language is power ! Learning extra language is more power !!!
Which language is easy to learn and which is the most difficult ?
Najmul Kadir Kaikobad Rana Md Shohel Anwarr Afroza Haq Daizy Tanjena Mahbub Alexandra Zamaro
I think Hindi is the easiest to learn whereas Mandarin is the most difficult language in the world.
Fantastic discussion. Following. All languages are not easy to learn. The key think how much you expose the target language. Some continental languages are close to each other. For example if you learn Arabic language and if you live and belong one of the Middle eastern country than you can learn much quicker. For example my arabic is little , i am native Turkish speaker and Turkish language has perhaps %5-10 arabic words. Therefore i can make progress much better than the South American languages. Learning a new language is a fan. In artificial intelligence ( AI) era almost all of us would be able to interact with our native languages and AI will made the language barrier history very soon, I am expecting in 5 years or so. If happens you can deliver your talks , teachings, etc in your language with simultaneous translation. That sounds good..isn't it? Md Zafar Alam Bhuiyan many thanks bringing this fantastic topic here, much appreciated..
Hello
Well the easier one for me is Spanish is my language, the difficult maybe arabic
Ingrid
Emre Pakdemirli
Thank you for your impartial and insightful detailed answer here. Yes, I do agree with you . Regards
Ingrid Del Valle García Carreño
Thank you for your contribution. Let we see for more contributions from the others.
regards
Anastas Ivanov Ivanov
English is the bulky and verbose language. How many vocabulary English has we don't know exactly. For huge words all the word meanings are not graped even by the natives !
My original is mother language and easy to learn.
English also easy to learn.
All others are difficult for me.
Fateh Boutekouk
Thank you for your contribution.
YES, I agree.
Regards
Japanese Hungarian
Finnish
Arabic
Polish are the most difficult languages
since I speak/read/write different languages, I classify them by family (f.e. Latin, Greek, Northen Europe, Arab, Chinese) in order to identify the roots. Once roots are spotted, you understand better the architecture of the language and why it's different from a cousin one. But sharing roots means a lot of concepts in common, that makes the language easier to learn. I don't speak Arab but I understand things many Arab speakers ignore, such as how ends an old Arab manuscript: with a kind of reversed pyramid of writing. I specially enjoy the poetry within Arab language, even if I can't read the letters. It will be a future learning. Chinese too. But the only language I could not relate with any other and therefore is very difficult to learn is Hungarian. They have distinct pre and post-positions. Nevertheless, going often to Hungary's thermal springs, I manage to speak a few words. Napot Kivanok!
Easy to learn : English
Most difficult to learn: Others (French, arabic, latin, etc)
The easiest language to communicate formally in sciences and technologies is the language of mathematics. Next to it would be one or more common programming languages. Whether or not it is difficult to learn depends on individual skills, and understanding of their necessity.
As far as a most widely used speaking/writing language in sciences and technologies is concerned, currently it is English, since near 1940. Before that, it was German. It's not to say those two ones are very easy to learn languages. It were choices based on historical circumstances. Countries, that want their languages to dominate in the world ought to invest in their citizens' prosperity, world respect, and leading positions in sciences and technologies.
Anastas Ivanov Ivanov What US Americans say about English: "It's the simplest language in its low-cost version worldwide spoken. It's also the most difficult language in its Bostonian version." I agree with them (even not exactly about Boston). American English is like a labyrinth you never come out. Because it is an extraordinary language for scientific research, because this colonizer language was done to describe never-seen things and its grammar (yes, US English have a grammar) almost automatically orders unknown surroundings. The language for explorers.
Human Language
Most Difficult: Chinese
Easiest: English
Programming Language
Most Difficult: Assembly Language
Easiest: Python
For little comminication English may be an eady language but for its verbose /huge voccabulary make its a difficult language!
Mother tongue is the easiest of the languages to learn. This is because of the fact that you learn the language from your mother, your family members, and from the community you belong to. This is the reason why Bengali is the easiest language, that I have so far learnt.
To me, Chinese and Korean look very difficult. Although, this is quite relative. What is difficult for someone is easy for another.
It is natural that the English language is the easiest language to be more widely used and used .. The most difficult language that contains a number of many alphabets regardless of the extent of circulation globally.
I think all languages are difficult but as long as an interpreter makes things easier
Dr Fatima
Yes, I do agree with you.English is difficult for its huge unknown words and The Arabic is harder languge in pronunciations and grammar point of view.
This depends on the native language. In my case - Russian is Slavic. Therefore, it is easier for me to communicate with Slovaks, Poles, even Czechs (Ukrainian and Belarusian for me sound like dialects of Russian, with regular deviations from the standard, sorry). After few weeks at Ukraine I start speak as Ukrainian, sorry again, and have communication problems after return to Ural. But I absolutely do not understand Bulgarians, although it is believed that Bulgarian is close to Russian. I pick up individual words, but the meaning of the speech is not clear. At the same time, I understand Polish quite well, although I have never taught it. Once I was in a Polish environment, I heard the Polish speech for several hours (not addressed to me) and was taken aback by the fact that I understand everything! But here there is a "aberration of proximity", often languages of similar origin are perceived incorrectly. The famous (for Russians) Czech road sign "Pozor, děti" means "Attention, children", but not "Shame on children", as it often seems to my compatriots.
As I now little Italian and English, I understand a little bit some romance and germanic languages. Same time I absolutely do not understand French (except for a few words, thanks to "War and Peace" by L. Tolstoy and some other Russian writers), although I understand Spanish, it is strange.
My friend, Tatar, told me that he understands some Bashkirs, Kazakhs, Kumyks, but not Chuvash, Turks, Azeris or Uzbeks.
Nevertheless, I think that it is necessary to learn one language from the corresponding group in order to return to other related languages. By the way, the Hungarian language has only two relatives: Khanty and Mansi (quite rare languages), so it must be taught from scratch, as well as Georgian, Armenian ...
Naturally, closely related languages seem to me more simple - in my case these are Slavic. The following are Germanic and Romance, since we have a lot of language borrowings. As for the Turkic ones, for example, or Chinese, studying these is a hard work ...
Certainly English, since, as it seems to me, with its help you can express thoughts most accurately and most simply. Therefore, it is not surprising that he won his place as the main language in science. It is hard to imagine that any other language could compete with English in science in the foreseeable future. And for sure it will not be Chinese, even if Chinese civilization is dominant in this world. It is possible that someday it will be Russian, if the Russians succeed in science, for which there is reason, and will begin to use wisely their vast territory. However, I do not exclude that a new language, convenient for all, will be invented. But for this we must all become smarter.
People will have a natural tendency to claim that their native tongue is the easiest, but I can say, in my experience, I disagree.
English is easy, for one, because the grammar is a simplified, collapsed version of the grammar of other languages: Latin, and by extension, the similar grammars of German, and the Romance languages. Also easy because, while it might have a vast dictionary of words and idiomatic expressions, these are not essential to make oneself understood.
Another reason why English is easy is because it is spoken and written the same way, unless we really indulge heavily in colloquial slang. And English is analytical, clinical, not unnecessarily verbose, as so many languages are. You won't come across as being more educated or more knowledgeable, in English, if you construct complicated, long sentences, for no good reason. Maybe that's part of the culture. Concise is always best.
One thing I've found among native English speakers, who communicate with the more tentative of non-native English speakers, is that the native English speakers are not always aware they might be using difficult idioms, that might be hard for the non-English speaker to grasp. Rethink the sentence structure! Simplify! Knowing more than just English raises one's awareness of this problem.
Back to my original sentence, I think the easiest language is the language one is educated in, which may very well not be one's native tongue! People who are educated in some other language than their own, from a very early age (let's say, starting at 6 years old), and not formally educated also in their native language, may be able to speak their native tongue well enough, may have a perfect native accent too, but I'll bet they will have trouble writing in it, fluently and correctly. This is especially the case when a language is spoken and written differently. The writing may well be unsophisticated, even childish. Of course, practice makes perfect, in any language, including in one's own native tongue.
Depending on where you are born, some languages are harder to master than others. For example, Europeans generally find English easy to learn and speak while Arabic is harder to master. Chinese generally find it more difficult to speak English, than Mandarin, etc.
Can you believe there are 4000 languages in India!!. In every 20 miles language change here, that's really incredible!! But the one language (English) brought every one in the common platform.
Its really hard to say which language is easy or which one is difficult. But its our obligation to save the languages for diversity and civilization. Thanks.
My native language is Polish, which is a rather complex one with declension (seven cases), genders (for both singular and plural), conjugation, etc. I noticed that it was easier for me to learn a less inflectional language such as German and English. Likewise, for the same reason Russian felt very approachable because both Polish and Russian share similar complexity mentioned above.
So, I agree with Agnieszka that the perceived level of difficulty learning a new language is relative rather than absolute.
I think that it depends on one's native language and its' structure.
The easiest language is undoubtedly your mother tongue. This is because of the fact that this is the first language you learn and, that too, from your mother. Your family members and the community around you help you further in learning this language. Bengali is my mother tongue and hence, this is the language I am most comfortable with and the easiest for me as a person.
i think any language with less speaker is more difficult because you can't communicate with enough people.
I studied various languages - English, Spanish, Sanskrit, Hindi, French and German. I think Sanskrit is the most difficult to learn followed by German. Spanish has been the easiest to learn as well as communicate in.
Definitely mother language is the easiest one to the incumbent and it is simple always. Here , we meant communication by other languages .
It took me over a year to feel comfortable with the four tones of Mandarin Chinese. The easy part, as I realized later, was because although you cannot predict the tone for a character and so have to learn the tone for every single one, the tones in Mandarin Chinese are distinct. There is one rising tone, one falling, one level and one which initially falls and then rises. With a certain degree of familiarity, you can distinguish the tones when listening to a speaker perfectly.
At present, the most difficult language I encountered is Cantonese. It has six tones, but unlike Mandarin, they are more advanced. There are for instance three level tones, each with a different pitch: high, medium and low. As I said, in Mandarin there was only one level tone, it did not matter with what pitch you start as long as you keep it on the same level. This is no longer the case for Cantonese.
In brief: for me the most difficult language (phonetically) is Cantonese.
To me : my native Arabic is the easiest, English is 50 :50, and all other languages are difficult.
From my foreigner friends I have heard that Bangla also a difficult language in pronunciations and some cases of spelling.
Chinese is really difficult language! However, English language is easier to communicate with others who do not speak your mother tongue language.
All languages are easy to communicate with by its native language users. But during to the complexity of the systems of languages in south east Asia make them very much difficult to master and communicate with.
Any new language is difficult. With keep practicing it will be easy.
For communication, I think Hindi & Urdu are the easiest . Mandarin is the most difficult language in the world.
Dear Md Zafar Alam Bhuiyan
This is really good question. Perhaps, English is the most common and easiest way express emotion to abroad peoples. However, native language is also important to communicate country peoples.
One should, first of all, define "easy" and "difficult". As a brain scientist, I take into consideration experimental results in terms of neural networks involvement, reaction time and scientifically proved communication efficiency. As a multilingual person, I would definitely place on top of the "difficult" list: Hungarian and probably Slovenian, for obvious grammar peculiarities. Japanese is also a challenge. My experience with learning and teaching places Mandarin Chinese among feasible/easy targets, which is not true for the rest of the languages spoken in China. All in all, there is no such thing as an "easy" or "difficult" language. It's all a matter of "from where I stand...". Mother tongue, social environment, motivation, cultural background make the difference. Studying the brain and its organization helps a lot, too.
Ragad moufaq Tawafak
In fact , I don't think English is an easiest language. For rigorous global practice it is known to us for the communication purpose but mastering in the same is not so easy due to its huge verbose patterns , words, grammatical diversity. Only in English , there are many unknown words even for the natives!
Thanks
As far as I know, English the easiest to learn, but poor in # of words. For new immigrants, Greek is not difficult to learn, but has millions of words. That is why when USA became a country they picked English over Greek by one vote or so.
Fateh Boutekouk
Oh is it sir ! Very good to know, Thanks. One of our scientists has answer like this before. ''Arabic language is one of the most rich languages in the world''-I agree
There is no free meal.....Every languages have their handicaps. One of my colleagues askEd me today “ Do you think you would be able to write a poem in English? “ i replied “ if I feel it I can“
other issue would be “ if you make it simple , expose yourself to the targeted language“
“ LOOK, LISTEN, HARD WORK,COMMUNICATE AND LEARN”
English is easy and important international language. No language id very easy or very difficult.
No language is easy. No language is difficult. If you want to learn a new language, it depends on your first language leading to the fact that the new one seems difficult or not.
Within the country you were born and raised, the easiest language for formal communications is this country's language (your mother's tongue). Whereas the most difficult is the language of the look in the facial expressions and gestures about that be visited deaf-mute.
Within the country you were born and raised, the easiest language for formal communications is this country's language (your mother's tongue). Whereas the most difficult is the language of the look in the facial expressions and gestures about that be visited deaf-mute.
My practice : The most difficult - old Latin , old Greek, Georgian, Arabic, Sanscrit, the "easiest" - Spanish or creolized languages
I think, there is not easiest language or the most difficult because all languages have different handicaps. However, memorizing of arabic texts is very easy.
@Vural. Memorizing Arabic texts is easy??? Yes if u know all vowels...
Dear Aleksandr Maryukhin, I don't know all vowels, and I am not arab. However, after a lot of repeating of arabic text, people can memorize it easily. And I try the same way to memorize arabic texts...
Dear Colleagues and Friends from RG,
Each of us may have different subjective feelings and experiences when it comes to language learning, which can be determined by various factors, including our personal experiences and abilities. To objectively answer the question, which language is easier and which is more difficult to learn, it would be necessary to carry out these studies on a representative group of people who learned at least several languages. At the same time, the research should include people who learned at least two languages in addition to their native language. The research would have to take a sufficient number of people, including specific groups of people who speak the same native language and learned at least two other languages. In addition, the research period should separate the issue of learning individual elements of a foreign language such as: learning words, phrases, letters, parts of a sentence, grammar, phraseology, etc. as separate research elements, which should be treated together after partial research. In this way one could get an objective answer to the above question.
Best wishes
Arabic and Chinese are difficult to learn. On the other hand, English is one of the easiest and simplest languages.
For me, Learning language is not an easy task, for some it comes naturally, their brain formatting help them to learn language easily, but for some language learning is quite difficult, example is mine, we grew up in the region in Pakistan where Punjabi (my mother tongue) speaking people are less and Saraiki speaking people are more, my all siblings speak saraiki fluently except me, my listening is good, I understand Saraki very well but can speak only 2 to 3 sentences and then my saraiki gets exhausted, my siblings adopt other languages (we have many native languages in Pakistan)smoothly, fluently in less time, but my brain formatting for language is quite deficient, although I know that with hard work (in case of mine, lots of hard work regarding languages) we can learn anything.
So it is very subjective.......
English is very easy for scientific communication. Nice topic ... Best Regards Md Zafar Alam Bhuiyan
Interesting topic and discussion. I agree with those who state that the difficulty or ease in learning a language depends on how familiar is the particular language to the person.
Language is not a knowledge, it's is a skill so if we adapt any language we will easy to learn.
Hello
I think it totally depends on what your mother language is. Considering the most spoken languages around the world, for us Spanish native speakers, Potuguese, Italian and French are the easiest languages of all. In the second place, there comes English, German and Russian, and finally Arabic, Japanese and Chinese.
Best regards.
My mother tongue: Hungarian language is one of the most difficult one.
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