- [Voiceover] How difficult a language is to learn
is often a matter of perspective.
For example, a Dutch speaker trying to learn German
will have a much easier time than say,
a Mandarin speaker,
because Dutch and German are closely related languages,
and Mandarin and German are not.
So, get ready to find out about
the five most difficult languages in the world to learn.
(speaks Hungarian)
Hungarian stands as several odd men out in Europe,
alongside Finnish and Estonian as belonging to
a language family other than that of the majority
of European languages.
Most European languages belong to
a family called Indo-European,
but Hungarian belongs to a family called Finno-Ugric.
What makes Hungarian incredibly difficult to learn,
for say a German,
or English speaker,
is the combination of incredibly alien vocabulary
combined with an insanely difficult grammar.
For example, German and English have many words
in common with each other, such as:
But, if you line up those same words with Hungarian,
you can see where the difficulty comes in.
They are completely different,
making it a true challenge to learn.
(speaks Cantonese)
There really is no such thing as Chinese,
rather what is normally called Chinese,
or Chinese dialects are in fact different languages.
Mandarin is the official language of China,
but there are others,
most prominently the Cantonese language,
which is spoken in Southern China,
as well as Honk Kong and Macau.
Mandarin has four different tones,
each of which conveys a different meaning,
and can be difficult enough to get right for a foreigner,
but Cantonese has six tones.
Additionally, the real difficulty in learning Chinese
is always the reading and writing system,
because the language has no alphabet,
instead it uses an archaic writing system
based on what are called idiograms.
Idiograms are graphic symbols that convey meaning,
and the Chinese ones were originally based on
representation of things from the real world.
Over time, the relationship between the symbols
and what they represented was lost,
but the complexity in the number of the characters grew.
It takes years, and years,
even as a Chinese person to learn enough
of the characters to be literate.
Compare that to the Korean alphabet, hangul,
which can be learnt in a few hours,
and you get an idea of how difficult it can be
to acquire even basic literacy.
Given this, the Chinese writing system was reformed
in the 20th Century in mainland China
into what is called simplified characters,
but in Hong Kong they kept
the even more complex traditional ones,
which when combined with the greater number of tones
makes Hong Kong Cantonese
one of the most difficult languages in the world to learn.
(speaks Xhosa)
Xhosa is a language that belongs to the African family
of languages called Bantu,
and is one of the official languages of South Africa.
In addition to a difficult grammar and vocabulary,
foreign to native speakers of English,
it is one of the infamous clicking sound languages
that requires a unique precision in order
to pronounce correctly.
The language is a total of 18 clicks
that are very hard for non-natives to learn.
So, if you decide to pick up Xhosa,
all we can say is good luck,
you're going to need it.
(speaks Navajo)
Navajao is an American Indian langauge
that has had an unusual role in history.
Due to its isolation as a language,
and small number of speakers,
during World War II a man named Phillip Johnston
suggested the introduction of so-called Navajo code talkers
in order to preserve the secrecy of information,
and confuse the enemy.
He was fortunate to have grown up as the son
of a missionary on a reservation,
and thus spoke it fluently,
but he also realized that almost no one spoke it,
and those who tried usually failed.
Instead of distinguishing tense,
which refers to when something happened,
as we do in English,
Navajo instead uses something called aspect,
which stresses the way in which something is done,
instead of when it was done.
These have no real correspondence in English,
but have classifications,
such as transitional,
which involves an action involving transition
from one status or form to another.
Momentaneous, which involves an action
that takes place at a specific point in time,
and many others.
You can see why Navajo would be hell to learn,
and why the Navajo code talkers were able to outwit
the Japanese at every turn.
(speaks Greenlandic)
If you thought Navajo would be hard to learn,
then Greenlandic is just off the charts.
It's one of the Eskimo Aleut languages spoken by
the Inuit of Greenland,
and its incredibly strange and difficult grammar
make it the most difficult language to learn.
Besides being unrelated to anything Western
or Eastern people are familiar with,
it is the grammar that is the real killer.
Most languages have distinct parts for subjects,
objects, and verbs,
but in Greenlandic,
the verb itself contains virtually all information
of the things conveyed in the sentence,
including the subject and object,
making the language conceptually very different
from anything you might have encountered
in the language learning classroom.
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