The hardest language to learn
What is the hardest language to learn?
Extremely Hard: The hardest language to learn is: Polish-Seven Cases, Seven Genders and very difficult pronunciation. Average English speaker is fluent at about the age 12; the average Polish speaker is fluent in their language not until age 16. .
Very Hard: Finnish, Hungarian, and Estonian-These languages are hard because of the countless noun cases. However, the cases are more like English prepositions added to the end of the root.Pretty Hard: Ukrainian and Russian complex grammar and different alphabet but easier pronunciation. Serbian-Also similar to other Slavic languages with a complex case and gender system, but it also has many tenses. alphabet
Fairly Hard: Chinese and Japanese-No cases, no genders, no tenses, no verb changes, short words, very easy grammar, however, writing is hard. But to speak it is very easy. Also intonations make it harder but certainly not harder than Polish pronunciation. I know a Chinese language teacher that says people pick up Chinese very easy, but he speaks several languages and could not learn Polish. I am learning some Chinese, it is not the hardest language maybe even the easiest language to learn. Not the hardest language by any measure. Try to learn some Chinese and Polish your self and you will see which is the hardest language.
Average: French-lots of tenses but not used and moderate grammar. German-only four cases and like five exceptions, everything is logical, of course.
Easy: Spanish and Italian
Basic to hard: English, no cases or gender, you hear it everywhere, spelling can be hard and British tenses you can use the simple and continues tense instead of the perfect tenses and you will speak American English. English at the basic level is easy but to speak it like a native it’s hard because of the dynamic idiomatic nature.
So what - the hardest language to learn
So what is hard? Hard really means, it’s just a longer learning curve. Look I am in my forties and I learned Polish and I have problems with languages, in addition to having a bleeding in the brain. So if I can do it, the only thing holding you back from learning the language of your dreams is method and patience.
What to do about a hard language
Do you think its hard to learn a language? Not any more. Even then hardest language to learn is easy. Why? I created language learning programs based on music and accelerated learning. Conquer the hardest language with the easiest method -> Speed learn a language.
May 8, 2007at 7:12 am
“These languages are hard because of the countless noun cases” - what’s actually so difficult in it? When you say “talosta” you just add the affix to the stem, when you say “from the house” you do the same, only the affix goes to another position. The real difficulty comes not from the amount of affixes, but from the peculiarities of their usage. In this respect “z domu” is two steps more complicated as 1) you have to put the noun into the Genetive, and 2) you should use the right ending for the Genetive.
May 8, 2007at 12:49 pm
As a native English speaker who learned Polish I wish I could agree one hundred percent with you.
On one level your right. English and Polish are not harder than each other, rather just different. But that is coming from the perspective of, if you learned Polish as a native. But the reality is Polish cases are hard for English speakers as they are virtually non-existent in our language, as is gender. So it’s no just a matter of steps but engaging and area of the brain what was never used in this way. Whereas if you are Polish speaker learning another language its simple a matter of steps as analogous concepts exist in Polish when trying to learn another language. To make an analogy, to teach an English speaker how to use cases is like teaching someone to read; they have never used this type of thinking. However, for a Polish person, whose language has most grammatical concepts found in the target language, its like learning how to read new words, not the process of reading.
Further verbs change not only in ending but the whole words change for past and present in some cases.
Every word in Polish has about 24 forms for every English word. And you must know how and when to use it. In English you have ‘my’ in Polish mój, moje, moja, moją, mojego, moje,mojemu, mojej, moim, moi, moich, moimi, etc.
That’s why Polish people are very good with languages and do not understand why foreigners have trouble speaking their language.
I think there are few people who speak Polish who were not born speaking it, and it’s not just because of usage its difficulty. That being said I love Polish, and am still learning.
May 18, 2007at 5:14 am
I fully agree with what you have written: my comment was just to re-habilitate the agglutinative languages like Finish, Hungarian and Estonian you had mentioned as the hardest to learn. This difficulty is mostly psychological: the sentence in them consists to a great extent from the same components you find in English, they are simply written together. In Finnish ‘talo’ is the house, ‘talo-sta’ - from the house, ‘talo-ssa’ - in the house, ‘talo-i-sta’ - from the houses, ‘talo-i-ssa’ - in the houses… Of course, there are more complicated forms, but the overall structure is very transparent and modular. Forget about noun cases, these are basically the same combinations of words with modifying particles you are used to in English
If you can keep in memory “house”, “-s”, “from” and “in”, you can do so for “talo”, “-i-”, “-sta” and “-ssa”, just don’t forget to join them according to the Finnish order. The Polish and other flective languages are another story, as the words there are much more compact, and there is often no such transparency. That’s why I suggest to move Finnish etc. below Polish in your list.
May 19, 2007at 3:15 am
I wanted to list Polish as the hardest language in the world, but I did not have a full understanding of Finno-Ungrician languages, with your comments I will list Polish as the hardest, I know I have been learning it and there is nothing like this. Unless someone can intelligently refute my listing as Polish being the hardest, I will list it as so. The good news is if you can speak Polish you can do anything you want with languages or other in your life.
May 24, 2007at 2:31 am
Well, the hardest one I know was the Old Irish - incredibly irregular due to numerous phonetic changes and inconsistent orthography. An author of its grammar even writes that it is hard to understand how it could have been spoken at all
May 24, 2007at 5:12 am
I will have to look into Old Irish. If you learn the grammar as a child your brain does not know its hard of course. I tell Polish people all the time that they are geniuses because they speak the Polish language, so well and almost without thinking about it with near perfect grammar and pronunciation.
May 25, 2007at 5:39 pm
Why haven`t you included Serbian? It`s one __very__ hard to learn language. It has seven cases, three genres, 15+ tenses, very hard-to-learn grammar…. Just wondering….
May 28, 2007at 6:04 am
Serbian is another language I have to look into. Certainly intresting, and studied by people like JRR Tolkien. Although a southern Slavic language I think its very close in construction to Polish a Western Slavic language. I have to look at what a language has in theory and what it has in practical use. In English we have a lot of tenses but as an Americans like myself only, use a few in practice, and even if we Americans do know all the tenses we do not use them right, like the king’s Cambridge Engish. I need to update this list and give it more robustness. I have not even included many American Indian languages which has completely different grammatical ideas, for example.
May 29, 2007at 3:46 pm
The problem with the Old Irish is not in the grammar but in the irregularity. The history of this language is a good example of the language evolution in general: the more or less typical Late Indo-European grammar in the Common Celtic period (evidenced by the Gaulish, Celtiberian and Lepontic inscriptions), then dramatic phonetic changes (3-5 centuries) which created numerous variants within each grammatical pattern, then a period of some stabilization (5-9th centuries), and then a collapse at the time of Viking invasions: the language changes rapidly loosing most of its morphology and irregularity (like in the Old English, only the latter was much more regular). If we ask about the reasons, the most obvious are those related to how children learn to speak: at some point the irregularities become too intolerable, and children introduce more normalized forms, while in some periods children accept the nuances of the language they are offered to learn.
May 29, 2007at 3:47 pm
In Serbian, in my view, the most complicated is the stress, not the morphology, which is fairly typical for the Slavic languages.
May 30, 2007at 7:54 am
Still, the morphology and especially the syntax are fairly complicated as well. According to my opinion, Serbian should also be classified in the same group as Polish, because I know many Serbian people that have learned Polish without having any problems.
May 30, 2007at 11:05 am
Its been added to the a top list, but I need more research for making it number 1. Thanks for the comment. My only rebuttal to your last statement is the Slavic languages are the most closely related, compared to the other European languages. I would say that almost 50% of Polish and Serbian vocabulary is similar as is the grammar, therefore it would be like an Italian learning spanish or Romanian. I am looking at it from an native English speakers point of view. However, I will consider it the number 1 spot, when I do more research. Polish holds it because it has an edge with its crazy pronunciations. Try to say: W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie i Szczebrzeszyn z tego słynie.
May 31, 2007at 9:08 am
I think Slovak language is one of the most difficult language… A lot of exceptions…
June 4, 2007at 11:34 am
I will consider Slovak also. I can kind of understand Slovak just because I have studied Polish. I will have to look at this more objectively, I am obviously partial towards Polish as the hardest language to learn as that is what I had to painfully learn myself.
June 7, 2007at 4:45 pm
Do more research, but Serbian is definitely far more complex than Russian! I agree that you should find out the facts, but he fact is that Serbian is NOT easier or as easy as Russian!
Best Regards,
Stefan Borovic
June 7, 2007at 4:54 pm
…. and try to say this: чоканчићем ћу те, чоканчићем ћеш ме, or разрасхатлеисалисте ли се, or на ливади коњ ућустечен и расћустечен!!!
June 7, 2007at 5:04 pm
I agree with Stefan Borovic when he says that Serbian should definately be included. My mother tongue is English, but I also learned Serbian ( because my mother is Serbian) and I know how hard it is! I’ve personally experianced learning Serbian as a second language and noticed that it is a difficult task. Even now, after spending a ceratin amount of time of my childhood in a public Serbian school, I can hardly “guess” if I should use accusative or genitive case because they are too similar, but at the same time distincively different. The stress of the Serbian language is something impossible to learn. Whenever i come to Serbia, people laugh at me because my pronunciation isn’t right!
June 11, 2007at 3:48 pm
Yeah, I know what you mean…. Well, keep up with the good work….
June 11, 2007at 3:50 pm
If literary analyzed from an ortorical point of view, one can comprehend the complexity which is weaved into apprehending the Serbian language. If one naive and unlearned being such as yourselves truly regard Russian as the most difficult language, I have two very sophisticated words for you.
June 17, 2007at 9:52 am
Life is an art and not a science. I am a native English speaker, who spoke no other languages as a child. I am looking at the hardest language to learn from my point of view but I want to make a better objective determination when I have time. I have friends that learned both Russian and Polish and Polish is harder. Serbian I do not know. I openly confess my partial view on the hardest language to learn, but I do not think its wrong.
June 22, 2007at 5:16 am
Some people make an argument that Cyrillic languages are harder based on the alphabet. An alphabet is only 26 letters, give or take. That is it. When making a determination regarding the hardest language to learn, this is one small factor. Other factors weight much heavier for an over all evaluation for the hardest language to learn.
June 28, 2007at 2:50 pm
From my point of view Serbian is the hardest language to learn. I completely agree with those of you who say that all Slavic languages are quite similar and hard. However, I must emphasize the fact that people who speak Serbian can understand most of even all other Slavic languages, but it is not the same the other way around. This I saw when I was speaking to some of my Russian friends. Furthermore, Serbian is one of the very few languages that use both Latin and Cyrillic letters. Moreover, most of the languages are used with etymological grammar orthography, but Serbian has phonetic one which results in having multiple complexed alterations. All things considered, Stefan Borovic is the one to be trusted regarding this issue.
June 28, 2007at 3:02 pm
I would say that you should not make any changes on the list prior to having made that decision by yourself. My “trustworthy words”, as they seem to be regarded by other readers of this blog, should just make it easier for you to find out the facts, and not primarily influence your opinion! One advice - listen to others…
June 29, 2007at 8:47 am
Darko Draskovic rulez
June 29, 2007at 8:48 am
BUt not as much as you do!
June 29, 2007at 8:48 am
Thanks, I know…
July 1, 2007at 9:53 am
i have quite a bit of knowledge on this topic, and therefore i consider myself the most competenet to give my professional views. I deduce from all your previously discussed language thoughts, that the main clash on this web-site is whether Serbian or Polish is generally more of a challenge to apprehend…and i must say that from my professional opinion, the clash is non-existant, because all the complexeties present in Polish, are considerably harder in Serbian, which proves the fact that all Serbian-speaking individuals are truly geniuses. I believe this best portrays the evident stupidity of some people on this web-site, as either Finnish or Serbian, from my professional opinion, are not easy languages to learn the grammar off, let alone speak fluently…thank you for listening to a strictly professional opinion…i shall part now…farewell…
July 8, 2007at 9:24 am
Thank you for your feedback. One of the reason I did not want to make a judgement on Serbian either way was I did not have enough concrete information. I think Serbian is an interesting language, however, I need to be objective. What level did you learn Polish to? I know in the book famous book ‘How to learn a language fast’ the author states he learned dozens of languages, with polish the only one that he could not learn. So he choose something easy like Bulgarian and learned it. But Polish he stated he could not learn it. I as a native English speaker learn and am learning Polish and I have experience with this as I teach languages. How long did it take you to learn Polish fluenly as a native English speaker with no contact when you were young?
July 9, 2007at 10:47 am
I just want to be objective. The people I know who study at my language school, not in theory but in reality, universally say Polish, not Finnish or Serbian is the hardest but I will have to look at it objectively and perhaps change my ranking.
July 10, 2007at 2:29 am
I think that you did NOT study Serbian comme il faut. Study it well! My ex-wife was Serbian and I couldn’t understand her a word!
July 10, 2007at 2:41 am
Gosh… First I was afraid, I was petrified, but then I killed her and she stopped speaking that freaky language! Bro… She kept saying: Dubocica Leskovac Mikica je kralj!?!?!?
July 10, 2007at 10:01 am
It’s nice to know that I know hardest language of all - I’m Polish
I know German, Russian, Latin and off course English. I agree that for people with Polish as a primary language learning other languages (especially from Europe) is quite easy. You can learn English grammar in few weeks and be able to speak and write grammatically correct 95% of time. Try to do that with Polish grammar – You will be lucky genius if polish speaker won’t be rolling on the floor laughing from what you said.
And you can add spelling as another “funny” bit of polish
“h” and “ch” it’s the same sound in polish but they can’t be exchanged in word. Worst case is “rz” and “z”(there should be a “dot” above letter “z”) used in “morze” and “moze”
morze = Sea
moze = maybe
And there can exist next to each other “moze morze” = “maybe sea”
Both word sound exactly the same and only way to know what they mean is sentence context.
But don’t worry probably there’s more people fully understanding Einstein’s Relativity theory than people understanding fully polish grammar and spelling.
For me - hardest languages - Welsh, Hungarian, Finnish - mainly due to different pronunciation
August 5, 2007at 8:41 am
I agree that Serbian is a hard language to learn and it should be with Extremely Hard or very Hard but not Pretty Hard. I’m macedonian i tried learning Serbian (Serbian and Macedonian might be the same but the grammar is very very very different). In serbian you change your noun depending on your sentence which is really hard
e.g in my house = u mojoj kući. Come in my house = Uđi u moju kuću.
One sentence in english can be said in a lot of ways in Serbian which might confuse english speakers.
e.g I dance and sing in English
1. Ja plešem i ja pevam na engleskom
2. plešem i pevam na engleskom
3. na engleskom plešem i pevam
August 9, 2007at 9:18 am
Hi,
You wrote: ”the average Polish speaker is fluent in their language not until age 16”, but I would not agree. There are many people in their 40-ties and 50-ties who have problems with speaking correct Polish. This refers mostly to the words used as the names of the Polish cities, such as Wloszczowa (very popular city in Poland recently) but also to many, many other nouns. Some people must think hard whether they should say ”we Wloszczowej” or ”we Wloszczowie” although in this case only one version is correct (the first one!). There are cases when all versions may be correct.
The truth is that Polish people who finished their education after A levels make a lot of small mistakes when speaking Polish, but they do not care. So you should not worry either!:)
I agree that Polish may be difficult to learn. It requires special kind of perceiving reality (to think of the table as ”he” and of the glass as ‘’she” and of the sun as ”no gender” etc.) which, I imagine, must be difficult to teach and not only that.
After living 5 years in UK/US you can speak perfect English (I do not mean accent), but after 5 years in Poland you will not be fluent in Polish.
Anyway, powodzenia w nauce polskiego!:)
August 9, 2007at 9:40 am
For those who claim that Serbian is the hardest language to learn I advise them to read:
on Polish (although, there are some mistakes!)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_language
and on Serbian:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbian_language
August 15, 2007at 2:26 am
[...] What is the hardest language to learn for English Speakers? Take a guess; it is not Chinese or Japanese. It is Polish. Polish has seven cases and Polish grammar has more exception than rules. German for example has four cases all which are logical, Polish cases seem to have no pattern or rules; you have to learn the entire language. Asia languages usually do not have cases, or at least like that. The Pronunciation is eons harder than Asia language as it usually has long tong twisting consonants. For example a Polish sentence might look like this. Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie i Szczebrzeszyn z tego słynie. Wyindywidualizowaliśmy się z rozentuzjazmowanego tłumu. Further Polish people rarely hear foreign speak their language and with no accent or regional variation than pronunciation must be exact or they will have no idea what you are talking about. So the next time you have herd someone has learned Polish have some respect. Polish is the hardest language to learn. But the truth is I doubt you will hear a native English Speaker, speak Polish beyond a few phrases. Can it be learned? Yes you can Learn Polish. People do, it just takes humility. Close [...]
August 22, 2007at 6:40 am
Serbian is at least as hard as Polish! Did you even hear about all vocal changes that change the word`s letters? Or about inconsistent cases (seven of them)? There are two writing systems completely different from one another. Or maybe those are grammar irregularities that you have never herd of? Serbian language is EXTREMELY hard to learn! Please, group it appropriately! THANKS!
August 22, 2007at 7:14 am
QUOTATION: I agree that Polish may be difficult to learn. It requires special kind of perceiving reality (to think of the table as ‘’he’’ and of the glass as ‘’she’’ and of the sun as ‘’no gender’’ etc.) which, I imagine, must be difficult to teach and not only that. /QUOTATION
Also, the genders… For example, to think of a table (сто) as he, a glass (чаша) she, and of the sun (Сунце) as no gender/neutral gender.
P.S. I was really astonished when I`ve realized that the gender system is so similar, that even the words have the same gender in some cases (like the aforementioned three). Good luck!
August 22, 2007at 4:58 pm
I wonder where on this “scale” Romanian would fall. It is a Latin language, descended from Italian, with Slavic influences (due to geographical position). If I were to guess, being a Romanian-American that is fluent in both Romanian and English, I would say it falls somewhere between Average and Fairly Hard. It is definitely harder than Italian and Spanish, possibly harder than French.
What makes it unique is how articles work. In all romance languages, as in English, the article is put before the word; in Romanian it is appended to the end of the word:
No article - English: telephone; Italian: telefono; Romanian: telefon
With article - Eng: the telephone; Ita: il telefono; Ro: telefonul
August 25, 2007at 7:05 am
A language hard to learn should be regarded, with modern standards, as an inefficient language — provided you can express what you wanna (I want some comments on that ;)) express.
My wife knows Russian and Finnish and recently learned Polish. She tells me polish wasn’t all that hard to learn, but Finnish was hard. I think what’s hard i also depends on what languages you already speak. Going from Italian to Spanish is not as hard as going from Italian to Russian (crossing language families).
Also, I think participants here mostly know of European languages, so I guess there are some really tricky ones to learn out there.
August 31, 2007at 11:27 am
Oh well,
what will be the first prize? And who will get it? The native speakers of the winner language?
I am Hungarian. I was taught Russian at school for 8 years. After high school I went to Poland for a month. Before the journey I bought a manual, and learned the first 30 lessons. When I returned from Poland I was fluent.
I especially enjoyed to discover the differences, because the two languages - boze moj - are as similar as Spanish and Portuguese. It was fun! Later I studied two years of Polonystika at the university… I am a zaczarowany kon…
However, to learn Finnish was a shameful failure, though in theory the two languages have the same structure. I just could not capture the logic of it!
For many years I believed that I had a good English. Had accomplished several exams, spent a year studying English filology at the university, translated a good number of scientific articles into Hungarian, worked as interpreter. And, alas, this year I spent six months in England, and I was shocked. I could not understand half of what people said, and I noticed that my style was more than ridiculous. What a shame.
In the meantime, to speak Spanish is pure joy and happiness. It was easy to learn (alone), and the best tool to express myself orally. Apparently it has less stylistic strata than English, so it doesn’t feel so hopeless.
Summa summarum, it is up to you and your personal standing and experience which language you consider difficult. Polish is definitively an easy language. For me, at least.
August 31, 2007at 2:10 pm
what about norwegian or any of the african languages?
August 31, 2007at 5:00 pm
What does it matter which is the most difficult language? Learn English, that’s all you need.
September 1, 2007at 5:38 am
What makes a language hard? Its it having a great memory to remember all the cases, suffixes, genders, etc? Or is it like many native american/south american languages putting your mind into a totally different space to not think of everything being able to be labelled but as a concept. Many languages in the Indo European family are very literal, where as some native american languages don’t have words for things because they see the world differently.
I guess Polish is one of the harder Slavic languages FOR AN ENGLISH SPEAKER because of the alphabet, nasals, pronunciations of some letters (eg. w pronounced v, l pronounced w etc). I guess our question is what is the hardest language/s for English speakers. I think English would be a difficult language to learn as it has a wildness, mixed quality about it. Where did I see years ago that for a non native speaker of English that seeing the word
GHOTI
could be pronounced FISH
gh - enough, rough (=f)
o - women (=i)
ti - function (=sh)
Now how difficult is that, its not even consistent with its pronunciation, we have to memorise those words. I think memory retention is probably the easiest part of a language, its like anything driving a car, its scary at first but after a while doing it all the time (something many people trying to learn a language don’t do unless they are living in the country and attempting to learn and speak the language constantly) it comes easier. For me, having a conceptual language is totally more a different beast and would take a total change in attitude, beliefs, and way of life. NOW that makes a language difficult!
Loving life
Carmilla :^)
September 1, 2007at 8:47 am
Hmm, it’s difficult to categorize what a “hard language is”. Hard as in what ? And hard for who ? Japanese writing is easy for Chinese people and visa versa. Japanese grammar is also easy for Koreans. Swedes can understand Icelandic but it would be hard for me to learn. But maybe it would be easy for someone who already spoke three languages or who was naturally gifted at languages.
Men tend to be better at learning vocabulary and grammar rules and women usually have better aural skills. (Not always but usually)
I don’t consider myself naturally gifted at languages and I was always at the bottom of my Japanese class however I really enjoyed studying it.
Passion is the key and tends to negate the difficulty of a language at least in my experience.
September 1, 2007at 10:10 am
have you tried learning arabic? the phonetics of it can be incredibly difficult for someone who was not raised speaking arabic, and this is the formal arabic, as the colloquial arabic spoken across the region can vary in so many different ways.
September 1, 2007at 10:13 am
Polish sounds amazingly difficult but when it comes to noun cases NO ONE beats our friends from northern Spain… Basque language
September 1, 2007at 1:27 pm
A note on being a bit more objective in your ratings…
I half agree, half disagree with your rating of English difficulty (”Basic to hard”). Yes, perhaps if you learn it to a “basic” level, it can be fairly easy; but so can other languages if learned to a “basic” level. (What is “basic” anyway? That’s quite subjective.) I think you should choose a standard level of language acquisition before ranking languages to make it more consistent when comparing them; you could, for example, choose to consider the amount of time and effort necessary to learn a language such that you cannot be identified as a non-native speaker. I think you should also give English more credit for its irregularities; you only mention spelling being difficult, but pronunciation can sometimes be a bit tricky (especially with the “ough” combination), and there are so many exceptions to rules (including irregular forms of verbs, most notably the many seemingly-random past participles).
Another note on objective ratings…
Is there any particular reason why you did not include an explanation of your ranking of Spanish and Italian as you did with all of the other languages? I completely agree with your ranking here, but it might be good to mention, for example, how Spanish is essentially a phonetic language (or simply that its pronunciation is easy), and that exceptions are fairly uncommon (and that there are even rules to often explain exceptions!). (Please excuse me for neglecting Italian in my examples, but I have not learned it.)
(Just for the record, I am a native [American]-English speaker.)
September 1, 2007at 6:29 pm
And how about Arabic?
September 1, 2007at 9:00 pm
You’re an idiot. Check out Icelandic, Chinese, and Arabic. All are more difficult than Polish. I’m not even going to try to explain how they are more difficult, as the reasoning you presented for Polish being so difficult doesn’t make any sense. How about how governments and corporations rate languages? My salary includes foreign language incentive pay. Pay scales reflect that Chinese and Arabic pay more than Polish (Russian and Polish are on the same scale). Spanish and Italian are on the lowest rung (at least you got that right).
September 1, 2007at 11:09 pm
I am an American English speaker who learned Polish and lived in Poland for roughly two years. Cases make Polish hard to learn.
The fully phonetic alphabet, very strict grammar, (no exceptions, everything works the same on any word, all the time), make it an easier language to learn. Most words are almost compound, and so after building an initial vocabulary, you have a pretty good guess at what a word means just from the way it sounds.
I think its a trade off. If I had to learn a language again, (and Polish was more useful), I’d learn Polish again, just because its structured and normalized, (and easy to rhyme
). Basically, once you understand the rules, all you need to do is learn vocab.
September 2, 2007at 3:45 am
Serbian.. whaaaaa? Serbo-croatian perhaps
September 2, 2007at 4:37 am
I’m not going to sit here and argue the differences between languages and what makes them more difficult. Your entire premise is flawed. The difficulty of learning a [second] language depends entirely upon your native language and the similarities between the two. For example, Japanese is one of the hardest languages for native English speakers to learn, but it is much easier for a native Korean speaker to learn than English. If you did some real research into this subject you’d discover that the Defense Language Institute already has the following categories, defined by difficulty for native English speakers to learn:
Category I: French, Italian, Portuguese (Brazilian), Portuguese (European), and Spanish
Category II: German, Romanian
Category III: Czech, Greek, Hebrew, Persian-Farsi, Polish, Russian, Serbian/Croatian, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese
Category IV: Arabic, Chinese Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean
September 2, 2007at 4:48 am
I think if you want to add Thai just you can just put it at the same level as Japanese and Chinese. Speaking is fairly easy apart from the five tones to master. Writing is a quite difficult although we have an alphabet, it is composed of around 90 characters and many combinations.
I would also think speaking Japanese is easier than Chinese or Thai as they do not have tones.
For Chinese you may also want to differentiate Mandarin (Simplified Chinese, 4 tones) with Cantonese (Traditional Chinese, 9 tones).
September 2, 2007at 7:23 am
Icelandic. Incredibly hard. Even the locals can’t speak it properly! Seriously, Check it out.
September 4, 2007at 8:49 pm
i am american. i know french on a basic level. it is a beautiful language. i have been trying to learn welsh. i’d be suprised if polish is harder than welsh. i am also trying to learn icelandic. to me, it is really difficult. just to say basic greetings is difficult, worse than welsh. welsh is still nasty, though. sometimes it is incomprehensible. any guttural sounds are tough on an english speaker. i don’t feel comfortable spitting when i speak.
September 5, 2007at 9:49 am
Wlasnie sie dowiedzialem, ze wladam najtrudniejszym do nauczenia sie jezykiem na swiecie, a mam problem z nauczeniem sie angielskiego. Troche frustrujace
Zycze powodzenia w nauce polskiego.
ps: Nie uzylem polskich znakow, bo zapewne i tak bys ich nie zobaczyl. Do you understand, what i wrote?
September 5, 2007at 10:11 am
I would also say that English (which is now the fifth language I have learned–after Hungarian [my native tongue], Japanese, Portugese, and Swahili) is possibly the most difficult to be fluent in because of the highly dynamic nature of the cultures which use it, and its global nature.
I have had the most difficulty in speaking ‘properly’ when living in Australia, Ireland, and the United States.
September 5, 2007at 10:43 am
No naprawdę, polski to trudny język?
A jak mamy się uczyć chińskiego ?
Polish is simple
September 5, 2007at 11:11 am
http://www.sendspace.com/file/1pcob5
polish pronunciation sample: Wyindywidualizowaliśmy się z rozentuzjazmowanego tłumu. Sorry for poor quality.
September 5, 2007at 11:40 am
im 20 and i live in Poland. what can i say about my language? it is hard, there are lots of people i know, who cant remember how to write (sometimes even basic) words correctly, no matter what age are they- 5, 15, 50. even my polish teachers had problems with pronunciation or grammar. in Poland there are even national tests from writting for adults and usually there is no one who can write all the words without a mistake! but i dont think this is the hardest language to learn.
extra information- the longest word in polsih is ‘Konstantynopolitańczykowianeczka’ and this is a girl from Konstantynopol ;P
September 5, 2007at 11:54 am
I’m polish native speaker. It’s true that many polish people make errors while they speaking - but it’s hard to believe that any language is spoken perfectly (especially when something which is spoken by everyone is consider as an error).
As we talk abount h/ch and rz/ż (This page is served as utf-8 so I hope you have proper fonts installed) you may in 99% cases read the word correctly (the only exception are words which have been got from other languages such as yeti - I’d write, if I hadn’t knewn the world, jeti).
PS. Wyindywidualizowaliśmy się z rozentuzjazmowanego tłumu sounds like newspeach (anybody knows how to translate this into English properly - to make it sound like newspeach?).
September 5, 2007at 12:01 pm
“Average English speaker is fluent at about the age 12; the average Polish speaker is fluent in their language not until age 16″
This is not true. 12 years old kids can speak Polish fluently.
In fact. You can’t say with one is hardest to learn becouse it’s depend on person.
For me, languages like German, Dutch etc are the hardest. Pronunciation even simple sentence is nightmare.
We have only 3 tenses so it’s a lot easier to talk about anything without worring about right tense.
Of course Polish is not easiest one. But not the hardest either.
Greetings
September 5, 2007at 12:18 pm
here is the
“W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie i Szczebrzeszyn z tego słynie”
I’m native Polish but this sentence is always quite a problem to pronounce, in primary school I wasn’t able to say it.
http://www.sendspace.com/file/0cbv0h
September 5, 2007at 12:19 pm
A ja potrafię bardzo dobrze mówić po Polsku
/ I can very well speak Polish 
September 5, 2007at 12:22 pm
Who can speak in Polish that:
- Stół z powyłamywanymi nogami
- W Chrzebrzeszczynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie
- Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz
PS: For Polish very hard is Japanese
September 5, 2007at 12:58 pm
Whole article is …boloney
” English speaker is fluent at about the age 12; the average Polish speaker is fluent in their language not until age 16.”
WTF? I’m from Poland I can assure you that’s not true. You are fluent in language much earlier… 12 for English? So the same for Polish. But I think it’s more like from 8 to 12 for both.
September 5, 2007at 1:29 pm
Hi from poland
I thinks that if a person born in poland, then he’s/she’s brain is “designed” to polish since he/she heard first words
I’m 16 and i think polish very well, I can speak english, ut I’ve got my own grammar system
I think that the easiest languages are those langs, that have the same root like your native.
As a polish man I can understand Czech (Ceska Republika ;)), A Bit of Slowak, Russian, Ukrainian etc.
A few weeks ago i’ve started to learn german. What makes it easier? I’ve found some words that are almost the same in english, org have root in latin. some latin words is in poland so I can guess the original meaning. That same is with other words, I can found root in some french words, I’ve learned french for two years, but effect is miserable
I think that the hardest languages are: hungarian (I can’t find roots of words in any other known me language), Finnish, and others north-europe languages…
Mam nadzieję, że zrozumieliście mój angielski pomimo mojej niezbyt dobrej gramatyki
September 5, 2007at 1:56 pm
baniol: Japanese? You mean writing? Japanese in speaking is very simple, You just have to learn words and some grammar. But of course if You want to write or read japanese text… well, You have to know at leat 1945 kanji characters + 2 syllabaries, and that’s truly difficult… at the beginning.
September 5, 2007at 2:10 pm
I aggree, polish is hard to learn
Zgadzam się, polski jest trudny do nauczenia się.
September 5, 2007at 2:16 pm
taa…sami Polacy tutaj hehe, posstraffiam fszysskich Polakufff!
September 5, 2007at 2:27 pm
“Who can speak in Polish that:
- Stół z powyłamywanymi nogami
- W Chrzebrzeszczynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie
- Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz”
jeszcze dodalbym: (i’d add to this list)
- wyindywidualizowalismy sie z rozentuzjazmowanego tlumu
- krol karol kupil krolowej karolinie korale koloru koralowego
- szedl sasza sucha szosa
September 5, 2007at 3:09 pm
I laugh at statistics like that, because learning a foreign language is a very individual thing. Something, that may be hard for one man, can be very clear and simple to another. English language is easy IMO. It is one of the simpliest, so one of the most commong languages.
I consider Baltic languages a bit harder than Slavic, though they have much in common. But the pronounciation is a way tuffer case, believe me.
September 5, 2007at 3:27 pm
polish language: w szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie.
grzegorz brzęczyszczykiewicz, chrząszczydewoszyce powiat łękołody
September 5, 2007at 3:57 pm
Hi there. I’ve always thought, the chinese was the hardest language (of course writing), the second were the ugro-finishe languages, and the polish on third place. Good for me, I’m a genius:-) And when it goes to sentences in polish like “Stół z powyłamywanymi nogami” the difficulty is to speak it out. Even most polish people have troubles with it. But when a foreigner says “I speak polish”, I have always one sentence for him to understand that he doesn’t:
“- Z miastaście a dupaście.
- Dupam?
- Dupaś.”
It is polish, belive me.
regards
mkb
September 5, 2007at 4:05 pm
A few sentences in Polish language:
wyrewolwerowany rewolwerowiec
rozrewolweryzowany rewolwer
Szły pchły koło wody,
Pchła pchłę pchła do wody
I ta pchła płakała,
Że ją tamta pchła popchała.
Cesarz czesał cesarzowej włosy na styl cesarski
konstantynopolitanczykowianeczka
“W Trzebiszewie trzmiel trze trzciny,
trzeszczą w Tczewie trzy trzmieliny,
a trzy byczki znad Trzebyczki
z trzaskiem trzepią trzy trzewiczki.”
-Polish is very hard to learn, but i think Hungarian is more difficult!! Is almost impossible to learn i think…
September 5, 2007at 4:52 pm
What’s so hard about gender in Polish?! Don’t you have it in German, French or Italian? All these der, die, das, ein, eine, le, la, les… I think that gender makes language richer, more beautiful, help us to describe the world perfectly.
September 5, 2007at 4:53 pm
for me (I’m from Poland, I speak also English, German, and a bit of Latin)
the most difficult are: Chinese/Japanese/Korean, Arabic, Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, Welsh. They just don’t seem as a language I could ever learn
September 5, 2007at 5:14 pm
Chcesz, żeby Cię Twoja dziewczyna zabiła? Katarzyna, a nie Katażyna
(Pages\About Me)
September 5, 2007at 5:23 pm
The most important thing in learning any language is motivation. If you are motivated, there is virtually nothing to discourage you from acquiring the language you chose. That’s why I would like to praise somebody I know who made enormous progress in learning English. I am eally proud of you:)
I agree that Polish is difficlut to learn, but the greater challenge, the greater satisfaction:)
September 5, 2007at 5:36 pm
Najlepsze jest:
“Ckliwy prestidigitator Todoregalllo Verdadero do knajpki mknie po buteleczkę spirytusinku najwydestylowaniuchniejszego dla reżysera Mendozy.” :))
Pozdrawiam wszystkich, którzy się uczą polskiego.
And I would like to add that Polish is very easy. ;))
And we’ve got very simple spelling (you read a word almost just like it is written down).
September 5, 2007at 6:26 pm
And I speak Polish
September 5, 2007at 7:15 pm
Suprising… too suprising to be true, I suppose. Arabic seems much more complicated (I am polish and learning standard Arabic). The important questions to ask are:
1. Difficult for who? English native-speakers? Indians?
2. What are the criteria to state that something is either hard or not?
September 5, 2007at 8:27 pm
Język polski wcale nie jest trudny
Ale patrząc po poziomie wpisów na blogach młodych polaków dochodzę do wniosku, że się po prostu nie uczą 
“Morze to jest dla nih za tródnę?”
Hello from Poland
September 6, 2007at 12:59 am
I agree (though I am Polish) that Polish is one of the most diffuclt languages in the world. However, why haven’t you mentioned Icelandic? Try it, it is even more complex than Polish.
And to Finnish I have to disagree a bit - its main “tough shit” is the vocabulary, which is different (its Finno-Ungaric language, not Indo-European). Everything else more or less strictly follows the rules.
Anyways, nice summary.
September 6, 2007at 1:44 am
Well.
The whole article should be titled ‘what is the hardest language to learn _for me_.
Learning languages is a fairly individual thing and depends highly on the language you speak as your first language.
For example, people speaking natively polish have often problems with languages like english or german because they in polish we “simply” switch endings of the word whereas in those languages you use many different prepositions.
And take all those tenses in english. Polish has only three tenses (ok, it also has past perfect but it’s very rarely used nowadays; pitty, because it’s a nice and logical form to use).
Also, people say that Japanese is hard to learn for polish people (english too, I heard). Well, maybe. I’m learning Japanese and I don’t seem to have any problems with it.
About fluency - sorry, no banana. In any given language most people use their language very carelessly and it’s not a “proper” language. It’s full of mistakes. It all depends on whether the person in question really wants to speak the language strictly acording to the rules or he/she cares not about the correctnes of his/her speaking. Believe me, I’ve seen/heard so many english speaking people speaking their “fluent” English, that I was wondering what language they speak since it couldn’t be English…
So, it’s all not that easy.
September 6, 2007at 1:50 am
Oh, and don’t forget, as someone already pointed out - Polish has mostly 1-1 relation between what’s written to what is spoken (give or take the h/ch, u/ó, and rz/ż cases). English can have as much as 6 or 7 cases of different pronounciation of the same letters and up to 6 or 7 different writings for the same sound. So even those “monstrous” examples of polish words are quite “easy” to read in terms of being able to translate from written form to spoken form when you only know the basic rules of pronounciation (ok, speaking them is a different case even for polish people ;->) whereas you seem to have to learn every single word in English because you never know why it’s spoken/written that way.
September 6, 2007at 2:27 am
polska język jest trudna język…
September 6, 2007at 2:59 am
Dla wszystkich co tak kochają szczebrzeszyn:
She sells see shells by the see shore
September 6, 2007at 3:00 am
Actually the Polish language is missing one thing, the articles (a/the), which makes it hard for Polish people to speak grammatically correct in languages like English and German. Polish people will tend to drop them out in sentences, because they don’t have a natural feeling of when to use them. If only we had them, it would be much easier to learn and speak Germanic languages grammatically correct.
September 6, 2007at 3:49 am
There are more tricky points in polish pronunciation …
For example:
“h” and “ch”
“hak” means “hook”.
“chór” means “choir”.
Basically, “h” and “ch” are pronounced the same (like in the word “hook” in english). But some polish people can speak in such way that you can actually hear the difference between words written with “h” and “ch”. It is not a very common skill, usually older people (born before the second world war) can pronounce like that. I cannot even describe the difference..
I agree that even without this very specific problems, polish pronunciation some times is tricky. For professionals, watching tv can be traumatic, presenters make so many mistakes…
But, if English is so easy, can somebody tell my why there is the difference in the “core” of the words:
Pronunciation
Pronounce
Why the hell there is an “o” in the second one???
September 6, 2007at 4:41 am
There is a page about Polish grammar: http://free.of.pl/g/grzegorj/gram/gram00.html (written in Polish and English) which can be interesting to read.
Does Polish is hardest I can not say as I am Polish native. I had some years of Russian which I mostly forgot but at least can read Cyrilic, then some years of English which I can read/write much better then speak/understand.
But when I was in Slovakia for few days I had no problem to read their texts with understanding - of course there was some problems with dictionary.
September 6, 2007at 5:00 am
What did you mean by saying Polish has 7 Genders? Masculine/Feminine/Neuter and…
September 6, 2007at 6:29 am
So, God thank you - I’m fluent in Polish & Hungarian
My motherlanguage is Polish and I had the big occasion to learn also Hungarian. Hungarian IS hard, even very hard, but I do not believe that it’s easier to learn Chinese / Japanese or any of Arabian languages.
PL-pozdro / HUN-udv
September 6, 2007at 6:49 am
I’m Polish and i don’t speak and write well English but I know it and understand. I know a littlebit German and Russian and i think that people who know’s polish can easy learn any other langangue. Thanks to knowing polish and littlebit russian i can understand Czech, Sloviak, Ukrainian, Bulgarian and more of the East Europe countrys. Even i do understamd a littlebit of balkanian langangues. Thanks to knowing German i do understand to a littlebit of Swedisch, Norway or Netherland and Danmark langangues. And finally english that speak olmost everyone on the world. If enybody know Polish know a lot of langangues i he can very easy learn other langangues. No other country heave langangue so hard and streange as we do. I can read serbian letters and i do repeat serbian words, but no one can read a littlebit in polish
September 6, 2007at 7:11 am
EE tam myślę, że chiński jest trudniejszy ;p
I think that Chineese is more difficult to learn ;P
September 6, 2007at 7:38 am
I couldn’t agree more. Arabic is one of the hardest. Comparing this to learning Japanese is like candy from a baby.
September 6, 2007at 7:39 am
mkb:
A dialog
“- Z miastaście a dupaście.
- Dupam?
- Dupaś.”
It is polish, belive me.
regards
mkb
contains may old and rather non used forms - connection beetwen word “Dupa” and “Miasto” (nouns which mean “rear” and city) and shortened verb “jesteście, jestem, jesteś” (”to be”) and it may cause problems to modern Poles.
Polish is also hard to learn because of its irregularities - I’m educated person and sometimes even I have troubles with proper inflection.
I can only say that english pronounciation (especually of vowels) is really hard for Poles . Polish language lost long and short vowels. Also connected vowels like “something between “a” and “e” are horrible.
Also english idea of “Perfects” and “Continuous” times is taken from hell
September 6, 2007at 8:12 am
Hi. My name is David and I’m Polish. I know English, Latin and a bit of Russian and Arabic. I’ve always had this general feeling, that grammar makes Polish far more complicated than other languages. It was already mentioned here several times that the cases in Polish are really hard to comprehend, espetially for someone who is an English native speaker. There are also many other things.
For example the pronounciation is quite difficult (even though 99% of time - unlike in English - you pronounce word the way you spell it). Some people have given examples of realy har sentences in Polish - well, that’s not really a proof, I mean there are a lot of hard to pronounce (even for a native speaker) sentences in English as well. The thing is that even when you have basic words that include sounds like “sz” or “ż” pronouncing them is going to be a hell of a problem for an English-speaking person.
But nothing is impossible. My uncle is Syrian and came to Poland in the 80. to study medicine. He always says, that he managed to learn Polish because he fell in love with my aunt who studied pharmacy at the same university. So the bottom line is - everything is easy if you have the right motivation
By the way my uncle and my aunt moved to States about 20 years ago. Their kids speak English, Polish, Arabic and a bit of Spanish. So it’s also a good idea to start learning foreign languages as soon as it’s possible. The results can be extraordinary.
Trzymam kciuki za wszystkich uczących się polskiego. Uszy do góry
September 6, 2007at 8:25 am
Deszcz pluszcze w bluszczach puszczy
w bluszczach puszczy pluszcze deszcz
chłoszcze śmiele w trzcinach trzmiele
dźga dżdżownice w prężny grzbiet
Dżdża wypluszcze się pojutrze
a nazajutrz tęczy sztuk trzy
sztukmistrz z Tczewa strząśnie z nieb
sztukmistrz z Tczewa strząśnie z nieb
W wysuszonych sczerniałych trzcinowych szuwarach sześcionogi szczwany
trzmiel bezczelnie szeleścił w szczawiu trzymając w szczękach strzęp
szczypiorku i często trzepocąc skrzydłami.
Spadł bąk na strąk, a strąk na pąk. Pękł pąk, pękł strąk, a bąk się zląkł.
Mała muszka spod Łopuszki
Chciała mieć różowe nóżki
Różdżką nóżki czarowała
Lecz wciąż nóżki czarne miała
Po cóż czary moja muszko?
Rusz że móżdżkiem a nie różdżką
Wyrzuć wreszcie różdżkę w różki
I unużaj w różu nózki.
Szczepan Szczygieł z GRZMIĄCYCH BYSTRZYC
Przed chrzcinami chciał się przystrzyc.
Sam się strzyc nie przywykł wszakże
Więc do szwagra wskoczył - Szwagrze,
Szwagrze, ostrzyż mnie choć krztynę,
Gdyż mam chrzciny za godzinę.
Nic prostszego szwagier na to:
Żono, brzytwę daj szczerbatą
W rżysko będzie strzechę Szczygła
Ta szczerbata brzytwa strzygła !!!
Usłyszawszy straszną wieść
Szczepan Szczygieł wrzasnął: Cześć !
I przez grządki poprzez proso
Niestrzyżony czmychnął w proso
~~~~~~~
Wróbelek Walerek miał mały werbelek, werbelek Walerka miał mały felerek, felerek werbelka naprawił Walerek, wróbelek Walerek na werbelku gra
Stąpa Sasza suchą szosą,
z trudem stopy Saszę niosą.
Słońce szczodrze żarem bucha,
podczas suszy szosa sucha.
Od upału strzechy trzeszczą,
suchą słomą wciąż szeleszczą.
Słońce szczodrze żarem bucha,
podczas suszy szosa sucha.
Jesion liśćmi schładza cień,
tam na Saszę czeka sen.
Słońce szczodrze żarem bucha,
podczas suszy szosa sucha.
September 6, 2007at 8:27 am
tHIS IS VERY FIRST STAGE TO ALL WHO WANT TO LEARN POLISH PRONAUNCIATION:)
GOOD LUCK
September 6, 2007at 9:26 am
extremely hard hm… Polish (my native) and Russian . Diffrend alfabet, hard and soft voices, hard grammar.
September 6, 2007at 10:19 am
I’m also from Poland.
Polish is definately hard. But no one should bother themselves with sentences like “Chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie”, because these are really difficult. In normal situations you’ll probably never use such a sentence (maybe because it means “A beetle is humming in reed” ;]). If you brake the mental blocade, you can learn Polish on basic level quite fast. Gender is simply German Der, Die, Das, so it can’t be that difficult. Polish is also very, very melodic and easy to rhyme, so listening to Polish poetry or songs is a great experience. English is quite simple, at least for me, but I hate conditionals! I think I even used the wrong one in this text
September 6, 2007at 11:50 am
The whole pronounciation thing depends on what you’re used to in your own language. Many of you probably heard of the term “Engrish” which makes fun of how Japanese tend to hurt english language badly. In English there are two different consonants “r” and “l”. In Japanese, there is one (and this one can be spoken as either “r” or “l” depending on the person speaking.
And try to introduce Japanese person to the concept of plural form. (Japanese language has no such thing as distinction between singular/plurar; they have one verb form for all persons). Therefore it’s very very subjective which language is the hardest one. Of course, for any native, his own language will be the easiest one, because he knows it already, therefore I’m trying to say polish is not that bad
It’s usually an easier task to learn a language of the same family that your native language is, so usually it’ll be easier for Poles to learn other slavic languages than roman ones let alone Japanese or Chinese.
Japanese, OTOH seems relatively simple in terms of grammar itself, but it’s got so many polite forms you have to learn not to offend the person you’re talking to, and kanji is sooo complicated (although both kanas are quite simple; you just gotta get used to it).
But Chinese beats all those languages from the European’s point of view because it’s a tonal language. Therefore the same word, pronounced the same way but with slightly different intonation can mean completely different thing. And that’s something we don’t have in european languages at all (AFAIK).
So, every language has its niceties and its hardships, and it’s hard to say that one language is objectively the hardest one.
September 6, 2007at 1:14 pm
Fronika said:
“What does it matter which is the most difficult language? Learn English, that’s all you need.”
Yeah, right, because everyone speaks English, right? Not. And people love it when you arrogantly expect them to learn English because you refuse to learn any other languages…
Jared said of Polish:
“The fully phonetic alphabet, very strict grammar, (no exceptions, everything works the same on any word, all the time), make it an easier language to learn.”
Um, no. It’s more phonetic than English, granted, but it still has weird stuff like rz=ż, ó=u, ch=h, and that “ę” at the end of a word sounds like “e” and “d” at the end of a word sounds like “t”, etc. The grammar has plenty of exceptions. Word inflection is a nightmare of complex rules with many exceptions. Things do NOT work the same on any word all the time in my experience. Just look at comparative forms of adjectives, for instance: why do we say “bliski, bliżej”, “niski, niżej”, but not “śliski, śliżej” (must be “bardziej śliski”)? Or masculine genitives and the often random choice between -a and -u. Or numbers.
September 6, 2007at 1:21 pm
I think - and agree with several people above - that this whole discussion is not scientific at all. Here is the first paragraph of the original post:
“Extremely Hard: The hardest language to learn is: Polish-Seven Cases, Seven Genders and very difficult pronunciation. Average English speaker is fluent at about the age 12; the average Polish speaker is fluent in their language not until age 16.”
1. What are the seven genders in Polish?? As far as I know, there are the “usual” three. Untrue statement. Although it’s true that for instance adjectives do get different endings for the genders, and that they do have seven cases, same way as nouns.
2. The statement about the fluency is extremely unscientific as well - what does “fluency” mean? using all proper endings? having a rich vocabulary? being able to communicate without problems? being understood? Spelling correctly? I don’t know where the theory about about fluency achieved at 16 came from and I think it’s just rubbish.
I spent the first 25 years of my life in Poland, now I’ve lived for 10 years among Americans in the U.S. I’m an English teacher by profession, and for the last year I’ve been teaching Polish to American kids, so - believe me - I know how hard the endings are. Still, it could be harder, if I were teaching them Russian, because they would have to learn a different script! Which brings me to the final conclusion: ratings like this discussion are quite subjective and unless we take into account the native language of the learner, we can’t even start to talk about the difficulty of the new tongue.
Yes, we could objectively compare how many noun endings there are, or perhaps even how difficult the pronunciation is - but we would still need the native language to compare.
A PS for those who are quoting the tongue-twisters about Szczebrzeszyn etc: how about trying these in English, which is supposed to be so much easier:
She sells sea shells on the seashore.
How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? A wood chuck would chuck all the wood he could chuck, if the wood chuck could chuck wood. (heh, I wonder if I wrote it correctly?
And… ta-dam..
supercalifragilisticexpialidociouos. Making as much sense as Konstantynopolitanczykowianeczka.
[more tongue-twisters in various languages: http://www.uebersetzung.at/twister/
PS do cytujacych Szczebrzeszyn: “Lamacze jezykow” istnieja w kazdym jezyku… Nie ma sie co chwalic, ze tylko od Szczebrzeszyna ludzie pluja po sluchaczach. Polecam stronke: http://www.uebersetzung.at/twister/
September 6, 2007at 1:22 pm
Fronika said:
“What does it matter which is the most difficult language? Learn English, that’s all you need.”
Yeah, right, because everyone speaks English, right? Not. And people love it when you arrogantly expect them to learn English because you refuse to learn any other languages…
Jared said of Polish:
“The fully phonetic alphabet, very strict grammar, (no exceptions, everything works the same on any word, all the time), make it an easier language to learn.”
Um, no. Polish is more phonetic than English, granted, but it still has weird spelling/pronunciation stuff like rz=ż, ó=u, ch=h, and “ę” at the end of a word sounds like “e”, and “d” at the end of a word sounds like “t”, and “ł” disappears in “jabłko”, etc. (If it’s so phonetic, how are there difficult orthography contests?)
The grammar has plenty of exceptions. Word inflection is a nightmare of complex rules with many exceptions, and not just endings but changes in the middle of the word (ł/l, ó/o, and lots of other random alternations that do NOT strictly follow rules). Things do NOT work the same on any word all the time. Just look at comparative forms of adjectives, for instance: why do we say “bliski, bliższy”, “niski, niższy”, but not “śliski, śliższy” (must be “bardziej śliski”)? Or masculine genitives and the often random choice between -a and -u. Or the way numbers work. Or we learn that the -ący active participle means you are doing the verb - so why does śpiący not mean you are sleeping (and instead means you are sleepy or want to sleep)? (Not to mention how the hell we get from the infinitive spać to śpiący in the first place.
For a language that really does have pretty simple grammar and literally no irregular nouns, verbs, or adjectives, I recommend Esperanto, which is far easier to learn than Polish, English, or any other national language.
September 6, 2007at 1:25 pm
The sad thing is that polish people ruin every serious discussion. To be honest, most of polish fellows who state that they speak perfectly, they just don’t. That is because of typical level of the native speaker is pretty low, compared to the language standards. Definitely when it comes to writings, the eastern languages are too weird, for us. It’s the totally opposite to the i.e. french where things had come very different, but I would never try to guess the ‘difficulty’ by the number of characters in alphabet, I would rather focus on the information you need to extract from sounds, and the way you do emit those - that’s the language you need to learn. Eastern ones are just “dull”, and compared to them our, European languages, seem to have no limits, when it comes to describing anything. It’s way more harder to learn, than remembering funny patterns on paper, which require almost no skill, but the memory. I see no point in presenting hard to pronounce phrases, which are not applied in common chat - You’ll probably find tons of these in any language. As I speak native polish, I’ve talked with few people, who really do speak perfect polish. You don’t need to know whole grammar, and apply it to be known as fluent speaking, but You don’t, as most of my pre-posters probably, my friends, nor do I.
September 6, 2007at 6:21 pm
First of all: you forgot, that discussion was about hardest language to learn FOR ENGLISH NATIVE SPEAKER. So all examples “I’m hungarian and polish was easy and finish not” and so on have no sense.
Second: you are europocentric. There’s a lot of languages that have nothing common with english (navajo, bantu, suahili, mandarin, 2000 New Guinean languages) - I’m afraid some of them may be much more difficult to learn for English speaker
Third: there are many factors making language difficult - complicated or irregular grammar, different from english pronounciation, difficult spelling, different alphabet. There are tonal languages, which may be extremely difficult for me but much easier to some musicians.
So the order on the list is strongly dependent on personal abilities of list creator, because some people don’t have problems with grammar and some have (me, for example)
Personally I haven’t seen here any grammar complication in above examples that doesn’t exist in polish (sorry serbians and russians ;P) but it don’t mean anything yet. I just don’t believe in strict hierarchy of easier and harder languages. I just know that polish is difficult and there are many other difficult languages in the world.
This whole discussion lost it’s sense as soon as everyone forgot the basic assumptions of this list….
September 6, 2007at 11:38 pm
Over 50% of Polish people leaving a comment here have just undermined the concept of them being able to learn proper English. Poles apparently can learn languages fast, but most of them is hardly able to speak native-like English - they mix up prepositions, they often can’t tell the difference between ‘a’, ‘an’ and ‘the’, not to mention their innate tendency to get them completely wrong while speaking. Therefore, the idea of one language being more difficult to learn than the other is highly dubious and depends tremendously on what your native language is.
September 7, 2007at 3:30 am
I am from Poland but i think Polish is the second hardest language to learn. The most difficult language is…. the language o women :). WHY? Words has different meanings depending of time of the day, time of the month, progres in a relationship, mental condition, etc. etc. . Sometimes sentences means the opposite of what you have heard and your words can( and will be) undestood by them in the completly different meaning. I think that there are very few people in the world who mastered that language. I wouldn’t be suprised if there was no one who can fully mastered and undersand that language.
September 7, 2007at 4:17 am
As a native Finnish, may I point also that I have never met a foreign persons (so a person who hasn’t been raised in Finland with Finnish as first or second mother tongue), who would have spoken Finnish compleatly without an accent or without making some kind of grammar mistakes. Most of the time foreigners Finnish is actually so painful to listen and understand that everybody turns to English.
Just think of the misunderstandings stemming from the mispronounciation of the following words, which are very close to each other in pronounciation, but still very different and have compleatly different meanings:
tuli = fire
tuuli = wind
tulli = customs
September 7, 2007at 6:12 am
I do not think Polish is so hard to learn. I know children 3-4 years speaking fluently. It can not be so difficult.
September 7, 2007at 6:36 am
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September 7, 2007at 8:12 am
Polish is hard for people from Britain or America because it’s different, in fact much different but of course English is easy I live in Poland in Suwałki and I was learning English about 5 years and I’m still learning but I speak freely English. Someone said ‘Polish has more exceptions than rules’ It’s only half true. I make example: You are pretty.-Jesteś piękna. She is pretty.-Ona jest piękna. That’s of course easy but what if somone say: Odnośnie twojej niedokładnie przetworzonych, bądź mógłbym rzec niekompletnych informacji… 2 years or more of learning Polish is for you (I think) becoming a nuisance. Our language is just hard from spelling because grammar have exceptions but (again I think) it’s logical when you uses Polish often even more… And 3-4 years speaking fluently tell me where because if they’re in Poland just tell when you had 3-4 years you could’t speak fluently? I was speaking fluently when I was about 3…
September 7, 2007at 8:21 am
Olka,
I beg to differ.
http://slowniki.pwn.pl/poradnia/lista.php?id=1088
September 7, 2007at 10:20 am
As a Polish native living in the UK I would like to thank you for taking on the venture of learning my language. I know the concepts like stem-words and different endings can feel completely useless sometimes :]. Nonetheless, it’s very easy to joke in a complex language by just inventing new words and by coming up with new endings. Even when you take a name for example. You can grade the levels of affection to a person by modifying the name itself.
My birth name: Rafal
Other names that a Polish native full understand immediately:
Rafalek, Rafico, Ralfiatko, Ralf, Rafaleczek, Rafalinski, Ralfinski
The endings can be non-existant in any other words than peoples’ names but they are understood right away.
Cheers, mate! Good luck.
If you have any questions on Polish, drop me an email.
September 7, 2007at 1:16 pm
people, polish is not the hardest to learn:P read: Teraz piszę po polsku. what means “I’m writng in polish now”.
September 7, 2007at 4:37 pm
Rafał - how do people in UK say Your name? In this freakin’ USA they mix it with Rafel and Rafael. that’s so ridiculous. i try to tell people: RA-FAL, so slowly and with accent on the second “A”. They still call me Rafael or Rafel.
I got the MVP prize from Volleyball from my school. It says: For the Most Valuable Player from Brighton High School: Rafel Chelstowski.
I thought I am gonna go crazy. shame.
I know english little worse than polish. i think i am very fluent in my native language. i go crazy when i hear “Poszłem” instead of “Poszedłem”. I also was trying to learn German. I was taking classes with that language at school and just learned basic sentences and some verbs and adjectives. Same thing with French(though my class didn’t really want to learn it so my teacher wasn’t eager to teach us as well as my classmates).
few years ago i went on a camp to italy. my camp’s campmates were Slovakian. To communicate with each other we didn’t use english but… our native languages. I found it very interesting experience. The most funny thing was when my friend was trying to help our Slovakian friends to find a bag, he said: “Ja tobie poszukam”(In English - I will find it for You/in Slovakian- I want to have sex with You). She looked and him with a huge surprise on her face and together with her friends they started laughing.
Best Regards, Vielen Grussen, Serdeczne pozdrowionka
Rafał
September 7, 2007at 4:57 pm
I would love to know (more) about the seven Polish genders.
Any reference would be welcome.
September 7, 2007at 5:53 pm
No one mentioned that the same sentence in polish can be a question or announce. For example ‘Możesz wstać?’ as a question ‘Can you stand up?’ and ‘Możesz wstać.’, which means ‘You can stand up.’ Sometime it’s difficult for native polish speakers to remember that and they’re trying to ask someone ‘Can you stand up?’.
On the other hand there in polish is a latitude in order of words in sentence. I think it makes polish more flexible and more approachable, but less logic.
ps. There is a sentence in polish, which can be translated like ‘I speak polish, because I think polish’. It’s easier to learn foreign language when you’re trying to thing in that language.
Cheers!
September 8, 2007at 12:33 am
And you write it without mistakes.
September 8, 2007at 5:52 am
As far as the cases, I think the author is referring to nominative, accusative, dative etc. There are 7 in Polish, so he is correct.
September 8, 2007at 9:49 am
As a native Polish speaker, I must say that beauty of our language is in its flexibility. You can “mold” your ideas i various directions and it can be pretty comical most of a time. For those who speak and understand Polish, I recommend some readings by Slawomir Mrozek or Stanislaw Lem.Kapuscinski was another master of grasping reader’s attention.
you can also visit my website, to do some readings, have fun
http://www.nowy-jork.com
September 8, 2007at 11:28 am
guest said “And you write it without mistakes”
I know and sorry for that. I hope You understood :). As I said, sometime it’s difficult (for example for me)
September 9, 2007at 2:32 pm
Język polski wcale nie jest taki trudny.
Spróbujcie się nauczyć Chińskiego …
September 9, 2007at 4:08 pm
r u gay?
September 9, 2007at 4:09 pm
stefan
September 9, 2007at 4:09 pm
stefan borovic je to napisao
September 9, 2007at 4:10 pm
stefan borovic is a dog
September 9, 2007at 4:11 pm
stefan lives in belgrade
September 9, 2007at 4:11 pm
In Texas not in
September 9, 2007at 4:11 pm
we are happy horses
September 10, 2007at 9:03 am
hey there guys i read some of the comments that u sad about the hardest languages to learn, u mentioned slavic languages but nobody mentioned albanian language
Albanian language is a unik language and and one of the most oldest languages in europe i would like to kno w what do u guys think of albanian language… welll not serbs because they’re gonna insultit so ……
September 10, 2007at 3:12 pm
Niezly popis daliscie drodzy rodacy. Po co sie w ogole wypowiadacie skoro nie potraficie pisac poprawnie po angielsku i tylko wstawiacie jakies durne teksty i nas osmieszacie??? Po co piszecie po angielsku, ze jak Polak mowi, ze zna jezyk to go tak naprawde nie zna??? Pojedzcie sobie do Wloch, Hiszpanii i Francji, a moze wtedy docenicie znajomosc jezykow obcych naszych rodakow.
September 11, 2007at 5:17 am
Polacy znają angielski bardzo dobrze.
Carrie, I teach English to foreigners. Polish people speak better English than any other nationality I know. Since the Polish language is so rich in sounds they can imitate English sounds very well, but the converse is not true. Further since their language is so complex in grammar, easier languages like French, English, Spanish and Italian are easy for Polish people. Polish people may complain about learning languages and how hard it is, as complaining and self doubt runs rampant in Poland, but the reality is they speak it very well and have amazing language abilities. However when an American or English or French or Italian person speaks English they have problems, forget Polish. But American (which I am) and Brits full of confidence, will often times think the converse. Polacy znają angielski bardzo dobrze. IMO (In my opinion).
September 11, 2007at 6:32 am
markbiernat, it’s indeed easily recognizable that you’re not Polish native speaker :). The syntax of “Polacy znają angielski bardzo dobrze”, while actually correct and understandable, is an obvious transformation of English sentence word-array to Polish (”Poles know English very good”). A Pole would actually say this phrase with a slightly modified word order: “Polacy bardzo dobrze znają angielski”. The previous one is correct, notwithstanding.
(There’s one interesting thing I personally notice about English native speakers. While their pronunciation’s excellence is rather impossible to achieve, their SPELLING seems to be worse than many people who learned English as their secondary language. It looks like native speakers a little disregard “writing skills”. For example, it is common among English people to write “your” instead of “you’re”. I think it just slips out as they sound practically the same. This leads to sentences like “I think your right”.)
Back to the topic - as a Polish native speaker, I would like to point out an issue with English that is the most difficult to master for a Pole: the tenses. Their variety often seems “ridiculous” to people who actually have THREE main tenses (past, present, future), excluding conditionals.
In Polish, there are no tenses like Present Perfect, Past Perfect (+Continuous). The function of these tenses is not achieved by giving them a correct grammatical form, but it rather depends on the context in a sentence/paragraph or supporting words like “before”, “then”, “during” etc. etc. etc.
I hope this helps a little
September 11, 2007at 8:14 am
Bardzo ciekawy komentarz, wziąwszy po uwagę że kolejność słów w zdaniu w języku polskim można zmieniać bez uszczerbku dla sensu zdania. Myślę że “Polacy znają angielski bardzo dobrze” jest tak samo poprawne jak “Polacy bardzo dobrze znają angielski”. Pozdrawiam
September 11, 2007at 8:58 am
The above comment by neovigo and my reply in Polish is case in point, that Polish is the hardest language to learn.
September 11, 2007at 2:47 pm
Ale np. nauczyciel uzna ci zdanie “Polacy znają angielski bardzo dobrze” za błąd składniowy. Czyli trzeba się trochę zastanowić.
September 11, 2007at 4:43 pm
Answering jani’s question about genders:
There are five main genders. fale, female and neuter. There’s also “male-plural” and “female-plural”.
The gender affects the form of adjective.
For example, let’s consider three words and an adjective:
1. MATKA (mother) - female gender
2. OJCIEC (father) - male gender
3. DZIECKO (child) - neuter gender
adjective: BRZYDKI (ugly).
Proper forms of above together would be:
brzydka matka (ugly mother)
brzydki ojciec (ugly father)
brzydkie dziecko (ugly child)
As you see, gender affects the adjective. In plural form it would be:
brzydkie matki (ugly mothers) - female-plural
brzydcy ojcowie (ugly fathers) - male-plural
brzydkie dzieci (ugly children) - female-plural
This kind of gender “transformations” can be quite confusing at first!
Gender also affects other words, such as verbs. In Polish, for example “Ja zjadłam” (I ate) is different from “Ja zjadłem” (also I ate). First one is used when the speaker is female, the other one - male. Also, the subject of the sentence is REDUNDANT. It’s one of the most significant differences between English and Polish.
In English you would say:
he killed, we killed, they killed, I killed
In Polish it is:
zabił, zabiliśmy/zabiłyśmy, zabili/zabiły, zabiłem/zabiłam
“zabił” already sets the gender of the subject to MALE, as the English equivalent uses “he”. However, “we killed” is not specific enough in English. “We” in Polish is different when “we” consists of females only and when it consists the other gender too. . .
One could talk all day long about this… Regarding one aspect brings up three more (if one wants to be strictly specific and correct), so it’s pointless to analyze whole Polish gender stuff here. If you need/want more information about this topic, let me know, I’ll see what I can do
–
And, believe me - I know how extremely CONFUSING and OVERCOMPLICATED it does look. You would be fairly surprised how these rules are *obvious* and natural to every Polish native speaker. In fact, for a Pole it takes more effort to actually name these rules and try to explain them than just use them. It’s natural
September 11, 2007at 4:46 pm
And, by the way, I hope that my English skills are good enough to explain some things. I’d feel fairly ashamed if it turned out I’m making stupid grammar mistakes every now and then… you know, we’ve equivocally annoucend English the easiest of all languages…!
September 14, 2007at 7:10 am
ljubo said:”I dance and sing in English
1. Ja plešem i ja pevam na engleskom
2. plešem i pevam na engleskom
3. na engleskom plešem i pevam”
Polish is similar:
1.Ja tańczę i śpiewam po angielsku
2. Tańcze i śpiewam po angielsku
3. Po angielsku śpiewam i tańczę
September 14, 2007at