What Are The Most Difficult Languages ​​In The World, In Your Opinion?

[Salty80]

I think the Chinese language?

[Atheist]

Salty; how many languages do you know?

[Salty80]

Only 2 atheist

[Neveracrossword]

Many African and Indian languages are, or would be, very difficult for English speakers.

[Mozz71]

Klingon

[Buenchico]

Any tonal language is going to be exceptionally difficult to learn for someone who normally only uses prototypical (non-tonal) languages.

So obviously the two Chinese languages, Mandarin and Cantonese, tend to feature high on the list of 'hard to learn' languages. However Vietnamese and Thai are possibly equally difficult, along with other tonal languages such as some of those spoken in Africa (e.g. Igbo, Yòrúba and Zulu) or among North-American tribal groups (such as Navajo).

Even languages that generally only use two tones (such as Japanese, Swedish and Norwegian) can prove very difficult to master, as can some tricky protypical languages (such as Finnish).

Some Slavic languages, especially Polish, can easily confuse learners because of the many different endings that each word can have (depending upon where and how the word is used in a sentence). In Polish, for example, the endings of proper names keep changing. So the US fast food chain isn't simply 'McDonald's' in Poland. It can be, among other things, 'McDonaldsem' or 'McDonaldski', depending upon where it occurs in a sentence. (I spent a year trying to learn Polish. It's hard!)

[The Builder]

The "tones" that Chris mentioned are also known a the "pitch accent."
We all recognise it in Norwegian and Swedish.
The only other European languages that have it are Lithuanian and Serbo-Croat as far as I know.

In both Norwegian and Swedish you would be understood without it except for a few words whose meaning changes completely without it.
Mandarin would be mostly unintelligible without it.

For Mozz............. you can actually do a course on Klingon on Duolingo. :o)))

[JimF]

10 Polish
9 Icelandic
8 Navaho
7 Basque
6 Finnish
5 Korean
4 Hungarian
3 Japanese
2 Arabic
1 Mandarin

[LadyCG]

Valenciano was no picnic.

My mother had learnt to speak one of the Chinese languages and German before the age of 10. She's lost them both now.

[Toorak]

I have studied many languages and found Arabic most difficult

[piggynose]

Add to that list,Irish!
I tried learning it 33yrs ago.
Just when I thought I'd wasted my time,about 5yrs after id stopped going to classes. I ended up talking to somebody for about 1/2hr. I surprised myself how much id remembered.

[1ozzy]

Welsh!!

How on earth is this pronounced?

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.

Convince me otherwise..

[piggynose]

https://youtu.be/fHxO0UdpoxM
For you, Ozzy!

[1ozzy]

Thanks Piggy, but I'm not going to try repeating that..

[gulliver1]

I know what the most stupid Language is .
"Cockney rhyming slang"

[1ozzy]

Try to convince TTT ;-/

Go on Gulliver, you know you want too!!

[1ozzy]

Guess I must be a berk too,

[theshedman]

In English just for you 1ozzy, St Mary’s Church in the Hollow of the White Hazel Near to the Rapid Whirlpool of Llantysilio of the Red Cave or the short version in Welsh, Llanfair PG.

[1ozzy]

But that wasn't Welsh Sheddy.

Thanks for proving my point ;-)

[theshedman]

I can say it in Welsh 1ozzy, being Welsh makes it easier lol.