Which language is the hardest to learn?

sammy.tatter

Korean, Japanese or Arabic?

Reply 1

sammy.tatter

Korean, Japanese or Arabic?

Reply 2

Vyshto Andeddu

Original post by sammy.tatter

Korean, Japanese or Arabic?

Navajo is the hardest language to learn, but out of the options you gave there... I would say Japanese, due to the many, many characters you have to learn. Korean is rather simple once you learn the basics. Arabic is very tricky, a lot of practice is required to get a base knowledge of it.

(edited 7 months ago)

Reply 3

MindMax2000

Universities Forum Helper

Original post by sammy.tatter

Korean, Japanese or Arabic?

I'm a little curious to why those specific languages. Anyway, the following posted their opinions:
https://verbalicity.com/easiest-hardest-language-to-learn/ - Japanese
https://resources.unbabel.com/blog/japanese-finnish-or-chinese-the-10-hardest-languages-for-english-speakers-to-learn - Arabic
https://www.tomedes.com/translator-hub/hardest-languages-to-learn - Arabic
https://leverageedu.com/blog/most-difficult-languages/ - Arabic

According to the FSI ranking, they're all Category V level of difficulty (https://www.fsi-language-courses.org/blog/fsi-language-difficulty/), so you're not exactly going to have an easy time with any apparently.

Personally, I had an OK time with Japanese so long I stay away from the poetry, idioms, sophisticated literature, and multiple kanjis that sound the same. I haven't tried the other 2, so I don't know how much more difficult they are.

Having said the above, I'm confident they more or less left out all of the tonal tribal languages and just went for the nationally recognised languages. in which case there are probably more difficult languages out there we don't know about.