Studying foreign languages broadens the horizons, improves memory and thought processes. But if in order to independently compose a short story about yourself in English orally and in writing it will take several months of training "from scratch", then for the same result in Hungarian it may not be a year.
Today we offer Top 10 hardest languages to learn... Compared to many of them, Russian seems to be one of the simplest.
10. Icelandic
This language has retained many ancient words that are no longer used anywhere in Europe. Many Icelandic sounds have no exact counterparts, so you can only learn them by listening to a native speaker. Proper nouns also testify to the complexity of Icelandic. For example, in 2010, the whole world tried to remember the name of the awakened volcano Eyjafjallajökull.
9. Polish
The Polish grammar has more exceptions than rules. To learn the seven Polish cases, it is easier to learn the spoken language first, and only then try to understand the logic. Poles have 32 letters in the alphabet, many of which have 2-3 pronunciation options. Despite the fact that many words seem familiar to the Russian ear, they often have completely different meanings. By the way, the name of the city L’o’dz ’, which we know as Lodz, is pronounced by Poles as“ Wudzh ”.
8. Basque
There are 24 cases in the language of the northern regions of Spain. It is one of the oldest languages in Europe. Word formation in it occurs by adding prefixes and suffixes to the stem. So, verb forms for different tenses are difficult to remember, because not only their ending changes, but also the beginning.
7. Estonian
This complex language has 12 cases. In addition, the same word can have 3-4 meanings, many of which date back to the 12-13th centuries, when the Estonian language was formed. Vowels in the language have 3 degrees of longitude, but only two of them are displayed in writing.
6. Navajo
This American Indian language was used by the United States to transmit radio messages during the Second World War. The Japanese could not decipher the intercepted message. there were no published Navajo dictionaries. Today the language is spoken by about 180 thousand people.
5. Japanese
Learning to read in Japanese does not mean learning to speak it, because the hieroglyphs from the books do not give an idea of the pronunciation of words. In addition, there are 3 writing systems in the language. Kanji uses Chinese characters, katakana is the syllable alphabet for loan words, and hiragana is the alphabet for writing suffixes and grammatical particles. Until 1959, Japanese writing was conducted from right to left and top to bottom. A student wishing to obtain a higher education diploma must memorize 10-15 thousand hieroglyphs.
4. Hungarian
This complex language is the leader in terms of the number of cases, there are 35 of them in Hungarian. In addition, the language has many suffixes and expressive idioms. Many vowel sounds are difficult to repeat as they are pronounced deep in the throat.
3. Tuyuka
One of the Indian languages is spoken today only in the regions of the Eastern Amazon. One of the main difficulties is the system of verb endings that indicate from where the speaker knows about a particular event.For example, "Diga ape-wi" means "the boy played football (I know it because I saw it)."
2. Arabic
The first difficulty in Arabic is writing. Many letters have 4 different spellings depending on their position in the word. Vowels are not included when writing, word hyphenation is not allowed, capital letters are absent. In addition, Arabs write from right to left. The grammar is complicated by features we are not used to. So, in addition to the singular and plural, there is a dual in Arabic.
1. Chinese
Despite all the complexity, it is this language that leads in Top 15 most common in the world... The main difficulty of Chinese is 87 thousand characters. True, 800 is enough for elementary communication, and knowing 3 thousand hieroglyphs, you can read newspapers. Another difficulty is the dozens of dialects that are not alike. By the way, in some regions of China they write from top to bottom from right to left, while in others the European style of the horizontal writing we are accustomed to is adopted.