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11 Hard Languages for English Speakers 👉🏼
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⏱ TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 – Intro
0:20 – Impossible Language 1
4:10 – Impossible Language 2
10:48 – Impossible Language 3
14:02 – Impossible Language 4
19:45 – Impossible Language 5
📜 SOURCES & ATTRIBUTIONS:
🎬 Video Clips:
Star Wars – briefing scene HD
LOTR The Fellowship of the Ring – Extended Edition – Lothlórien
People Afraid Of Roller-Coasters Ride One For The First Time (360° Video)
🖼 Images:
“Tolkien in the 1920s” by Unknown is licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons
“Cantonese tones” by Saurmandal is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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Is there some kind of test to find out which level to buy?
Does Storylearning include traditional Chinese or only simplified Chinese?
At 20:39 you happened to misspell “Szív” (heart) as “Sziz”.
I’ve tried many of these languages before figuring out how hard they are
I guess the hardest language is some obscure Native American, Caucasian or East Asian language. For an official language, with quiet large number of speakers my guess that the hardest is Georgian
I would throw the austronesian languages in there too. Papua New Guinea has an absurd number of languages and learning a lot of them would be insanely difficult.
Plus some sign languages when they are supressed in the local deaf communities.
The hardest languages are those that haven’t been written down for hundreds and hundreds of years. The longer a language evolves without writing, the more complex it becomes; that’s my experience with the languages my family speaks (Chiac, Gàidhlig, Finnish, …) and the ones that I have learned so far.
I’ve looked into Georgian and omg just looking at the alphabet stresses me out
I had to learn Xhosa in school. After a while the clicks weren’t too hard, it was just the usual things that made it hard to learn, like grammar and syntax and all that.
I had been learning Fiinish in my school. It is a very beautiful language, and I find it extremely musical! And now… now I learn Arabic. Why do I keep torturing myself?
أتمنى لك النجاح
I spent a summer with an international group that also had some people from Hungary. What I found strange was that I couldn’t hear when a sentence ended because the voice doesn’t get down.
Xhosa was the first language that came to mind but also, for me anyway, any language that requires rolling ‘r’ s is also impossible! I just can’t make that sound!
I’m doing battle with Cantonese right now, but I feel Vietnamese deserves a mention … I’ve been speaking/studying for 15 years and still feel like I’m at pre-school level, it sounds like it comes from another planet (and is quite closely related to Cantonese)
Only superficially – Cantonese is Sino-Tibetan, whereas Vietnamese is Austro-Asiatic. Vietnamese acquired tone from surrounding Sinitic languages quite early during its development, but in terms of its basic vocabulary, it’s still Austro-Asiatic, so it’s related to Khmer (even though the two groups have historically been, ahem, less than cordial to each other).
In your experience, does Cantonese seems easier to learn compared to Vietnamese (I am a Vietnamese learner, hoping to study Cantonese in the future – yeah I like to suffer lol)
@SiKedekI did not realize this fact about Viet language being Austro Asiatic. I heard my first really good rock music in Viet just a few hours ago, the band UnlimiteD. Viet is one of the very few major languages I know Nothing about… Just today I learned that the Dong is the world’s smallest currency too!
@SiKedek I’d say it’s more than superficial at this stage in the development. Certainly they originate from two different language families, but belonging to the sinosphere for so long meant Vietnamese developed very strong Chinese traits (i.e. acquiring the tones about 2000 years ago), and quite a lot of common vocab – just to throw out a couple of terms – the words for university and student are almost exactly the same. But perhaps that’s why Viet is so tricky, it’s picked up the Chinese tones, and some pronunciations, but retained a grammar that I’ve never seen anything like anywhere.
I am from Poland, I was so surprised when I saw ‘Impossible language nr 3’. But I confirm, it’s extremely difficult to learn, grammar is extremely complex. I respect people who are trying to learn this language and I always wonder why people do that. It is only used in one country ( which is not attractive from tourism or business perspective). Very interesting video, thanks Olly 🙂
Polish is the second most commonly spoken language in England.
I think Poland is attractive from both a touristic and a business point of view, you have nice cities and the mountain part is great as well, also your economy is the largest in the eastern half of the EU and certainly the one with the modt potential for growth
I got a bit sad during COVID times, and decided to learn Polish. As it turned out, it was super easy for a Ukrainian to do it. So many commonalities and similar sounds! But you are right – I still don’t know why exactly I decided to – just thought it should be cool. It was my language number 7 I tried to learn.
Polish? Easy peasy. Of course, if you know any other Slavic language.
After English and Spanish, Polish is the most common language in Illinois. Chicago has more Polish people than any other city in the world except Warsaw! That includes all the other cities and towns in Poland!
I am currently learning Finnish. I started when I was studying for a year in Finland.
For me spelling was easy. The pronunciation not too hard once I got the ä/a, the r, and the h in coda (like in “nähdä” or “hiihto”).
(Some Finns even told me that I didn’t sound foreign, and I can’t say the same for my English)
For the grammar, once you understand that you replace for example “in” with “-ssa/-ssä” or “from” with “-sta/-stä”, it’s not that hard except for some irregular words.
The lexicon however, is really different. For that I really feel how it has nothing to do with French (my native language) or English.
The hardest is probably to not speak English with the Finns. Because, when they feel that you are uncertain, some of them immediately switch to English😅
Also, I wonder why Estonian didn’t figure in this list with the õ vowel or the fact that it distinguish between short, long and overlong vowels. And it also has a case system similar to the one in Finnish, and that lexicon too. However it doesn’t have the vowel harmony (but that can make some words harder to pronounce).
I didn’t start to learn Estonian (yet). But for me, Estonian looks harder than Finnish.
I think what makes Estonian technically easier than Finnish is that there is a vast amount of Germanic loanwords, so if you are a native indo-european language speaker, there is going to be much more familiar vocabulary. Also, Estonian is much less of a conservative language- so it lost a lot of archaic and complicated features that Finnish has kept. But, considering that there’s even less resources, materials, and native speakers of Estonian, it may well be harder to learn if we are looking at practical purposes.
I’m Polish. I think Polish is a very difficult language. I admire people who want to learn it because even many Poles don’t know their own language. 😁 Grammar and spelling are very difficult let alone pronunciation. I know a little of English and learn Japanese and Korean. I learned German and Russian at school but I thought these languages were too difficult even though grammar of the Russian language resembles Polish one. Japanese and Korean are much easier to me because in these languages there aren’t any grammatical genders, verbs don’t have endings depending on which person we are talking about (he, she, you) etc.
Seriously? Pronunciation difficult? Where? With what? None of our sound groups really change (except for ą-> om and ę->em before b). ” rz” and “ż”, “u” and “ó” sound the same, as they have lost their historic phonetical differences, most of the letters are pronounced either from middle or front of the mouth. We do not have different Ps, like English does (aspirated and inaspirated), what you have in word you pretty much read as it is. No shortened forms, except for archaic ones, accent almost always is on the second syllable from the last (and still it has zero influence on the understanding of the word), no longer or shorter vowels, no different Is or Es. How is pronunciation difficult? Compared to Xhosa mentioned in the video or even English with no regular pronunciation of the words and limited rules, Polish is very easy to pronounce.
Spelling has certain rules with clear exceptions that haven’t changed in ages. We have some unusual consonant “exchanges’ when it comes to declension but they are not hard to learn. Cases are more troublesome and I do admit, these can be a pain in the neck, much more than pronunciation.
What I will admit, though, the school programme, putting grammar in primary school is a very wrong way to teach Polish. It is too complicated for that age (in my opinion) and only basics should be taught, not the whole damn thing. (altrhough I have finished school long time ago and don’t know the current programme for Polish in primary schools…)
For the record about the Finnish language, Tolkien was indeed influenced by it in creating Quenya, but in this particular fragment of The Fellowship of the Ring, Haldir spoke to Legolas in Sindarin, which in turn was influenced by Welsh, not Finnish.
A fellow Tolkien fan! Yes, his languages were different and based on those you said. But I find he also mixed in elements of other Euro languages as well.
Oh good, someone commented that for me 😄
I lived in Hong Kong for 12 years, Cantonese is a really expressive language which has a lot of sounds that aren’t actually words on their own but which are used for various forms of emphasis. My experience was however that the locals show no mercy when yo I get your tones wrong.😅
English is a simple language but not easy. Spanish is a complex language but not hard. For people that speaks Portuguese. 👍
Danish is extremely difficult, in spite of its relatively easy grammar. Pronunciation is near impossible for foreign speakers.
I don’t know, maybe putting a potato in my mouth would help…
3 out of 5 languages in this video are in my favourite languages list. 😅 I have never learnt Finnish, Polish or Hungarian but I really like them. I only tried to learn to read Polish years ago. But hey, the video is called “5 impossible languages for English speakers”. I’m a Bulgarian, not a native English speaker. So, maybe it won’t be impossible for me. 😅😅
Xhosa sounds really cool too but I think for these clicking sounds you actually need superpowers. 😱
I’d include Siksikaitsipowahsin (Blackfoot) in the sequel to this. It’s one of the Indigenous languages where I live and it seems outrageously difficult! Or Anishnaabemowin (Ojibwe) or Neheyawewin (Cree).
Almost any Native American language would probably be difficult to learn for an English speaker but I have heard Navajo (Diné) is exceptionally so.
@Isaac Bruner I live with several Polynesian languages. They’re not exactly a walk in the park either
My foreign friends are often amazed by how Finns can produce words while inhaling. My mom often uses sigh-like phrases “joo-o” or “vai niin” (oh well/is that so), inhaling kind of underlines it 🙂
I am on a mission to learn czech, which is very similar to polish in its structure and vocabulary. Every time I learn something new I get all sweaty from how complicated it is, but its very rewarding once you learn. I feel that I have conquered a new level of language mastery, which makes other languages seem quite simple. It also shows that nothing is impossible, you just need to give it time and patience.