There is always discussion about what people consider to be the hardest languages to learn, and I'm interested to know what your personal thoughts are on this.
Most people say that the hardest languages to learn are Polish, Hungarian, Russian or Mandarin Chinese, Arabic or Japanese.
I learned Polish fairly rapidly and didn't find it that hard at all, much to my surprise. And I'm currently learning Japanese and I find it easy. I think people look at the complex writing systems of certain languages and automatically assume those languages are difficult. It really isn't the case.
I've also been learning Mandarin Chinese for about a year and a half, and I think this is a difficult language. Sure, the grammar is easy and the tones aren't hard, but the hard part comes in remembering the vocabulary, because it is so different to English, AND you have to remember the correct tone for every word or you won't be understood. Also, superimposing the tones over words while talking at a reasonable pace is tricky (it's easy at slow speed). And then there's the complex writing system (with no alphabet).
So for ME, I'd say Mandarin Chinese is the hardest language of the ones I've been learning so far.
I also think Cantonese must be difficult, because it has more tones than Mandarin (8 tones I think, correct me if I'm wrong).
I'd actually go as far as to say that English is one the hardest languages to learn if you're a non-English native, because our alphabet is not phonetic...i.e. you cannot tell how a word/letter is pronounced just by looking at it. This must make remembering and reading English really hard for foreigners. The alphabets and writing systems for most languages are entirely phonetic....every word is written as it is pronounced, so in actual fact things that SEEM complex such as the Russian alphabet or Japanese writing systems are in fact quite easy to learn.
I don't know about Hungarian to be honest, haven't tried learning it.
In the end, some things are easier and some things are harder in certain languages, I don't think it's possible to truly say what the hardest language is.
What do YOU think are the hardest languages to learn, from your own experience or otherwise, and why?