The most difficult languages you wouldn't want to mess with

1/24/2018

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Geography Story: The most difficult languages you wouldn't want to mess with

Which foreign language to learn? This list will help you find the easiest one for you!

Foreign Service Institute worked out a list of foreign languages ranked in accordance with the difficulty of learning for English-speakers.

To simplify the choice they divided all considered languages in only five categories.

Reddit user Fummy presented it in a even simpler form of a map, where countries of the same category are colored same color:

Romance languages are the nearest to English by origin since they come from Latin, hence they are easier to pick-up and start talking and writing.These are such languages as French, Spanish, Italian.
English also has common roots with other languages like Dutch, Danish, Swedish. All of these languages are comprised in Category 1 and require about 24 weeks of study.
Japanese, Korean, or Arabic are the most distant languages in origin from English. You can learn them (one of them!) in 88 weeks (2 years), provided half of this time you spend among native speakers. They are in the Category 5.
Studying languages of other categories will take you less time if you spend about 3,5 hours per day on it. This time also hugely depends on your devotion to the process and your learning abilities.

*Languages marked with asterisk are usually harder to learn than those from the same category.

Category 1 - 24 weeks (600 hours):

Category 2 - 30 weeks (750 hours):

Category 3 - 36 weeks (900 hours)

Category 4 - 44 weeks (1100 hours)

Category 5 - 88 weeks (2200 hours)

How many languages do you know? Do you agree with the list given above?

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What are your thoughts on this subject?

68 Comments

Addie Adams Wijnen

I speak Italian and some French and Dutch. The problem with languages is that if you don’t use them you lose them.

Frank Champagne

They omitted WELSH which is one of the most difficult languages to learn.

Leena Livingston

Speaking from personal experience, learning an other foreign language is fairly long road of self discipline and will to learn. It is not repeating what you hear on the tape recorder, but it is changing your entire thinking pattern to the language you are learning. Only than you can start forming sentences and participate in conversation. I know, I have done it.

werma

The easiest way to learn a new language is to go to that country and then you're forced to learn.

Satish Chandran

Ancient language Tamil can be learnt within a month.

Alana King

Susanna Viljanen, So you're a polyglot. Well done! I have to admit, I agree with my father with how, regardless of whether being Catholic or public schooling, it is strange that so many schools (at least in Australia and New Zealand) don't teach Latin anymore. It is a true base for learning many other languages.

Alana King

If you look at it, based on the hours, this is why toddlers who grow up in multilingual households gain language skills so well and early. They are sponges. So even if they speak gibberish to you, they are forming multiple developmental pathways towards speech. I heard a father speaking Italian to his infant daughter, while the mother and grandmother spoke English. I thought "Yep, that kid's going to know half of Europe by the time she reaches school."

Alana King

I can speak basic Japanese and enough conversational French to get me around. The best I would do is German, as I seem to have retained most of it, but I won't deny I get the syntax and structure mixed up occasionally. Also, English is the mongrel/mutt of languages, as we actually take from so many others. However, the base would be Germanic, not Latin.

Gerry Santos

Hmmm. Tagalog is cat 4 while Indonesian and Malaysian are cat 3. They all belong to the same language group. Also isn't English a derivative of German not Latin?

Doris Dallaire

I know French and English, learned a little bit of Spanish and German and so can figure out a bit of Dutch and Italian but not much.

Allison Aspden

Interesting information about the difficulty of learning and foreign languages.

Cindy Ursan

I think English would be the hardest language to learn. Every rule can be broken. Many words are identical but are pronounced differently and have different meanings. Then you have your “ible’s” snd “able’s”…I’m born and bred English speaking and still get confused!!🤓