You know those people who seem to pick up languages effortlessly? While some might find language learning comes naturally, for most, it’s a rewarding but challenging journey. It requires dedication, time, and a good dose of motivation. Understanding the language difficulty ranking, especially in relation to your native English, can be incredibly helpful in setting realistic goals.
Language difficulty rankings provide a useful framework for understanding the scope of the challenge ahead. This guide explores the spectrum from the easiest languages to the Hardest Languages To Learn Ranked, examines the factors influencing language difficulty, and offers a comprehensive ranking of widely spoken languages, including estimated learning times.
Language Difficulty Categories for Widely-Spoken Languages
With thousands of languages spoken worldwide, creating a definitive ranking is complex. The following language difficulty charts focus on languages spoken by a significant portion of the global population.
The Foreign Service Institute (FSI), a respected authority in language education, provides time estimates alongside difficulty rankings. These estimates represent the time needed for an average English speaker to achieve a Level 3 proficiency, indicating professional working proficiency. If your language goals are more modest, such as reaching a Level 1 or 2 proficiency for basic communication, you may find you can learn a language in less time.
Category I: Languages Closely Related to English
These languages require approximately 24-30 weeks (600-750 hours of study) to reach professional working proficiency. Their close relationship to English means learners benefit from shared grammar structures and vocabulary similarities, making them some of the easiest languages for English speakers to learn.
- Danish
- Dutch
- French
- Italian
- Norwegian
- Portuguese
- Romanian
- Spanish
- Swedish
Category II: Languages Similar to English
Achieving professional working proficiency in Category II languages typically takes around 36 weeks (900 hours of study). While German shares Germanic roots with English, its more complex pronunciation and grammar place it slightly higher on the difficulty scale compared to Category I languages.
- German
- Haitian Creole
- Indonesian
- Malay
- Swahili
Category III: Languages with Linguistic and/or Cultural Differences
Category III languages demand approximately 44 weeks (1,100 hours of study) to reach professional working proficiency. This category includes languages with significant linguistic and sometimes cultural differences from English. Many of these languages also utilize writing systems other than the Latin alphabet, adding to the learning curve.
| Albanian | Lithuanian |
|---|---|
| Amharic | Macedonian |
| Armenian | Mongolian |
| Azerbaijani | Nepali |
| Bengali | Polish |
| Bulgarian | Russian |
| Burmese | Serbo-Croatian |
| Czech | Sinhala |
| Dari | Slovak |
| Estonian | Slovenian |
| Farsi | Somali |
| Finnish | Tagalog |
| Georgian | Tajiki |
| Greek | Tamil |
| Hebrew | Telugu |
| Hindi | Thai |
| Hungarian | Tibetan |
| Icelandic | Turkish |
| Kazakh | Turkmen |
| Khmer | Ukrainian |
| Kurdish | Urdu |
| Kyrgyz | Uzbek |
| Lao | Vietnamese |
| Latvian |
Category IV: The Hardest Languages to Learn for English Speakers
Reaching professional working proficiency in Category IV languages requires a significant time investment of around 88 weeks (2,200 hours of study). These are generally considered the hardest languages to learn ranked for native English speakers due to their significant linguistic and cultural distance. They often feature highly complex grammar, pronunciation, and writing systems. However, the challenge can also be incredibly rewarding!
- Arabic
- Chinese (Cantonese)
- Chinese (Mandarin)
- Japanese
- Korean
What Factors Determine Language Difficulty Ranking?
Language difficulty ranking isn’t arbitrary. It’s based on a comprehensive evaluation of how languages relate to each other, particularly from the perspective of an English speaker. The Foreign Service Institute’s rankings are widely respected due to their extensive experience in language training for US government personnel, spanning over 70 years.
The primary criterion for determining language difficulty is the average time it takes a student to achieve proficiency. However, several linguistic components contribute to this learning time and overall difficulty.
Linguistic Distance: How Far Apart Are Languages?
Consider the word for “flower.” In French, it’s “la fleur,” in Spanish, “la flor,” and in Italian, “il fiore.” This similarity isn’t accidental. These languages belong to the Romance language family, all derived from Latin, resulting in shared vocabulary and grammatical structures. Exploring language families reveals these connections, showing groups of languages descended from a common ancestor.
In contrast, German and Mandarin Chinese, from different language families and with distinct writing systems, are linguistically very distant. The greater the linguistic distance between your native language and the target language, the more challenging the learning process may be.
Grammar: Complexity and Familiarity
English grammar has its quirks, but some languages present entirely new grammatical concepts. For example, in English, you can say “five books.” However, Mandarin Chinese requires a measure word. Just like you’d say “a pack of wolves,” you need to use běn when referring to books in Mandarin, indicating a unit for counting books. This is just one example of grammatical features that might be absent in English and add to the difficulty.
Languages with grammatical structures significantly different from English can increase the learning curve. Conversely, languages with grammar rules closer to English can be easier to grasp.
Pronunciation: Sounds and Tones
German, with words like Schlittschuhlaufen (ice skating) and its often-cited challenging pronunciation, might seem like a difficult language. Yet, it’s categorized as relatively easier for English speakers compared to languages like Mandarin. Why?
German and English are both Germanic languages, sharing phonetic similarities. While mastering a perfect German accent can be tricky, most German speakers will understand you even with pronunciation errors.
The real pronunciation challenge arises with tonal languages, such as Vietnamese and Mandarin. In these languages, the tone or inflection used when pronouncing a word changes its meaning entirely. Mandarin Chinese, for instance, has four main tones, giving the syllable ma four distinct meanings depending on the tone used. Accurate pronunciation of tones is crucial for effective communication and adds a significant layer of difficulty.
Writing System: Alphabet and Characters
For English speakers, writing systems can be categorized into three types:
- Latin Alphabet: Languages using the same alphabet as English (e.g., Spanish, French). These are generally the easiest to learn to read and write because of alphabet familiarity.
- Unique Alphabets: Languages with their own alphabets (e.g., Russian, Greek). Learning a new alphabet and its corresponding sounds presents a moderate challenge.
- Logosyllabic Systems: Languages like Mandarin Chinese use characters representing syllables or whole words. These systems are the hardest to learn for English speakers as they require memorizing thousands of individual characters, making initial reading and writing particularly demanding. While Pinyin (romanization) aids beginners, mastering characters is essential for advanced proficiency.
Leveraging Language Difficulty Rankings for Effective Learning
Language difficulty rankings are not about discouraging learners; they are valuable tools for setting realistic expectations and tailoring your learning approach.
Learning a language is a marathon, not a sprint. Understanding the potential difficulty level allows you to maintain motivation, stay disciplined, and focus on your language goals. Knowing that a language is ranked among the hardest languages to learn simply means preparing for a longer and potentially more demanding, but ultimately rewarding, journey.
Regardless of the language’s difficulty, effective methods like Rosetta Stone’s Dynamic Immersion method can make learning engaging and efficient. You can learn at your own pace or create a personalized plan to align with your desired timeline. To accelerate your learning, consider Rosetta Stone’s Live Tutoring for interactive practice and personalized feedback.
