Japanese Your mother tongue is an important deciding factor when it comes to difficulty. For example, native speakers of Italian seem to learn Spanish and Portuguese rather easily despite the complex grammatical structures of the Spanish language. On the same basis, Chinese speakers will probably pick up Japanese faster than people whose first language uses the Roman alphabet. In fact, Chinese has no grammatical system per se, which makes it easier to learn than many Western languages once you have memorized the basic characters. Individual aptitude is another factor. Some people have a natural talent for learning new languages, while others struggle through the basics. Factors such as environment, materials used, motivation, and even environment also play an important role in how difficult a language is to learn. All that aside, the British Foreign Office conducted a language study recently and concluded that the most difficult language to learn is Basque, spoken in parts of Spain and France, followed closely by Hungarian, which has 35 cases or noun forms. On the other hand, German and Russian languages use a punctuation system said to be among the most difficult ones in the world. Languages that use characters may seem hard to read and write to users of the Roman alphabet, but they are not always that difficult. Experts agree that Chinese and Korean can be learned rather easily by speakers of Western languages; Vietnamese and Japanese, however, are much more complex. http://www.wisegeek.com/which-are-the-most-difficult-languages-to-learn.htm Another opinion: 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 http://www.claritaslux.com/blog/the-hardest-language-to-learn/ And an interesting link: http://www.language-learning-advisor.com/what-makes-one-language-harder-or-easier-to-learn-than-another.html

I hear that Mandrain Chinese is the hardest to learn

For an english speaker, yes. It is much easier. The writing system is similar but everything can be pronounced phonetically in Japanese. It's all based on vowels and those same vowel sounds exist in English. The only thing that will be difficult is Kanji, which is the third alphabet and consists of Chinese characters. It's hard, but there are usually other kana (letters) that accompany Kanji to tell how each character is pronounced. Learning the 46 characters of both Hiragan and Katakana is not hard.