Have you just started to learn a foreign language and have already encountered incredible difficulties?
Can't crawl through the thorns of German, English or French grammar, phonetics and vocabulary without tears? Chin up! Rejoice that you are not faced with the task of conquering one of the most complex languages in the world.
Russian - fifth place
Foreigners compare the study of the “great and mighty” with a nightmare. Even the Russian alphabet enters into a state of panic. Many letters in the Cyrillic alphabet look the same as in the Latin alphabet, but they sound very different. The purpose of "b" and "b" is a secret behind seven seals. But most often the stumbling block is “Y” and “Y”. The pronunciation of these sounds is a real torture for the uninitiated.
Questions are also raised by words. The most difficult to learn are homonyms. Although they are written the same way, they have different meanings. Synonyms also do not stand aside - only the verb "go" about 50 identical concepts! And the harmony of some words and the change in stress can distort the meaning of the phrase and cause an awkward situation.
Having mastered a kaleidoscope of letters and words, the unfortunate fall into the wondrous world of 6 cases, 2 conjugations and 3 declensions. Keeping all the rules in mind is already a feat, and it’s just right to give a medal for mastering exceptions.
Hungarian - fourth place
The grammar of the Hungarian language is almost inaccessible to mere mortals. It is fraught with unpleasant surprises:
- 25 cases (in some sources - 18);
- The presence of 6 temporary verb forms, including the imperative mood for the first person.
- Unusual morphology. The fact that Russian speakers express prepositions, Hungarians add to the word using case endings.
- The gender of a noun is determined only by the meaning of the sentence or the word itself.
The Magyars alphabet consists of 40 letters (14 vowels and 26 consonants). A difficult moment for Russians is a feature of the pronunciation of characters. So, “S” reads as “Sh,” “GY” as “D,” “A” as something in between Russian “O” and “A”.
Cunning and linguistics. It is difficult not to faint when you see the word “megszentsйgtelenнthetetlensйgeskedйseitekйrt” in the text, which translates roughly as “in connection with your desire to maintain an impeccable reputation”.
Japanese - third place
Samurai language is a severe test for foreigners. Learning the rules of native speech is difficult even for Japanese: 10 out of 12 school years children spend on combating intricate kanji (hieroglyphs) and two alphabets with their own alphabet. What to speak of those who grew up far from mysterious calligraphic signs!
The good news is Japanese morphology is simple and has a clear structure. Nouns and adjectives do not change, and verb forms are easy to learn. The bad news is the abundance of grammatical synonyms: indistinguishable for the European ear techniques for expressing time, conditions and causes.
A separate topic is the famous Japanese politeness. Courteous residents of the rising sun use 50 types of greetings. For representatives of different ages, social status and financial situation, a separate, carefully selected style of speech is provided.One misused word - and you will appear in the list of notorious snappers.
Arabic - second place
Foreigners understand the scale of the tragedy even when they open the Arabic book. What the inhabitants of the land of sheikhs call letters, for Europeans looks like fancy patterns. However, to contemplate this artistic creation and to learn to portray something like this yourself are different things. Arabs write from right to left, but the numbers put down from left to right.
Forming words, each of the 28 letters of the alphabet is connected to the neighboring one using a ligature. In addition, 18 letters acquire a new spelling depending on their position. The second difficulty is the pronunciation of sounds. Many of them seem completely ignorant in the Arab people to be exactly the same. Pay due attention to mastering phonetics, otherwise native speakers will not perceive your speech.
Another problem for learners of Arabic is the ambiguity of words. It is realized in speech: only from the context does it become clear what the speaker means. A correct understanding of the lexical meaning of words in different situations comes only over the years.
The most difficult language in the world
The most difficult language in the world is Chinese.. The desire to study it disappears at the first glance at the hieroglyphs. The alphabet in the Celestial Empire does not exist, since the written signs of Chinese are not the only meaningless symbols, which are the letters familiar to Europeans. Each character denotes a syllable or a whole word.
Chinese writing looks like an insoluble rebus. However, it is even more difficult to perceive the speech of ancient mandarins by ear.Phonetics includes 4 tones: ascending, even, falling and falling. A mistake in reproducing one of them can entail not only a distortion of the word, but also a change in the context of the whole said phrase.
The pace of speech is also important. The Chinese speak 6 times faster than the Russians. This swiftness turns sentences into a cacophony of inarticulate sounds. The way out is continuous communication with native speakers.
According to studies by employees of the American Institute of Foreign Service, the most difficult languages in the world are Russian, Hungarian, Japanese, Arabic and Chinese. English-speaking students need more than 1,100 hours to learn their basics. In compiling the rating, linguists took into account the main world languages, leaving behind the rarely used languages and speech of small nations.
