What is the most difficult language for you?

Posts0Likes0Joined3/9/2018LocationSan Salvador / SV
Native
English, Spanish
Learning French

For native English speakers I've heard Spanish is very challenging. What do you think?

There are no other limits to the human mind rather than the ones you think there are.

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#1
Posts0Likes0Joined3/9/2018LocationLagos / NG
Native
English
Learning French

I think spanish is the most difficult,i might be wrong though but french is easier

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#2
Posts1630Likes1092Joined18/3/2018LocationBellingham / US
Native
English
Learning German
Other Chinese - Mandarin, French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, Tagalog, Thai

TemitopeAkinyede wrote:
I think spanish is the most difficult,i might be wrong though but french is easier

I think it depends on many things, and maybe the most important is your mother tongue. So Spanish and French is hardest for people with your mother tongue?


French and Spanish were the easiest for me by far. Japanese and Mandarin were the hardest by far.

In Thailand now. Next up Tanzania and Philippines.

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#3
Posts0Likes0Joined3/9/2018LocationLagos / NG
Native
English
Learning French

That’s correct. Never thought of Japanese, that should be difficult 

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#4
Posts0Likes0Joined3/9/2018LocationSkopje / MK
Native
Macedonian
Other Arabic - Gulf, English, French, Spanish, Serbian

I think the languages most difficult for us to learn are the ones that differ completely from our mother tongue(s). Those are the ones that contain a completely foreign alphabet, which all together enclose a totally different grammar, word count, and since the culture is the one creating the language, you can even feel the totally different vibe or dominance of phrases, approaches, expressions that define the culture and its traditions, the way of saying things, how people think etc. It's like a total change of embodiment if you fully learn the language or just immerse in the culture. So, it's never just about learning a language, it's also about learning the culture and how it functions. That's why it's not hard to just learn a new language, but everything that the language and culture carries with itself. That's why I find learning a new language to be so enriching. You can however always put a limit to how much and what you want to learn, but a new language carries way more knowledge than what one would maybe assume.  


Mine is Arabic. I love exotic languages, but one of the hardest things I have ever embarked on. That's why it goes slow at the moment. :) 


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#5
Posts0Likes0Joined4/9/2018LocationLaguna / PH
Native
Tagalog
Other English, Hindi, Japanese

The hardest for me is Arabic, I've been working with the Arabs for four consecutive years and no matter how I tried, I just learned max of 20 Arabic words. I think Arabic is the most challenging for native English speakers. Like any language, there’s a substantial difference between being immersed in a language from birth and learning it at or beyond your teenage years.


For Arabic in particular, I think most of the difficulty comes from an overwhelming amount of grammar rules that are wildly inconsistent - most grammar rules have several exceptions that are often unique to individual words.


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#6
Posts0Likes0Joined4/9/2018LocationCaracas / VE
Native
Spanish
Learning German, Italian
Other English

I totally agree with you, languages with a foreign alphabet are the most difficult. I once tried to learn basics in Hebrew and felt so demotivated. Those can take your motivation away real fast if you do not have the correct tools available.

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#7
Posts0Likes0Joined3/9/2018LocationCebu City / PH
Native
Cebuano, English, Tagalog
Other Arabic - Standard, Chinese - Mandarin, Korean, Malay

Arabic or Mideast languages are particularly hard for me to enunciate. I get tongue-tied and choke on words but writing is fun for me. It's one of the easiest written form I've learned with and I can say writing a sentence in Arabic is far more speedy than writing in English, French, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Bahasa Melayu, or even my native tongue Filipino. No complicated strokes, just fluid strokes from right to left. 


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#8
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