What language did you find the hardest to learn?

English, most English speaking people have no idea how to speak it, much less non-English speaking people learning it as a second language.

English, because: The English Language

Have you ever wondered why foreigners have trouble with the English Language?

Let's face it
English is a stupid language.
There is no egg in the eggplant
No ham in the hamburger
And neither pine nor apple in the pineapple.
English muffins were not invented in England
French fries were not invented in France.

We sometimes take English for granted
But if we examine its paradoxes we find that
Quicksand takes you down slowly
Boxing rings are square
And a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

If writers write, how come fingers don't fing.
If the plural of tooth is teeth
Shouldn't the plural of phone booth be phone beeth
If the teacher taught,
Why didn't the preacher praught.

If a vegetarian eats vegetables
What the heck does a humanitarian eat!?
Why do people recite at a play
Yet play at a recital?
Park on driveways and
Drive on parkways

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy
Of a language where a house can burn up as
It burns down
And in which you fill in a form
By filling it out
And a bell is only heard once it goes!

English was invented by people, not computers
And it reflects the creativity of the human race
(Which of course isn't a race at all)

That is why
When the stars are out they are visible
But when the lights are out they are invisible
And why it is that when I wind up my watch
It starts
But when I wind up this observation,
It ends.

I always though it would be Mandarin, but actually once I realised that we use 'tones' in english also it got me over the humps. (as in 'are you CRAZY?' or 'are YOU crazy?' type thing)
Baffingly - whereas I picked up a reasonable level of Bengali in about four months some years (okay - decades) ago, I never could get an ear for Hindi...still can't understand it.
But I believe the hardest languages are some of the Native American ines. : )

For me it's German..sad part is..I am german..LOL

Ifound this:
27. September in Paris, held by a consortium of linguists with the
world. After eight years of research, investigation and study issued section
ten most difficult and easiest languages on this planet. Account
took the development of language, change the spelling, font style, characters, language,
history of language and grammar of the language.

ten easiest languages in the world.

10. Mongolian

09. Aramaic

08. Greek

07. Norwegian

06. Italian

05. Romanian

04. Croatian

03. Bulgarian

02. English

01. lightest in the world language spoken by over 300 million people
worldwide is Spain



Ten most difficult languages on the planet:

10. German

09. French

08. Chinese

07. Japanese

06. both Korean language is the same, so the Korean

05. Persian

04. Arabic

03. Finnish

02. Hungarian

01. most difficult language which is said on this planet is Slovak.
its grammar is so complicated that any alien
, according to calculations took 12 years until it learned the entire
not to mention grammar and variability of words, sentences and phrases
in sentences. I would say that
some cases extremely difficult to then, he has been able to
embrace a man. Slovak language grammar has exactly 465
exceptions, it demonstrates its complexity.The language is melodic and therefore we have no problem and understand Russian, Polish, Czech and other Slavic languages.
Its grammatical structure
is so complicated, so sophisticated in detail that with such
perfection is not meet for processing or in Hungarian

English, followed by Chinese.

I am told that Hungarian and Welsh are 2 of the hardest!

There is a saying among linguists that the hardest language to learn is the second one. This is somewhat true, because your first language you learned with little effort and the third and fourth come after one has already studied language consciously.

Of course, circumstances vary widely. I got small amounts of French and German as a child and so they aren't quite 2nd languages, but folded into my first.

German was the first language i studied formally and, even with some background in it, it was the hardest for me. I assumed that it was naturally harder than Spanish until a Mexican-American who studied Spanish as his 2nd and German as his 3rd told me that German is much easier than Spanish. This seems to confirm the saying.

Some languages are easier for certain people because they are related to what they know. Being familiar with German, Spanish and French, i have found that Russian isn't totally foreign, while Chinese is.

I hear that Chinese grammar is among the simplest in the world, but the characters and tonal qualities of words can drive a westerner crazy. Is Chinese harder than English? Probably not. It's just different. Millions of children speak both languages very well, so neither one can be terribly difficult.

If you're learning a language that is within the family of your own, it will be much easier. One key is to relate what you are learning to what you already know.

It's also important to be humble and to recognize that there are many right ways to see things.

Does this help to answer the question?

Basque - It is an isolated language, and has no references to any other language.

I was told that Hungarian and Welsh are notoriously hard.

It depends on the person's ability to learn a language, and the language they grew up with. If you grew up speaking castilian spanish, learning other types of spanish languages would not be as hard as learning cantonese chinese.

Most multilingual people I know for whom English is not their native tongue say that English is.

Latin!!

English. It has to be the most ridiculous language on the planet.

That must be anything Asian.

Hard to tell ... but
French, being based on Latin, would be my choice as the hardest language.
Personally speaking, it was by a long way the most difficult, however it was also very helpful in picking up a smattering of Italian.
My mother tongue is based on German, so I found German easy.
Most people I know found English very easy to learn ... it is a modern, evolving but quite profound language and can be extremely hard to master. I love it.

Moronish IMHO.

I think Chinese is because they have no alphabet.
Their language has various levels of tones to signify a word.
They have an economy of basic word structure as far as sounds go.
There are more than 1000 characters one must learn.
Can you believe there are more than 50 words that sound like Chi.
I know more than 5 languages fairly well and I even find Japanese capable of understanding, but I am baffled with Chinese.

Japanese. Because there are codes underlying the codes underlying the codes.

right now sanskrit is kicking my butt pretty good.

It would depend on where you are from..... Some say that english is the most difficult. Finnish is hardest for Americans or English speaking people to learn. It depends on how different the syntax of the language is, because if the syntax is different it is harder for you to make sentences.

I'd have to go with Basque.

Korean and Icelandic are two very tough ones - I already gave up on Korean.

Greek

You lovers of the English language might enjoy this!

There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is"UP."

It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP? At a meeting, why does a topic come UP? Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report?

We call UP our friends. And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver, we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car. At other times the little word has real special meaning. People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses. To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP is special.

And this UP is confusing: A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP. We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night.

We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP! To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions. I f you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more. When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP. When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP

When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP.

When it doesn't rain for awhile, things dry UP.

One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP, for now my time is UP, so.......... it is time to shut UP....!

Oh . . one more thing:


What is the first thing you do in the morning & the last thing you do at night? U-P
There are many more words like this in the english language, so My vote goes to English..

Chinese.

I've heard that Gaelic is extremely difficult..that said, I found mandarin difficult enough for me.

For whom? Americans? Or for any language learner, on the average?

Learn it to what degree? A good writer on the English language wrote that English is the easiest language to learn enough to get along in. But to master it is quite difficult.

To answer, we'd have had to try them all, and none of us has done that.

From what I've read, learning even a little Hungarian is extremely challenging to people for whom it is not the first language.