20 Most Difficult Languages to Learn Around the World - Get That Right (2023)

If you’re smart you can manage to learn the most difficult languages quite easily and in the shortest possible time. Some might consider a particular language the hardest language to learn in the world, but it’s all a matter of perspective. What’s hard for you could be very easy for someone from a different language background.

The truth is that all languages have evolved in a manner that makes them easy to learn, so one language cannot be deemed as more difficult than the other.

Is English the hardest language to learn, some might be asking. It is the most spoken language in the world. How easy or difficult another language is depends on how similar or different it is from a language that you’re already fluent in. For instance, if you’re fluent in German, it might not take you much time to catch on to Dutch. So let’s check out.

LEARNING POINTS

• What’s the hardest language to learn
• Most spoken language in the world
• 20 most difficult languages to learn
• Hardest language to write

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The Top 20 Hardest & Most Difficult Languages to Learn From All Around The World

1. Arabic – Arabia – Hardest Language in the World

Arabic is considered among the most difficult languages to learn, especially for English speakers. However, it is also undoubtedly a very beautiful language.

• The vocabulary is huge. Many words of more than 10 synonyms and most of them have the same meaning. This means that you have several words to convey a single meaning. It can also be the hardest language to write.

Note: There are around 90 million to nearly 500 million words in this language.

• There are many grammatical rules and a slight shift in words or a change in a letter could change the entire meaning

2. Hebrew – Israel

It’s a Semitic language with the oldest written records dating back to 1200 BC and also the Bible. There are around 9 million people all over the world speaking the language, but 90% of them being Jews in Israel along with some Israeli Arabs and also in the US.

• The Modern Hebrew is the standardized form today.
• The language includes many tongue twisters like, Ganan gidel dagan bagan – A gardener grew rye in the garden; Nachash nashach nachash – A snake bit a snake.
• There are many English religious words like Adam and Jacob, as well as kosher; hallelujah; behemoth; etc. that are actually loaned from Hebrew.

3. Polish: Poland

There are more than 50 million people all over the world speaking this language. Polish communities are also found in the USA, Canada, Great Britain and Israel among others.

• It belongs to the Slavic group, similar to Russian, Czech, Serbian etc. and is among the most difficult languages of the world.

Note: Daj, ac ja pobrusze, a ty poxzywaj – this is the first known Polish sentence meaning, Relax Honey I will do the dishes today.

• The language makes use of small forms. For instance, the word Ola; Olka; Olunia stand for Aleksandra.
• What’s the hardest language to learn? The digraphs, such as cz; ch; sz; dz; come in different combinations and are used for creating tongue twister words that foreigners find very difficult to pronounce.

4. Icelandic: Iceland

Around 300,000 people living in Iceland speak this beautiful Nordic language. It bears a lot of similarity to ancient Norwegian language. It is also a little similar to German and Dutch.

• The language contains plenty of oral culture in the form of ancient songs and poetry.
• People continue to make up new words in Icelandic. They also have their own sign language. It is also one of the difficult languages to learn.

5. Navajo: South West US ( Mexico US border)

The biggest Navajo populations are seen in Arizona and in Mexico. It is an Athabaskan language, which is spoken by tribes in Alaska. They are the 2nd largest Native American tribes in the US. Check out these Navajo phrases for common English sentences.

• A unique feature of the Navajo language is that it doesn’t use any adjectives but rather depends on verbs, so translation between other language is a little difficult. But it’s perfect if you’re looking for a challenge.
• There are no written rules for grammar nor is there a dictionary of the Navajo words. It can be one of the hardest languages to learn for English speakers.

Note: The language was used as a code during the World War II, as the language had nothing in common with Japanese or German. The Japanese were mystified by the language. The grammar was also complex so it could not be decoded easily.

6. Korean: Korea

It is an isolated language, meaning that it does not belong to any language group. With its increasing international presence, it seems a good time to learn a language spoken by more than 80 million people all over the world.

• It’s alphabet is known as ‘hangul’ and earlier the language used Chinese characters.
• It is a difficult language: the honorifics are complex; the script is unfamiliar; and it has 2 different numbering systems.

7. Pashto: Ethnic Afghans; Pashtuns in Afghanistan and West Pakistan

It is also called as Pashtu or Afghani and is the official language of Afghanistan, and a regional language of Pakistan. Around 60 million people speak the language all over the world. It belongs to the Indo Iranian group or the Indo European family.

• The writing is based on Arabic script called Naskh.
• It has 21 dialects, the southern and northern or the soft and hard dialects.
• The language is taught in primary as well as secondary education, but in Universities, the language is Dari, which is the co official language of Afghanistan.

8. Mandarin: China

It is spoken by 955 million native speakers all over the world, more than any other language. So if you learn this language, you can speak to 13% of the world’s population.

• There are totally only 50,000 characters but you can start reading the language even by knowing 2500 important characters.
• The language unlocks both the temporal lobes of your brain, whereas English only unlocks the left side.

Note: Famous people have started learning Mandarin. Mark Zuckerberg gave a talk in Chinese at the Beijing University.

9. Finnish – Finland

It is one of the most harmonic European languages and also the most challenging one! The language originates from the Russian Ural mountains. Some of the words used date back to 4000 years. There are around 5 million native speaking people of this language, most living in Finland.

• There are 29 letters, with standard Roman alphabets and some additions.
• The words are rather long as they make use of compound words, and the language is famed for having one of the longest words in the world, with 61 letters.

10. Cantonese – Canton, South China

It belongs to Sino Tibetan group of languages and is spoken by more than 100 million people all over the world, mainly in Hong Kong and Macau.

• It is popularly spoken in china-towns all over the world.
• It mainly depends on tones for differentiating between words and that’s what makes it a hard language to learn.

11. Tuyuca – Colombia

It is literally the boss of all linguistics. It is also an endangered language spoken by Colombians and can easily be considered as the most difficult language on this planet.

• It’s a polysynthetic language and is made of elaborate words that are made by attaching pieces of smaller words together.
• Some call it an agglutinating language, as words are piled up to form a word. For instance, I do not know how to write, is hoabasiriga.

12. Basque – Basque Country Between Spain and France

It is an isolated language and does not belong to the Indo European language group. It is spoken also in South America and in other places all over the world.

• There are roughly about 500,000 people speaking the language and it has about 9 dialects.
• According to the British Foreign Office, it is the hardest language to master for English speakers, as it is not connected with any European language.

13. Vietnamese – Vietnam

It is the official language of Vietnam, with more than 90 million speaking the language. It is one of the hardest languages in Asia.

• It uses Chinese characters and is also influenced by the Latin language.
• It makes use of diacritics for determining the tone. There are 6 tones and this makes it difficult to master, with Mandarin only having 4 tones and Cantonese 6.

14. Estonian – Estonia

Estonian is spoken in this European country by more than 11 million people and is similar to Finnish. The language has also taken many words from Russia, with the country being a neighbor. It is also spoken in several parts of Russia.

• It is written using Latin alphabet with Roman script. As some words are not covered using this alphabet, there are diacritics for creating specific sounds.
• Estonian belongs to the Uralic language group and is called the Finno Ugric language.
• Sentences are framed using several compounds, connecting each word with the other.

Note: Check out these quirky Estonian words!

• The Foreign Service Institute states that it is the 5th most difficult language to learn.

15. Japanese – Japan

It is the 9th most commonly spoken language of the world.

• It is not a tonal language, so this actually makes the language easier to learn than Mandarin.
• However, the language does have a rhythm to it, so you have to listen to the authentic speech to learn to speak it fluently.

16. Hungarian – Hungary

It is also known as Magyar and is spoken by about 9 million of the inhabitants of Hungary as well as surrounding countries like Austria and Croatia. It belongs to the Finno Ugric group.

• It is considered one of the hardest languages to learn due to the complex rules.
• It has a 44 letter word and is called an agglutinative language.

17. Xhosa: South Africa

It is an official language of South Africa and more than 7.6 million people speak it. It belongs to the Bantu language group.

• It is well known for the click consonants and the use of the letter ‘x’ for denoting these clicks.
• An alveolar click is made by pulsing your tongue against your mouth palette and making an explosive sound. Lateral clicks, represented by the letter ‘x’ is made by the tongue clicking on the mouth side, rather like a horse sound. Dental clicks are made with the tongue clicking on the back of the upper teeth, like ‘tut tut’.

18. Persian – Iran

It is also called Farsi and there are about 130 million people speaking this language in Iran and also in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Israel, Yemen, UAE and also in America.

• The language has similarity with French. For instance, the word ‘thank you’ is Mersi in Persian and Merci in French.
• Farsi and Dari are the two types or forms of the language.

19. Dutch – Netherlands

• It is similar to English and German. For instance, apple is appel; banana is banaan; blue is blauw; green is groen and so on. It can be one of the easiest languages to learn for native English speakers.
• Dutch has taken a lot of words from other languages, such as French; Hebrew and others. For instance, bureau; humeur; jus d orange; pantalon are a few French words that are found in the Dutch language.

20. Greek – Greece

• It is probably the first language that used vowels in alphabets. Prior to that, all written language only had consonants.
• Nearly 12% of words in the English language have been derived from Greek. For instance, ‘biology’ ‘mathematics’ and most of the English words starting with ‘ph’ like philosophy; phobia and so on.

Wrap Up

No language is inherently hard! It’s just a matter of learning the grammar, memorizing the rules and the vocabulary and spend some time in listening and speaking a new language to get the hang of it. With a little bit of familiarity and effort, you can still become a multi linguist. There are many other difficult languages, such as Sanskrit, which is the most difficult language in India.

You can even learn the American Sign Language or ASL, which is the the 4th most popular foreign language learned in US universities. When you learn a new language you are actually using your brain in a new and different way. You will also get acquainted with a new culture. So are you ready to give your brain a workout with a new language?

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