14 Hardest Languages to Learn for English Speakers

What Are the Hardest Languages to Learn?

Let us take a look at the languages that are most difficult for English speakers to understand. Learning expectations is compiled for different languages by the foreign institute of the United States department of state. This is based on how long it takes native speakers to learn and speak the language proficiently.

Depending on several factors, time is required to learn a language as each learner is different. The time taken to learn different languages depends on a variety of factors. Here are some of them:

• The complexity of the language.
• How similar the new language is to your mother tongue or other languages you understand.
• How long do you devote to learning the new language.
• The motivation of the learner and the resources available to the learner.

Learn in 23 to 24 Weeks

The following languages are easier to learn within 23 to 24 weeks with 575 to 600 hours of lessons. Here is the list.

1. Español, spoken in Spain with 329 million native speakers.
2. Portugués, spoken in Portugal with 178 million native speakers.
3. French, spoken in France with 67.8 million native speakers.
4. Italiano, spoken in Italy with 61.7 million native speakers.
5. Románá spoken in Romania with 23.4 million native speakers.
6. Dutch, spoken in the Netherlands with 21.7 million native speakers.
7. Svenska, spoken in Sweden with 8.3 million native speakers.
8. Afrikaans, spoken in South Africa with 4.6 million native speakers.
9. Norsk, spoken in Norway with 4.6 million.

Learn in 44 Weeks and 1,110 Hours

Here is the list of languages with medium level of difficulty in learning. It takes approximately 44 weeks and 1,110 hours of classes to understand this languages.

1. Hindi, spoken in India with 182 million native speakers.
2. PycckNÑ, spoken in Russia with 144 million native speakers.
3. Vietnamese spoken in Vietnam with 68.6 million native speakers.
4. Turkish, spoken in Turkey with 50.8 million native speakers.
5. Polish, spoken in Poland with 40 million native speakers.
6. Thai, spoken in Thailand with 20.4 million native speakers.
7. Serbian, as spoken in Serbia with 16.4 million native speakers.
8. Greek, as spoken in Greece with 13.1 million native speakers.
9. Hebrew as spoken in Israel with 5.3 million native speakers.
10. Finnish as spoken in Finland with 5 million native speakers.

Learn in 88 Weeks and 2,200 Hours

Here is the list of the hardest languages, taking about 88 weeks of study and 2,200 class hours to achieve proficiency.

Arabic
This is spoken by about 221 million native speakers. Egypt has the largest number of people speaking this language. This language is so difficult because it has a few words that looks like that of the European language and it has too few vowels.

Japanese
This language has approximately 122 million native speakers with Japan being the country with the largest number of speakers. This language is difficult because you need to be conversant with lots of characters. The complexity of this language is increased as a result of the different forms of writing and the two syllable system.

Chinese
This language has 1.2 billion native speakers. China has the most number of people speaking this language. This is a tonal language, this means as the tone of the word changes, the meaning of the word changes also. There is lots of character, this makes learning an uphill task.

Korean
This language is spoken by about 66.3 million native speakers with South Korea being the country with the most number of speakers. As a result of the sentence structure and verb conjugations, this language is difficult to learn.