What is the hardest language to learn?
For native English speakers, languages like Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Arabic are often considered the hardest to learn, needing about 2,200 class hours to reach professional working ability.
The US Foreign Service Institute, which trains American diplomats, groups languages by how long they take English speakers to learn. Its hardest category, Category IV, includes Arabic, Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese and Korean. These languages use different writing systems, have sounds or tones unfamiliar to English speakers and share little vocabulary with English.
Mandarin uses thousands of characters and has four main tones, so the same syllable can mean different things depending on pitch. Japanese uses three writing systems and complex politeness levels. Arabic has sounds that do not exist in English, is written right to left and differs greatly between regional dialects.
It depends on you
How hard a language is depends on your native language. For a Spanish speaker, Italian or Portuguese is easier than for an English speaker. For a Japanese speaker, Korean grammar may feel familiar. Motivation, practice and exposure matter most.
Did You Know?
Some linguists point to languages like Hungarian, Finnish, Polish and Navajo as especially challenging because of their complex grammar.