, of which some will most definitely be Chinese.


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## Designer (Nov 11, 2016)

We will not tolerate anti-semantics on this forum.


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## Designer (Nov 11, 2016)

Piccell said:


> We were talking about people, of which some will most definitely be Chinese.


One of you has to go.


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## Piccell (Nov 11, 2016)

480sparky said:


> Piccell said:
> 
> 
> > 480sparky said:
> ...


There is only one answer for each respondent is the point I was making when one person said there were several 'toughest' languages, but that is impossible.
Skywalker.


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## Gary A. (Nov 11, 2016)

For an adult, there are few Native American languages which can only be learn as a child, because an adult cannot retrain/train certain tongue muscles to accommodate the sounds of these languages.


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## Piccell (Nov 11, 2016)

Gary A. said:


> For an adult, there a few Native American languages which can only be learn as a child, because an adult cannot retrain/train certain tongue muscles to accommodate the sounds of these languages.


That seems very broad and generalistic. I am sure there is an exception to that somewhere.


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## JonA_CT (Nov 11, 2016)

I mean...from a linguist stand point...all languages are equally easy to learn, assuming you are immersed in them during the appropriate critical periods of development. A baby who is immersed in Chinese, English, and/or whatever, will be proficient in all of them.


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## Gary A. (Nov 11, 2016)

Piccell said:


> Gary A. said:
> 
> 
> > For an adult, there a few Native American languages which can only be learn as a child, because an adult cannot retrain/train certain tongue muscles to accommodate the sounds of these languages.
> ...


There are always exceptions.


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## Piccell (Nov 11, 2016)

nod


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## Piccell (Nov 11, 2016)

JonA_CT said:


> I mean...from a linguist stand point...all languages are equally easy to learn, assuming you are immersed in them during the appropriate critical periods of development. A baby who is immersed in Chinese, English, and/or whatever, will be proficient in all of them.


There are people that are unable to learn languages too though.


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## Causapscal (Nov 11, 2016)

Martian is very hard to learn 

Most seriously, Danish is very hard to learn


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## Piccell (Nov 11, 2016)

I had the most trouble learning to speak Gerbil as a kid.


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## JonA_CT (Nov 11, 2016)

Piccell said:


> JonA_CT said:
> 
> 
> > I mean...from a linguist stand point...all languages are equally easy to learn, assuming you are immersed in them during the appropriate critical periods of development. A baby who is immersed in Chinese, English, and/or whatever, will be proficient in all of them.
> ...



But then ALL languages are difficult to learn, not specific ones.


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## MSnowy (Nov 11, 2016)

English, 56  yeras an I aint gotta her write yet


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## Piccell (Nov 11, 2016)

MSnowy said:


> English, 56  yeras an I aint gotta her write yet


Yeah, there are a lot of these on the internet.


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## Achaicus (Nov 14, 2016)

I've heard it said Icelandic is up there and with reason. You think conjugating verbs in Spanish is hard, they change those and pronouns, adjectives, adverbs change right along with it. Not many opportunities to practice either.


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## jake337 (Nov 14, 2016)

I heard Icelandic was very difficult


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## OGsPhotography (Nov 14, 2016)

Im going to have to say the second one is harder than the first.

Also, Japanese and German, they were not " bird" courses and don't ask me why Business school requires 6 credits in " Second" language.

 Technically, my province is bilingual. What a farce that is.


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## snowbear (Nov 14, 2016)

I'll go along with what Lew said, and toss out Cherokee, maybe Inuktitut.


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## jcdeboever (Nov 14, 2016)

The true meaning of my wife's yelling at me... I haven't learned a thing... excuse me, I have an appointment with a laundry tub...


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## limr (Nov 14, 2016)

JonA_CT said:


> I mean...from a linguist stand point...all languages are equally easy to learn, assuming you are immersed in them during the appropriate critical periods of development. A baby who is immersed in Chinese, English, and/or whatever, will be proficient in all of them.



Thank you! All languages are equally accessible as a first language. A person's first language may influence the relative difficulty in learning a second language, and even then, there's a lot of individual variation.



Piccell said:


> JonA_CT said:
> 
> 
> > I mean...from a linguist stand point...all languages are equally easy to learn, assuming you are immersed in them during the appropriate critical periods of development. A baby who is immersed in Chinese, English, and/or whatever, will be proficient in all of them.
> ...



Do you mean people who could never learn a first language or a second language? The only things that interfere with the acquisition of a first language is lack of proper input or issues of abnormal cognition. Otherwise any child can learn any language given proper exposure during the acquisition period (which _does_ have an endpoint. If a person isn't exposed to language by about puberty, it's very unlikely they would ever gain competence in a first language.)

Learning a second language is a different story, and part of what affects a persons ability to learn a second language is competence in their first. Even when an adult can master vocabulary and grammar of a second language, they almost always have an accent in the second language. The accent is milder if that person was exposed to other languages while still a child, but it's still there.

And might I point out that we've been told that English has a) very few rules, and b) too many rules, and also told to not discuss semantics in a thread about linguistics. The irony is thick in here, folks 

English spelling is a hot mess, but its grammatical structure is much more consistent than most people think.


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## thereyougo! (Nov 15, 2016)

Piccell said:


> 480sparky said:
> 
> 
> > Piccell said:
> ...



Do you actually know how forums work?

Opinions are like faces.  Everyone has one and they are all individual to the person that has them.


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## thereyougo! (Nov 15, 2016)

Of the languages that I speak a little of, Japanese is the hardest followed by Korean.  German and Italian are relatively easy.


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## ashleykaryl (Nov 15, 2016)

I learned Italian while living in Milan for more than 10 years and it's very formal in structure with precise rules of grammar. Towards the end I did some translation work and it would often sound like 16th century English when decoded literally.

As you travel around the country there are differences in dialect and cadence that can be near impossible to understand, even for native Italians.


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## petrochemist (Nov 15, 2016)

I have yet to learn all languages, so can't really have a valid opinion on which of them would be hardest to learn.
Of those I've head Zulu seemed the most alien to me.

I have often heard that English is very hard to learn because of it's many inconsistencies, but it's so common in modern world cultures that I'm not at all sure that's true.
I remember meeting 9 year old Dutch children  who where totally fluent in English, and could also speak American English which is a subtly different language. They learnt one at school and the other watching films and treated them as different languages.


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## snowbear (Nov 16, 2016)

Here's another take:
BASIC and COBOL were fairly easy, while Assembler was not.  I have no formal training in FORTRAN, but I suspect learning it would be fairly simple.  I have picked up on Python with only a few problems.


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## Piccell (Nov 16, 2016)

I found assembler and ascii both fairly easy to learn.
There are 10 kinds of people, those that understand binary and those that don't.
I often confuse Christmas and Halloween because Dec. 25 = Oct. 31.


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## Rick50 (Nov 17, 2016)

I tried Japanese once while sitting in a bar in Japan and almost got laughed out of the place. 
I did find 'C' was fairly easy but took some time.


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## Ambient Lightscapes (Nov 30, 2016)

To pronounce: possibly Chinese or Korean (at least for me, I just can't repeat a Chinese or a Korean sentence after hearing it, but perhaps I am too old).

To learn all the possible word inflections and use them correctly in speech: Slavic languages, for example Polish with its 7 grammatical cases multiplied by 3 genders in the singular and 2 genders in the plural. And within one gender different noun groups take different inflections. Verbs and adjectives are inflected, too. However, once you know one Slavic language, the next ones are much easier because some inflections are very similar.

To learn the necessary speech styles and use them properly: possibly Japanese with its honorific and humble speech.


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## webestang64 (Nov 30, 2016)

Klingon.


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## petrochemist (Nov 30, 2016)

webestang64 said:


> Klingon.


I rather suspect Klingon is a fairly simple language there are many Sci-Fi buffs who seem to learn it, and there would be no point in making it complicated when designing it for TV shows.
I've even got a Christmas song 'sung' in Klingon among my MP3s


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## unpopular (Nov 30, 2016)

all of them. i have literally no idea how people learn other languages. It's a total mystery to me. I feel like it's a skill that my brain is entirely not wired for. For whatever reason I simply cannot take the pieces of a language to make a whole.

I used to be able to put together written French when I was younger. But verbal language is different.


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## unpopular (Nov 30, 2016)

snowbear said:


> I'll go along with what Lew said, and toss out Cherokee, maybe Inuktitut.



My mother developed the braille code for Inuktiut. She said that the structure was extremely different and was pretty challenging even as a written form.


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## webestang64 (Nov 30, 2016)

petrochemist said:


> webestang64 said:
> 
> 
> > Klingon.
> ...



Probably so, I have a buddy who speaks Klingon all the time.


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