Top 13 Hardest Languages To Learn In The World (For English Speakers)

Learning a language is an art coupled with scientific reasoning, yet learning the hardest languages is not always fun. 

Challenges make you strong, and learning a difficult language makes you socially strong. 

B.B. King says, “The beauty of learning is that no one can take it away from you.” 

Learning a language follows a simple formula based on the language families.

“If your native language is different from the target language you want to learn, it will naturally become the hardest language for you.”

We will discuss the top 13 languages considered difficult for English speakers to learn. For each one, you will learn about the language, the language family it belongs to ,and the different factors that make that particular language difficult for English learners. We have a catch here in the form of the Jolii app, which can assist you in learning vocabulary and grammar on the go, even for the most difficult languages. Let’s catch up!

What Makes a Language ‘The Hardest Language to Learn’

A language becomes the hardest language to learn when its features are far from your native language. The basic features of any language are vocabulary, grammar, spelling, and pronunciation. 

Cultures also play a big part in developing a language. While polyglots can learn multiple languages with their scientific features, sometimes the essential cultural essence is lacking.

And cultural acquisition is what makes language learning immersive and deep-rooted. We will discuss these language features now.

What One Reason Makes Language Learning Difficult?

The one reason that makes language learning difficult is “consistency.” Learning languages requires time and consistent effort from the learners, so the efforts never go unseen.

Writing

Some languages have different and complex writing systems, which make them harder to learn. For instance, Chinese uses logographic characters, where each symbol represents a word or concept, and Arabic has a complex script written from right to left, which makes it difficult for English speakers to learn. 

Grammar

Verb conjugations, grammatical genders, sentence structures, and noun cases are challenging factors that make grammar a big challenge for aspiring learners. German, for instance, has four cases, and learners must learn how adjectives and articles change with the different cases.

Pronunciation

Intonation and unfamiliar tones can make pronouncing any language hard. Mandarin Chinese is a tonal language, in which one syllable can have a different meaning when pronounced with different tones. 

Jolii can import any audio in the native accent, so repeating the new words with correct pronunciation becomes easy. Its speech recognition technology assists learners with mimicking accents accurately, providing instant feedback on their pronunciation.

Vocabulary

Homophones and regional dialects add layered difficulties, and don’t forget the vast vocabulary size. To better grasp the vocabulary, we can use the tools to help with language learning. With an easy-to-use interface, Jolii helps learners build vocabulary and obtain a robust word bank over time.

Cultural Context

Cultural and language nuances run parallel to learning a new language. Idiomatic phrases and societal norms are important in deepening comprehension and have a better cultural connection. Jolii incorporates cultural insights through videos and storytelling with interactive practices to understand the language better.

Ranking Top 13 Hardest Languages To Learn (Based On English Learners)

As an English learner, what are the most difficult languages to learn? In this list, we have ranked the Top 13 Hardest Languages to Learn, following several factors that English speakers typically find challenging, such as grammatical rules, linguistic structures, and writing systems. Keep reading to find out which languages are the most difficult and why!

13. Russian

At the bottom of our ranking is Russian. Russian can look even more intimidating than it actually is because of its Cyrillic alphabet, which can actually be mastered in just a few hours of studying, making learning Russian faster than you might think.. The main difficulties of Russian are actually its declension of nouns and verb aspects. Nouns change according to their function in the sentence (similar to other languages like Latin) and can have three different grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, neuter), with a distinction between animate and inanimate masculine nouns. Verbs also have aspects, meaning that, for instance, the verb to read has two forms in Russian: читать (chitat’) and прочитать (prochitat’). Which one is used depends on whether the action is ongoing (imperfective) or completed (perfective). 

Language Family: Indo-European (Slavic, East Slavic subgroup)

Geographical Locations: Russia, Eastern Europe, Central Asia

Key Difficulty Factors: 

• Cyrillic alphabet
• Complex declensions of nouns, with 6 cases and 3 genders
• Verbs aspects: Perfective vs. Imperfective

Hello! My name is …  in Russian: Привет! Меня зовут … (Privet! Menya zovut …)

12. Navajo

Our list continues with Navajo. This interesting Native American language is spoken by the Navajo people, an indigenous group in the United States. It played a key role during World War II, as it was used in code-talking by the so-called Navajo Code Talkers. The language has no similarities with English and is particularly challenging because of its four tones, which can change the meaning of words. Another difficulty is its polysynthetic verbs, meaning that verbs can be composed of many smaller parts, resulting in long, complex words that contain the meaning of an entire sentence. 

For example:

Navajo: “Shiidiitsi” 

English: “She pointed it at me.” (from shii- (to me), -dii- (it), -tsi (pointed)).

Navajo is spoken by around 170,000 people, and learning resources are very limited. 

Language Family: Athabaskan 

Geographical Locations: Southwestern United States (primarily Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah)

Key Difficulty Factors 

• Four tones
• Polysynthetic verbs
• Lack of learning resources.

Hello! My name is …  in Navajo: Ya’at’eeh! Shí éí … yinishyé

11. Polish

Polish belongs to the same language family as Russian, but it ranks higher in our list because of a few additional complexities. As in Russian, nouns change according to case and gender, and verbs have perfective and imperfective aspects. However, Polish is one of the most difficult languages because it has more cases and more grammatical genders than Russian, and additionally, verb conjugations are tied to the subject’s gender in the past, future, and conditional tenses. Moreover, consonant clusters are very common in Polish, making pronunciation more challenging, as seen in the word szczęście (pronounced roughly as sh-chyen-shcheh), which means happiness.

Language Family: Indo-European (Slavic, West Slavic subgroup)

Geographical Location: Poland

Key Difficulty Factors 

• Complex declension of nouns, with 7 cases, 3 genders, and 2 categories
• Gendered verbs and verb aspect: Perfective vs. Imperfective
• Pronunciation and consonant clusters

Hello! My name is …  in Polish: Cześć! Mam na imię …

10. Icelandic.

Icelandic is the only language in this list that has many words in common with English. English and Icelandic are both Germanic languages, with roughly 40% of shared vocabulary. Why, then, is Icelandic on our list? While many words have similar roots (for example, the word house is hús,) Icelandic has retained much of its archaic vocabulary and avoids borrowing foreign words, creating new terms using native roots, such as tölva (“computer”), sími (telephone), sjónvarp (television). Moreover, nouns have genders and declensions in singular and plural, and verbs have complex conjugations, making it even more challenging for native English speakers who are not used to changing nouns and verb endings. The pronunciation is also challenging, with its alphabet featuring 14 different vowels.

Language Family: Indo-European (Germanic, North Germanic subgroup)

Geographical Location: Iceland

Key Difficulty Factors 

• Archaic words
• Complex noun and verb declensions
• Pronunciation challenges due to unique vowel sounds

Hello! My name is …  in Icelandic: Halló! Ég heiti …

9. Basque

The Basque language, known as Euskara, is spoken in the Basque Country, a region in northern Spain and southwestern France, by around 800,000 native speakers. It is unique in Europe as it is the only language isolate, meaning it has no connections to other languages. The geographical isolation of this area in the Pyrenees mountains and its cultural identity helped preserve this language for millennia. Its complexity comes from its unique grammar structure, which differs completely from Indo-European languages, featuring many suffixes, prefixes, and infixes to form words, as well as verbs that conjugate at both the beginning and the end. Sentence structure also differs from Spanish and English and uses Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) order. Even though the government provides support to learn and preserve the language, Basque has limited learning resources as compared to other languages. 

For example:

English: “She eats an apple.”
Basque: “Sagarra jaten du.” (Literally: apple eats she)

Language Family: Language isolate (unrelated to other known languages)

Geographical Location: Basque Country (Northern Spain and Southwestern France)

Key Difficulty Factors 

• Sentence structure SOV
• Words with suffixes, prefixes, infixes
• Verbs that conjugate at both the beginning and the end.
• Limited learning resources compared to other languages.

Hello! My name is …  in Basque: Kaixo! Nire izena … da

7. Hungarian

If Basque is unique as an isolated language, the next two languages, Hungarian and Finnish, also are very unique in Europe. Despite being geographically close to other Indo-European languages, such as Swedish, Russian, and German, they did not mix with them at all. Together with Estonian, they form the Uralic language family and barely share any vocabulary with English. Hungarian has a rich case system, with 18 cases to indicate direction, possession, location, and much more. One key feature of Hungarian is its agglutinative grammar: words are built by adding prefixes and suffixes, resulting in long, intricate words.

For example: 

English: “In my houses.”
Hungarian: házaimban (from ház (house), -aim (my, plural), and -ban (in)).

Despite these complexities, its logical structure and consistency can be rewarding for learners.

Language Family: Uralic

Geographical Locations: Hungary, parts of Romania, Slovakia, and Serbia

Key Difficulty Factors 

• Difficult declension with 18 cases
• Agglutinative grammar with prefixes and suffixes
• Minimal cognates with Indo-European languages

Hello! My name is …  in Hungarian: Szia! A nevem …

8. Finnish

Similarly to Hungarian, the main challenges of Finnish are its agglutinative grammar with 15 cases and the fact that there are basically no words in common with other Indo-European languages. Vowels in Finnish follow a rule called vowel harmony, meaning that vowels in the root word and its suffixes must match.

For example:

English: “in the forest”

Finnish: metsässä 

• The suffix -ssä matches the front vowel ä in the word metsä.

Finnish can also be challenging to learn because Finnish people usually have a very good command of English. If you are learning Finnish in Finland, it might be tempting to rely on English in everyday situations, slowing down the learning process.  

Language Family: Uralic

Geographical Locations: Finland, parts of Sweden, and Russian Karelia

Key Difficulty Factors 

• Agglutinative grammar with 15 cases
• Minimal cognates with Indo-European languages
• Vowel harmony

Hello! My name is …  in Finnish:  Hei! Minun nimeni on …

6. Turkish

As we proceed further into our ranking of the hardest languages to learn, the languages become more and more complex. Turkish features many of the complications found in the languages mentioned above, such as agglutinative grammar with 6 cases, a complex sentence structure, and vowel harmony. Yet, Turkish still belongs to Category 3 of difficulty, according to the U.S. Foreign Service Institute’s classification.

Language Family: Turkic

Geographical Locations: Turkey, Cyprus, parts of Central Asia

Key Difficulty Factors 

• Agglutinative grammar with 6 cases
• Vowel harmony
• Sentence structure (SOV)

Hello! My name is …  in Turkish: Merhaba! Benim adım …

5. Korean

We are almost at the end of our list of the hardest languages in the world, and the next 5 languages on the list are all classified as Category 4, meaning they are the most difficult for an English speaker to learn. 

The Korean alphabet, Hangul, although it might look very difficult at first glance, is actually phonetic and composed of 24 basic letters (14 consonants and 10 vowels) and 19 complex letters (5 tense consonants and 11 compound vowels), making it much easier to master than other complex writing systems such as Japanese or Mandarin. The main challenges of learning Korean derive from its levels of formality and grammar. Learners must understand honorifics and learn how to speak at three formal levels: informal, formal, and very formal. Moreover, the grammar poses significant challenges, with Sentences in Korean following the subject-object-verb (SOV) sentence structure.

For example:

English: “I eat an apple.”

Korean: “나는 사과를 먹어요.” (Naneun sagwareul meogeoyo) – literally, “I apple eat”

Language Family: Koreanic

Geographical Locations: South Korea, North Korea, parts of China

Key Difficulty Factors 

• Hangul
• Formality levels
• Sentence structure (SOV)

Hello! My name is …  in Korean: 안녕하세요! 제 이름은 … 입니다 (Annyeonghaseyo! Je ireum-eun … imnida)

4. Arabic

The first challenge learners of Arabic face is deciding which version to learn. Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is only used in formal contexts such as official documents and literature, but what people speak are dialects, such as Levantine and Egyptian, which can differ significantly. Arabic is one of the most difficult languages in the world to learn because of its complex script, which is written from right to left, where letters change according to their position in the word and vowels are often not written. Another challenge of Arabic is its consonant roots, groups of three consonants to which vowels or extra letters are added to create words.

For example, the root “k-t-b” is connected to the idea of writing. Some example words are:

“Kitaab” (كتاب) – (book)

“Maktab” (مكتب) (office) 

Language Family: Afro-Asiatic 

Geographical Locations: Middle East, North Africa, Horn of Africa

Key Difficulty Factors 

• Modern Standard Arabic vs. Dialects
• Difficult script, written from right to left
• Consonant roots

(Marḥaban! Ismī) …مرحباً! اسمي …Hello! My name is …  in Arabic: c

3. Japanese

Japanese deserves a place on the podium of our ranking for several reasons. First of all, in order to master Japanese, you will need to learn not only one but three different writing systems (Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji). Among these, Kanji is the most difficult, requiring years of practice due to its complex characters and their multiple meanings. 

A distinction between formal and informal language in many aspects of grammar also makes Japanese one of the most difficult languages to learn in the world. For instance, the verb for “to eat” is “taberu” (食べる) in its casual form, but in polite speech, it becomes “tabemasu” (食べます).  

Another challenge for Japanese learners is particles, which are small words that indicate relations of words within a sentence. For example, “wa” (は) marks the subject, “wo” (を) marks the object, and “ni” (に) indicates direction or time. Particles are difficult to memorize and use because they have no direct equivalent in the English language.

Language Family: Japonic

Geographical Location: Japan

Key Difficulty Factors

• Three writing systems  (Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji) 
• Formal and informal language distinction
• Complex grammar rules with high reliance on particles

Hello! My name is …  in Japanese:こんにちは！私の名前は…です (Konnichiwa! Watashi no namae wa … desu)

2. Mandarin Chinese

With over 1.3 billion native speakers, Mandarin Chinese is by far the most spoken language in the world. However, it poses a great challenge to English speakers because of its characters and its tonal system, which features 4 tones. Chinese uses characters rather than an alphabet, with each character representing a syllable. Even though there exists a system called Pinyin to write Chinese phonetically, there are thousands of characters to learn, making reading and writing extremely time-consuming to learn. Additionally, speaking is challenging because of the 4 tones, meaning that the same syllable can be pronounced in 4 different ways, each conveying a different meaning. A typical example is the word “ma”, which can mean “mother,” “hemp,” “horse,” or “scold,” depending on the tone used. On the other hand, Chinese lacks verb conjugations and nouns have no gender, article, or plural forms, making Chinese grammar overall much easier to learn than other languages that are closer to English, such as French or German.

English: “She is a teacher”

Mandarin: “她是老师“ (Tā shì lǎoshī)” (composed by 她 (Tā) – “She”, 是(shì) – “to be”, 老师 (lǎoshī) – “teacher”)

Despite the easy grammar, learners still face challenges in mastering sentence structure and understanding word order. 

Language Family: Sino-Tibetan (Chinese, Yue subgroup)

Geographical Locations: Mainland China, Taiwan, Singapore

Key Difficulty Factors 

• A tonal system with 4 tones
• Thousands of characters
• Sentence structure

Hello! My name is …  in Mandarin: 你好！我叫… (Nǐ hǎo! Wǒ jiào …..)

1. Cantonese

You might have already heard that Mandarin Chinese is considered the most difficult language to learn, but Cantonese actually takes the top spot on our list. While often regarded as a dialect of Chinese, Cantonese differs significantly from Mandarin in grammar, writing, and tones. Depending on the dialect, Cantonese has 6 to 9 distinct tones, compared to Mandarin’s 4 tones, making pronunciation and listening comprehension much more challenging. The Cantonese writing system uses traditional characters rather than the simplified ones found in Mandarin, making reading and writing even more complex. Moreover, whereas Mandarin has Pinyin as a form of phonetic writing, Cantonese does not have a standardized system for writing pronunciation, and often spoken and written Cantonese differs.

For all the above reasons, we consider Cantonese as the hardest language to learn for an English speaker

Language Family: Sino-Tibetan (Chinese, Yue subgroup)

Geographical Locations: Southern China (primarily Guangdong and Guangxi), Hong Kong, and Macau.

Key Difficulty Factors 

• A tonal system with 6 to 9 tones
• Traditional characters
• No official standard Romanized system

Hello! My name is …  in Cantonese: 你好！我叫… (Néih hóu! Ngóh giu …)

Whether you choose to learn a language or another all comes down to your reasons for learning it. The list above showcases some of the hardest languages to learn in the world. If you are looking to learn one of these or one of the most popular languages like Spanish, French or German, you can download Jolii. With the Jolii App, you can learn while enjoying your favorite videos and TV shows, transforming language learning from an insurmountable challenge into an enjoyable, entertaining adventure! 

How Learning a Tough Language Benefits Brain & Cognitive Behaviors

Learning a new language trains your mind to become sharper. Dr.Thomas Bak of Edinburg University conducted a study on people with bilingualism, and the study shows,

“People who are bilingual or polyglots have a better attention span and sharper concentration than people who know just one language.”

For this reason, if you learn a difficult language, you put your mind to being more focused and present in the moment.

Learning Tips for Difficult Languages

To learn hard languages effectively, we can follow some learning tips. Tips are shortcuts that provide indirect assistance to anyone dealing with a situation. In the language learning context, here are some practical tips that can help you make a difference when learning tough languages.

1. Train your ears to improve your listening, listen more, and be part of an environment where you hear that language often.
2. Learn like a baby, and start mimicking each sound. As adults, you don’t have that much time to learn, so you can learn new words from an already built-up vocabulary. When you learn a new term, try to relate it to another, and make a connection; this will make it easier to recall it later.
3. Work your way to understand grammar and its rules, which apply especially to adults learning a tough language. You will not absorb all grammar rules like that, you have to make a dedicated effort to truly understand grammar.
4. Never feel bad at getting corrections. Be in an immersive environment and learn to accept and learn from your mistakes.
5. Using an all-immersive language learning approach is the best tip you can use. You can use the Jolii language learning app to get immersive help from the tool itself.  You can learn vocabulary and pronunciation practice with the help of Jolii, and you can also export your audio/videos in your target language to get help listening and finding meaning right there. Jolii boosts your learning.

Resources for Learning Difficult Languages

“One language sets you in a corridor for life. Two languages open every door along the way”.

Regarding the resources used for learning difficult languages, we can never say there’s just one way to do it. It is a long process where we have to take the lead and choose the method that works best for us. Writing and grammar are advanced properties of learning any language.

To achieve a smooth process, we can utilize several resources, including but not limited to:

1. Text Books
2. Youtube videos
3. Print Media
4. Podcasts
5. Netflix
6. Hiring a Tutor
7. Language Learning Tools

With so many resources available now, no one can find a language learning process too hard as it was before the availability of such resources. The thing that tops them all is the language learning apps that provide you all with one solution. We have the ease of the Jolii app which provides curated lessons and gives on-the-spot assistance for any pronunciation or the meanings. Try Jolii before you say that “these languages are just too hard for me to learn”.

Personal Anecdotes 

What makes a language difficult or easy is very subjective. Some people are visual learners who enjoy learning characters, while others enjoy applying schematic grammar rules and having fun doing grammar drills. Our list provides a ranking for the average English speaker, but sometimes, the difficulty of a language is very subjective. Here is the story of Elena, one of our top users:

I had always heard that Chinese would be an impossible language to learn, so one day, I decided to try it with Jolii. To my surprise, I soon realized that even the most difficult language in the world is manageable if you have the right tools! With Jolii, even the challenge of learning characters became fun and engaging, and I immediately became addicted to learning Mandarin. Thanks to the suggested list of videos, I was able to immediately pick the content that interested me the most and immerse myself in real-life conversations that I could actually understand. Learning the tones has not been as tricky as I expected because I have been able to practice them and receive feedback on my pronunciation. I have even memorized the lyrics to some Chinese songs! Learning Mandarin with Jolii is now part of my routine, and I went as far as booking a trip to Shanghai. Last September, I visited China and spoke Chinese the whole time! People were really impressed that a foreigner could engage in a real conversation with them. 谢谢 Jolii! Thank you!

Conclusion

Learning a language is a difficult yet rewarding endeavor. It becomes hard when its features differ significantly from your native tongue. Language has a writing system with it, and grammar rules are important. The vocabulary and cultural nuances play a significant role, but you can manage it through an immersive way of learning by using the tools to help you. With tools like Jolii, you can combine new technology to ease the complexities of learning a language. A language learned gives you an opportunity to explore new worlds and varied cultures. Let’s keep trying and make our way to learning even the hardest language in the world with convenience and ease.

FAQs

Q: Which language is the hardest to learn?

A: For an English speaker, the most difficult languages to learn include Korean, Arabic, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, and Cantonese because of their complex writing systems, unique pronunciation rules, and no or few shared vocabulary with English. However, the “hardest” ultimately depends on your goals, exposure, and personal interests.

Q: Is learning English difficult?

A: Learning English can feel challenging, especially for native speakers of languages that are very different from it, like Japanese and Chinese. English has irregular spelling, grammar rules, and a vast vocabulary influenced by multiple languages, which can be confusing for learners. With Jolii, you can learn English the easy way! You can simply import any video you like and practice with it, receiving personalized exercises tailored to your level and instant feedback.

Q: Which is the hardest European language to learn as an English speaker?

A: In Europe, four languages are completely different from English, making them particularly challenging to learn: Hungarian, Icelandic, Finnish, and Basque. Among these, Hungarian can be considered the hardest because of its many irregularities in the grammar.

Q: Which is the hardest Asian language?

For an English speaker, the hardest Asian languages to learn are Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese. They are both tonal languages, have complicated writing systems with thousands of characters to learn, and sentence structure is difficult to master.