Top 20 Most Difficult Languages to Learn

English may be the most widely used language in the world when you consider both native and non-native speakers, but it has some quirks that make it tricky to master. Most notably, it has some of the most nonsensical spelling and punctuation rules of any language on Earth. Even fluent speakers can see a new word in English and not know how to pronounce it correctly, because there are no fast rules. Plus, it has sixteen verb tenses, dozens of prepositions, and an extremely rigid word order. If you don’t structure your sentence properly, there’s a good chance you simply won’t be understood.

Polish isn’t necessarily easier or harder to master than its close siblings Slovak and Czech. However, as it is still a Slavic language, it’s difficult for speakers of different language families to get to grips with. For one thing, it uses the Latin alphabet and many of the same characters as English. Yet some of the letters are pronounced differently, while a handful are completely new. But what really makes Polish tricky - once you figure out the pronunciation and daunting spellings - are the seven cases. That’s because everything needs to be declined into them: verbs, adjectives, nouns, and even your own name!

When measured by the total number of speakers, Hindi is the third most widely employed language in the world. If you change that metric to include only native speakers, it still comes in fourth place. That’s because it’s spoken across India, the planet’s second-most populous country. While the nation has many different languages and dialects to contend with, Hindi is the one that will initially allow you to communicate with the most people. The fact that it’s a beautiful language doesn’t hurt either. However, what makes it difficult is the writing. While some people use Latin symbols, Hindi also has its own alphabet called Devanagari script, which contains a great number of additional characters to learn.

Modern Persian is separated into three distinct dialects: Farsi, Dari, and Tajik. Of these, the most common for foreigners to learn is Farsi, which is widely spoken both in Iran and by Iranian diaspora. As such, it can be a useful language to learn, even if you never go to the Middle East. It’s definitely not for the faint of heart, though. Persian uses a version of Arabic script, which can make it especially daunting. However, something that makes mastering this poetic language a little easier is its lack of noun genders and - refreshingly - the next to no irregular verbs.

This is the native language of the Philippines, and it’s a doozy. Across the Philippines’ numerous islands and cities, many different dialects exist. In fact, the variation means that it can sometimes be hard for locals to understand each other. In other words, Tagalog isn’t exactly easy to figure out. If you really want to be able to talk to every Filipino you meet, you’ll have to fully immerse yourself in the culture. But considering how rich it is, that’s a very rewarding endeavor. Luckily, Anglophones have an edge because Tagalog uses a lot of English words. Needless to say, that makes communication much easier, especially while you’re learning.

Learning Turkish is a great way to not only experience Turkey, but also many other countries where Turkic languages are spoken and Turkish is readily understood. But if you’ve never learned a Turkic tongue before, you might struggle. And if you aren’t someone who already speaks an agglutinative language? There’s a good chance you’ll have some trouble. Put simply, though word endings don’t change, additional ones are added with agglutination. As you can imagine, this often leads to some strange Franken-words. Yet Turkish also has strict and regular grammatical rules, so once you learn those, everything else comes easy.

The first tonal language on our list, Vietnamese has six tones for new learners to contend with. That alone makes it quite difficult. Though it does use the Latin alphabet, the many tones make correct pronunciation seem like an impossible task for newbies who haven’t encountered such languages before. However, once you get the hang of how different pitches create different words, Vietnamese grammar and word order aren’t so hard to understand. In fact, many people feel that they’re simpler than other East Asian languages. It might take years to master speaking and listening, but picking up reading and writing won’t be too bad.

Another tonal language, Navajo is spoken by the American Southwest’s Navajo people - also known as one of the largest Native American tribes in the United States. In other words, it’s among the country’s most prominent Indigenous languages. Like other parts of Native American identity, it has long been at risk of disappearing due to government interference. But thanks to the internet, language-learning apps, and the efforts of the tribe, it’s easier than ever for people to understand this incredible language. However, its unique pronunciations and punctuation set it apart, and make it quite challenging to grasp. But if you put in enough time and effort, learning Navajo is sure to be a gratifying experience.

Welsh has the most native speakers of all the UK’s Celtic languages. But despite the nearly 900,000 people who use it daily, it’s a pretty difficult language to wrap your head around. While it is known to be slightly easier than other Celtic languages like Irish, Welsh consonants are a handful. It’s hard to come to grips with how to make all the sounds! Luckily, once you learn how to construct the words, you’ll notice that their pronunciation is consistent phonetically. Naturally, those who speak other Celtic languages have a leg up here. But if you’re coming from a different part of the world, mastering Welsh will likely be confusing.

#11: Greek

Also in:

Top 10 Ancient Greek Myths That Turned Out To Be True

One of the few European languages that doesn’t employ Roman characters, modern Greek still uses the very same alphabet that Ancient Greek was written in. This makes it one of the most influential languages in the western world, since so much classical literature was written in it. Modern Greek is certainly easier to understand than its Ancient counterpart, but it still has a reputation for being tough. You can thank its complicated spelling and verbs for that! Still, once you master the alphabet, you’ll probably recognize a lot of familiar terms. That’s because Greek words are at the root of many English ones!

As a highly complex Uralic language, Hungarian is infamous for its difficulty. The fact that it has an abundance of cases definitely has something to do with that. Thankfully, you probably won’t need to use all of them while you’re going about your day-to-day business. But it’s still important to learn the grammar of a language you want to speak. Otherwise, you’ll never know exactly what you’re saying. While this adds a layer of complexity, there’s no denying it’s worth the effort. Unfortunately, the language has another big hurdle any learner has to overcome: its love of idioms. These expressions are typically hard to grasp. But in Hungarian, they’re a necessity.

All languages, even the most closely related ones, will have different sounds that any new speaker will have to learn. But the Khoisan languages may have the hardest ones to understand, because they utilize multiple, marked click consonants. While plenty of people know how to click their tongues, there’s usually no linguistic reason for them to do so. Yet in the Khoisan languages, you need to be able to create these sounds and tell them apart. What’s more, all of these languages differ greatly from one another. Plus, they are only spoken by a small number of people in certain parts of Africa, like Namibia, which makes things even trickier!

#8: Korean

Also in:

Tough Rides: China, Episode 1: Shanghai to the Korean Border

Though a layman might think Korean is similar to languages like Mandarin or Japanese, its alphabet and pronunciation are actually extremely different. In fact, it’s technically a language isolate, which makes it incredibly unique. In other words, it's pretty much guaranteed to be completely different from anything you’ve seen before! This all combines to make Korean one of the trickiest languages in the world to familiarize yourself with. But South Korea is an influential country with a huge cultural reach, which means its language is definitely worth learning. At least Korean has a much simpler writing system than Japanese and Mandarin!

Many people dream of someday being able to read the stunning sagas written in Old Norse about adventure and mythology. For Icelandic speakers, that dream is a reality, since the language has barely changed over the last millennium. Old English, by comparison, is far more similar to modern German than modern English. But this stagnation actually makes studying Icelandic very difficult. To start, it has a lot of strict cases. More than that, it’s full of complex verbs and pronunciations that aren’t always straightforward. In other words, there’s a lot for aspiring speakers to absorb before they can become fluent in Icelandic. Considering the fact it’s an incredibly historical language, it’s easy to understand why.

Scandinavia’s languages are certainly a diverse bunch. On the one hand, you have Norwegian, which is one of the easiest languages for English speakers to learn. On the other hand, you have Finnish, which is one of the hardest in the world to pick up. At first, its pronunciation will seem inscrutable because of how vowels and consonants can be doubled up and combined. But eventually, you’ll learn there are even more confounding aspects to Finland’s first language, as it has fifteen cases. Additionally, Finnish does not have noun genders. While this makes things slightly easier for English speakers, it actually makes them trickier for many Europeans who are used to these identifiers!

There are roughly a billion Mandarin speakers worldwide, making it China’s biggest language. But don’t let these impressive numbers fool you into thinking it's simple to pursue. On the contrary, its writing system is actually notoriously complex. In fact, there are thousands of Mandarin characters in existence. Luckily, you only need to know a fraction of them to understand news articles and most written text. However, Mandarin is also a tonal language. It has four distinct tones that will drastically impact what you’re saying. So you definitely need to get the hang of those if you want to have a coherent conversation!

#4: Russian

Also in:

This Abandoned Russian Island Almost Killed Us All | Unveiled

With similar pronunciation and grammar to other Slavic languages, the thing that makes learning Russian so difficult is the Cyrillic alphabet, which is notably employed throughout Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Another tricky feature is that Russian, like its sibling languages, doesn’t have any articles. In other words, you can forget about the “the”, “a” and “an”’s most of us have grown accustomed to. Thankfully, Russian grammar isn’t too tricky on the whole; it’s got six cases, but they enable a very free word order. As long as the endings are correct, you can mix things up a bit.

#3: Japanese

Also in:

Top 10 Japanese Gods and Goddesses

Japan is a major tourist destination with a huge influence on pop culture. As such, Japanese has become a wildly popular language. But it still has a very warranted reputation as one of the world’s most intricate languages. One big reason for this is its three alphabets, which contain thousands of unique hiragana, katakana and kanji characters. Thus, it’s the reading and writing that make Japanese so hard. Plus, you’ll need to learn honorifics - like “kun”, “chan”, and “senpai” -, in order to make sure you’re addressing everybody properly. It can take years of total immersion to become fluent in Japanese.

It may be spoken widely across much of Northern Africa and the Middle East, but learning basic Arabic won’t be enough to get you through visits to countries as far apart as Morocco and Syria. In fact, the many regional dialects often don’t have much in common. Plus, the Quran is in Classical Arabic, which has its own particularities. Furthermore, while Standard Arabic has a modest number of vowels, there are many consonants and an extremely difficult alphabet to master. All of this combines to make it one of the most complicated languages in the world to get to grips with. But it’s so widespread that learning a few words will undoubtedly come in handy someday.

Cantonese is Hong Kong’s primary language, and many speakers also live in parts of mainland China. Interestingly, Mandarin and Cantonese are quite similar. But the latter has some characteristics that make it the harder of the two to grasp. Once again, we have tones to thank for this. There are actually between six to nine of them, depending on who you ask. That’s definitely more than you need to speak Mandarin effectively. Furthermore, Cantonese employs traditional characters, which are more intricate than those typically used by its counterpart. Add in its complex pronunciations, and you’ll quickly understand why Cantonese is the toughest language to learn.