What are the easiest languages ​​for foreigners and Russians to learn? Top most difficult languages ​​in the world

Instructions

In terms of proximity, the most difficult language in the world can be called Basque, which does not belong to any language group. Basque has 24 cases and is considered the oldest in Europe. This language uses suffixes, infixes and prefixes to form new words. Here, to indicate connections between words, we use case endings. Basque has a very complex system of marking subject, indirect and direct objects. Today, approximately 700,000 people speak and write Basque.

Scientists from the American Institute of Foreign Languages ​​have created a unique list of the most difficult languages ​​to learn (for native English speakers). The most difficult languages ​​for them were: Bengali, Burmese, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Finnish, Hebrew, Hungarian, Czech, Khmer, Lao, Nepali, Polish, Thai, Tamil, Vietnamese, Arabic, Chinese, Korean and Japanese languages.

In terms of writing, the most difficult languages ​​are Chinese, Korean and Japanese. For example, the newest Chinese language, compiled in 1994, contains 85,568 characters. In Japan, children go to school for 12 years. To successfully pass the exam, a Japanese student must learn 1850 characters.

Russian is considered one of the most difficult languages ​​in the world, but it will be quite accessible for a Serb, Pole or Ukrainian to learn, but for a Turk or Japanese, Russian will seem very difficult.

The number of languages ​​spoken by the peoples of Dagestan cannot be accurately counted. The Tabasaran language was included in the Guinness Book of Records as containing the most a large number of cases - from 44 to 52. The Tabasaran language has 54 and 10 parts of speech.

The Eskimo language also became a record holder. There are 63 present tense forms. Native speakers of the Eskimo language think very figuratively. For example, the word “Internet” is expressed by the unpronounceable term “ikiaqqivik,” which literally means “travel through layers.”

Israeli scientists conducted an interesting experiment among speakers of Hebrew, Arabic and English. The results turned out to be very interesting. Native speakers of Hebrew and English were able to easily read words using only one hemisphere of the brain independently of the other. Native speakers actively used both hemispheres of the brain simultaneously when reading. Scientists' conclusion: when reading Arabic writing, the work of the cognitive systems of the brain is activated. So, if you want to develop your mind, then studying Arabic.

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Oddly enough, Chinese grammar is one of the simplest in the world.

Sources:

• Which language is the most difficult - the eternal battles of linguists
• 10 most difficult languages

Tip 2: Which language is the most difficult and which is the easiest to learn?

Studying foreign languages ​​opens up new career prospects, gives you the opportunity to watch films and read books in the original, understand the meaning of songs, and simply trains your memory. However, not all languages ​​are learned with equal ease - among them there are some that are very simple and those that are extremely difficult to learn.

One of the most difficult languages ​​is Chinese. Each word is indicated in it a separate character, having learned which, you will still have no idea how to pronounce it. Another challenge is the huge number of homophones - words that are pronounced the same, but are spelled differently and mean different concepts. The tonal system in Chinese also does not make things easier for the learner. In addition to the general intonation of the sentence, each syllable is also pronounced with a different tonality, which determines the meaning of the word.

The Japanese language is not much inferior to Chinese in its complexity. Knowing the symbols also does not give an idea of ​​their pronunciation. Japanese has three writing systems: kanji, which uses Chinese characters, hiragana, which is used to write grammatical particles and suffixes, and katakana, which represents loanwords.

It is estimated that students learning Japanese spend three times as much time studying as those learning English or French.

Arabic also poses a lot of difficulties. Vowels are not used when writing, but consonants have four spelling options depending on their position in the word. Nouns and verbs have to be studied in singular, dual and plural. The nouns themselves have three cases and two genders, and the verb in a sentence is placed before the predicate.

The dialects of Arabic are also more complex, as they can vary as much as modern ones. European languages from each other.

The easiest languages

Despite the fact that the English language has a lot of nuances (for example, words are often read differently from how they are written, and a lot of verbs are conjugated incorrectly), it has a simple grammar. Besides, in Everyday life people often encounter English in songs, films, brands and products on supermarket shelves. Getting to know this language better will not be so difficult.

Spanish is also quite easy to learn. The pronunciation is very similar to English, however, unlike the language of the UK and the USA, in Spanish the spelling of words coincides with their pronunciation. The sentence structure in this language is also easy to learn.

For a Russian-speaking person, learning other languages ​​of the Slavic group will not be very difficult, and the closer they are to their native language, the easier the learning will be. You can learn Ukrainian and Belarusian the fastest; Bulgarian and Czech are somewhat more difficult. Polish language is not considered simple - it has seven cases, and the grammar is replete with exceptions to the rules.

Have you just started learning a foreign language and have already encountered incredible difficulties?

Can't wade through the thorns of German, English or French grammar, phonetics and vocabulary without tears? Chin up! Be glad that you are not faced with the task of conquering one of the most difficult languages ​​in the world.

Russian – fifth place

Foreigners compare the study of the “great and mighty” to a nightmare. Even the Russian alphabet puts people in a state of panic. Many letters in Cyrillic look the same as in Latin, but sound completely different. The purpose of “b” and “b” is a sealed secret. But most often the stumbling block is “Y” and “Y”. Pronouncing these sounds is real torture for the uninitiated.

Words also raise questions. The most difficult ones to learn are homonyms. Although they are written the same, they have different meanings. Synonyms also do not stand aside - the verb “to go” alone has about 50 identical concepts! And the consonance of some words and changes in stress can distort the meaning of the phrase and cause an awkward situation.

Having mastered the kaleidoscope of letters and words, the unfortunate ones find themselves in the wonderful world of 6 cases, 2 conjugations and 3 declensions. Keeping all the rules in your head is already a feat, but mastering the exceptions deserves a medal.

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Hungarian – fourth place

The grammar of the Hungarian language is almost inaccessible to mere mortals. It is fraught with unpleasant surprises:

• 25 cases (in some sources - 18);
• The presence of 6 tense verb forms, including the imperative mood for the first person.
• Unusual morphology. What Russian speakers express with prepositions, Hungarians attach to words with case endings.
• The gender of a noun is determined only by the meaning of the sentence or the word itself.

The Magyar alphabet consists of 40 letters (14 vowels and 26 consonants). Difficult moment for Russians - a feature of the pronunciation of symbols. So, “S” is read as “Ш”, “GY” - as “Дь”, “A” - as something between the Russian “О” and “А”.

Linguistics is also insidious. It’s hard not to faint when you see the word “megszentsеgtelenнthetetlensеgeskedеseitekеrt” in the text, which translates roughly as “in connection with your desire to maintain an impeccable reputation.”

Japanese – third place

The samurai language is a severe test for foreigners. Even the Japanese learn the rules native speech difficult: 10 out of 12 school years children spend struggling with intricate kanji (hieroglyphs) and two alphabets that have their own alphabet. What can we say about those who grew up far from mysterious calligraphic signs!

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The good news is that Japanese morphology is simple and has a clear structure. Nouns and adjectives do not change, and verb forms are easy to learn. Bad news- an abundance of grammatical synonyms: methods of expressing time, conditions and reasons indistinguishable to the European ear.

A separate topic is the famous Japanese politeness. The polite inhabitants of the land of the rising sun use 50 types of greetings. For representatives different ages, social status And financial situation a separate, carefully selected style of speech is provided. One wrong word and you will find yourself on the list of notorious rude people.

Language represents complex system signs, which includes sounds and words, and for each nation it is unique and inimitable. Any language has its own characteristics, so to learn one of them, you need to try very hard - there are no simple and easy languages. We present to you the most difficult languages ​​to learn, but which you can still master.

10. Icelandic

Icelandic is the most difficult to pronounce. It is considered the most ancient, and many linguistic units are used only by the native inhabitants of Iceland. No one except native speakers can convey the truly unique sound of words: phonetics contains sounds that, as they say, can break your tongue when pronounced.

9. Finnish

How about 15 cases and several hundred finite forms of the verb? But hot Finnish guys learn this at school. The only thing that makes a language simpler is the exact correspondence of the spelling of a word to its phonetics, that is, both we write and pronounce. Interestingly, Finnish does not have a future tense, but there are several forms of the past tense.

8. Navajo

Navajo is an Indian tribe. In the Second World War this language was specially taught to American soldiers, who used it to transmit codes. In Navajo, verb forms are formed and modified by persons through the addition of prefixes, and in addition to vowels and consonants, there are special 4 tones: rising and falling, high and low. Navajo is gradually forgotten by young Indians: there are no dictionaries, and young people are gradually switching to English.

7. Hungarian

If you can crack 15 cases of Finnish like nuts, then try to master 35 cases of Hungarian and very long and drawn-out vowels. If this doesn’t seem enough, then here’s a countless number of suffixes and the same number set expressions, unique to Hungarian. To somehow facilitate the study, there are only 2 forms of time for you: past and future.

6. Eskimo

The present tense of the verb alone in the Eskimo language has 63 forms, and each noun has more than 200 case forms, which are formed by changing the ending of the word, prefix and suffix. The Eskimo language, listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the most difficult sign system, is very figurative: for example, we simply say “Internet,” but an Eskimo will say “travel through layers.”

This is one of the official Dagestan languages, which is also noted in the Book of Records. It has 46 cases and not a single preposition. Postpositions are used instead. The Tabasaran language has 3 dialects. In general, the language includes many borrowings from Persian, Arabic, Azerbaijani and Russian.

Basque is spoken by a few residents of the south of France and the north of Spain. In dictionaries you can count approximately half a million words and dialects. Basque also used by cunning American intelligence officers who participated in the Second World War, transmitting secret data to headquarters.

3. Russian

Yes, yes, ours is with you native language in third place in terms of difficulty to study. The main difficulty for foreigners in studying our “great and mighty” is the emphasis. For example, in French the stress always falls on the last syllable, but in ours the stress can be placed absolutely anywhere in the word. Sometimes the meaning of the word itself depends on which syllable is stressed, for example, Organ and organ. The Russian language is very rich in synonyms: one lexical unit can have several dozen synonyms. By the way, a huge variety of fonts have been developed for our language, and you can see the 25 best of them.

2. Arabic

One letter in Arabic can have 4 spellings, depending on its location in the word. There are no lowercase letters in this language, and the rules prohibit breaking words with hyphenation. The most important thing is that vowel sounds are not displayed when writing, and words are written from right to left. Almost all languages ​​of the world have two numbers: singular and plural, but in Arabic there is a third number - dual. Here, each word has its own special pronunciation, and there are none that are pronounced the same. This is due to the fact that each individual sound has 4 tones, and its pronunciation is affected by the place it occupies in the word.

1. Chinese

We all know that in writing the Chinese use hieroglyphs, of which there are more than 87 thousand, and how they are written is incredibly important: the meaning of the word will depend on the degree of pressure and the length of any stroke. Moreover, one “letter” of a hieroglyph can denote a separate word, or even a whole sentence, and the graphic symbol does not carry a phonetic load.

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Language is a sign system consisting of sounds, words and sentences. The sign system of each nation is unique due to its grammatical, morphological, phonetic and linguistic features. Simple languages does not exist, since each of them has its own difficulties, which are discovered during the study.

Below are the most complex languages ​​of the world, the rating of which consists of 10 sign systems.

- This is one of the most difficult to pronounce. The sign system is also considered one of the most ancient languages. It contains linguistic units used only by native speakers. One of the biggest challenges in learning Icelandic is its phonetics, which only native speakers can convey accurately.

Finnish language

Finnish language deservedly considered one of the most complex sign systems in the world. It has 15 cases, as well as several hundred personal verb forms and conjugations. In it, graphic signs completely convey the sound form of a word (both written and pronounced), which simplifies the language. The grammar contains several past tense forms, but no future tense forms.

Navajo

Navajo- the language of the Indians, the peculiarity of which is considered to be verb forms formed and changed by persons with the help of prefixes. It is verbs that carry the main semantic information. The Navajos were used by the US military during World War II to transmit encrypted information.

In addition to vowels and consonants, the language contains 4 tones, which are called ascending - descending; high Low. At the moment, the fate of the Navajo is in jeopardy, as linguistic dictionaries are absent, and the younger generation of Indians is switching exclusively to English.

It is one of the ten most difficult languages ​​to learn. It has 35 case forms and is replete with vowel sounds, which are quite difficult to pronounce due to their length. The sign system has a rather complex grammar, in which there is an innumerable number of suffixes, as well as stable expressions characteristic only of this language. A special feature of the dictionary system is the presence of only 2 temporary forms verb: present and past.

Eskimo

Eskimo and is considered one of the most complex in the world due to its numerous tense forms, of which there are up to 63 in the present tense alone. The case form of words has more than 200 inflections (word changes using endings, prefixes, suffixes). The Eskimo language is a language of images. For example, the meaning of the word “Internet” among the Eskimos would be “a journey through layers.” The Eskimo sign system is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as one of the most difficult.

One of the few languages ​​listed in the Book due to its complexity. Its peculiarity lies in its numerous cases, of which there are 46. This is one of state languages residents of Dagestan, which has no prepositions. Postpositions are used instead. There are three types of dialects in the language, and each of them unites certain group dialects IN sign system a lot of borrowings from different languages: Persian, Azerbaijani, Arabic, Russian and others.

One of the oldest in Europe. It is owned by some residents of Southern France and Northern Spain. Basque contains 24 case forms, and does not belong to any branch language families. Dictionaries contain about half a million words, including dialects. Prefixes and suffixes are used to form new linguistic units.

The connection between words in a sentence is traced through changes in endings. Verb tense is indicated by changing the endings and beginnings of the word. Due to the not widespread use of the language, it was used by the American military during World War II to convey classified information. Basque is rightfully considered one of the most difficult languages ​​to learn.

Russian

Russian one of the three most difficult languages ​​in the world. The main difficulty with “great and mighty” is the free stress. For example, in French The stress is always placed on the last syllable of the word. In Russian, the strong position can be anywhere: in the first or last syllable, or in the middle of a word. The meaning of many lexical units is determined by the place of stress, for example: flour - flour; organ – Organ. Also meaning polysemantic words, which are written and pronounced the same, are determined only in the context of the sentence.

Other linguistic units may differ in writing, but are pronounced the same and have a completely different meaning, for example: meadow - onion, etc. Our language is one of the richest in synonyms: one word can have up to a dozen linguistic units that are close in meaning. Punctuation also carries a large semantic load: the absence of one comma completely changes the meaning of the phrase. Remember the hackneyed phrase from school: “Execution cannot be pardoned”?

Arabic

Arabic– one of the most complex sign systems in the whole world. One letter has up to 4 different spellings: it all depends on the location of the symbol in the word. The Arabic dictionary system does not have lowercase letters, does not allow word breaks for hyphenation, and does not display vowel characters in writing. One of the individual features of the language is the way words are written - from right to left.

In Arabic, instead of the two numbers familiar to the Russian language, there are three numbers: singular, plural and dual. It is impossible to find identically pronounced words here, since each sound has 4 different tones, which will depend on its location.

Chinese

Chinese is an incredibly complex language. The first difficulty, if you want to study it, is total number hieroglyphs in the language. The modern Chinese dictionary contains about 87 thousand characters. The difficulty lies not only in the sign system of the language, but also in the correct spelling. A single incorrectly depicted line in one hieroglyph completely distorts the meaning of the word.

One Chinese "letter" can mean an entire word or even a sentence. A graphic symbol does not reflect the phonetic essence of a word - a person who does not know all the intricacies of this language will not be able to understand how to correctly pronounce a written word. Phonetics is quite complex: it has numerous homophones and contains 4 tones in the system. Learn Chinese– this is one of the most difficult tasks that a foreigner can set for himself.

Learning languages ​​has long ceased to be fashion trend and has turned into a necessity - today a highly paid job will be given to the applicant who can speak two, three or even four foreign languages. Therefore one of current issues among students and ordinary people - which ones to study.

What is the difference between an easy language and a difficult one?

It is almost impossible to say which languages ​​are the easiest to learn, because speakers of languages ​​of the same group can easily learn each other's language, since they have similar vocabulary and grammar. And, conversely, it will be more difficult for them to learn the language of another group, since it will have many differences. But there are a number of characteristics that allow you to distinguish an easy language from a difficult one:

in complex languages ​​and in easy ones - short;

the more rules a language has, the easier it is to learn and, conversely, the fewer, the more difficult it is;

the more homonyms a language has, the more difficult it is;

languages ​​with Latin or Cyrillic alphabet are easier to learn than those that have their own alphabet;

it is easier to learn the spelling of a language in which all words are written as they are heard;

The fewer dialects a language has, the easier it is to learn.

Thus, the easiest languages ​​to learn are those based on the Cyrillic or Latin alphabet with the largest number rules and the smallest number of homonyms.

Language difficulty levels

How ordinary people, and professional linguists wonder what is the easiest language to learn. Research has led to the fact that all the languages ​​of the world were divided into three groups based on complexity parameters.

The easiest foreign language to learn is any language from the Latin and Germanic groups; learning will require from 600 to 750 hours.

Languages ​​of average complexity are Indo-European, Turkic and the study of which will take from 900 to 1100 hours.

The most complex foreign language is any language that has its own alphabet and vocabulary - Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew, Georgian and other languages. The training will require at least 2200 hours.

Top 6 easy to learn languages

What is the easiest language to learn? As the US State Department notes, this is a language that will require no more than 600 hours to learn. This is exactly how long it will take to speak an unknown language tolerably. Thus, the easiest languages ​​to learn in are the following Indo-European languages:

English - due to the lack of gender, cases, and word agreement. In addition, his grammar is simple, verbs change only in the third person, and the words are short. Nice bonus- native speakers easily perceive the speech of those learning their language and are tolerant of language errors, because today a lot of people are learning English. In the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India and some African countries it is official.

French - Some words of this language are similar to English and it is easy to learn as it is one of the most popular languages ​​in the world. In France, Belgium, Switzerland, Canada and some African countries it is the official language.

Italian has simple pronunciation, no cases, and its vocabulary is rooted in Latin. The area of ​​Italian-speaking countries is small - Italy, Vatican City, San Marino, Switzerland and Argentina.

Spanish has simple grammar and spelling, vocabulary similar to Italian and English languages. In terms of the number of speakers, it is not far behind the most popular languages ​​- only 4th place after English, Chinese and Hindi. Distribution area: Spain, Mexico and Argentina.

Portuguese is similar to Spanish, but it is not easy for their speakers to understand each other due to the fact that the first language is a sibilant. The distribution area is African countries, Brazil and Portugal itself.

Esperanto is the easiest language, as you can master it in a month. In terms of similarity, it is close to Spanish. Esperanto is not official in any country, but it may be recognized as official in the European Union.

Which language is suitable for Russian speakers to learn?

It is suitable for a person to study a language that is in the same language group as his native one. For example, it is easy for an Italian to learn Spanish or Portuguese. What is the easiest language to learn for Russians? Since Russian is one of them, it will be easiest to learn Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Czech or any other Slavic language. Of the European ones, the easiest to learn are those whose culture and sound are closest to the student - for example, expressive Italian or Spanish is suitable for temperamental people, and French for romantics. The same applies to languages ​​of the 3rd complexity group. This is explained by the lack of similarity with the native language, so learning them will require the same amount of time and effort.