Which language is most difficult?
In our last post (Language Difficulty), we talked about developing an objective method for comparing language difficulty across three aspects: vocabulary acquisition, syntax and grammar, and phonology. Languages are oral and most do not have writing systems, and those that do have a huge disconnect with actual speech, so our language difficulty rating does not take writing systems into account (and I strongly suggest to stop relying on the written word to learn a foreign language).
Today let's take a look at a few languages and objectively compare their difficulties with data!
Vocabulary Acquisition
English EN: Germanic>West with lots of Romance vocabulary (base language)
In order of difficulty (these numbers depend on the base language):
| Language | Family | Points |
|---|---|---|
| German | Indo-European>Germanic>West | 0 |
| French | Indo-European>Romance | 5 |
| Spanish | Indo-European>Romance | 5 |
| Polish | Indo-European>Slavic>West | 10 |
| Russian | Indo-European>Slavic>East | 10 |
| Arabic | Afroasiatic>Semitic | 100 |
| Georgian | Kartvelian | 100 |
| Ubykh | North Caucasian | 100 |
| Japanese | >50% Sinitic vocabulary | 100 |
| Korean | >50% Sinitic vocabulary | 100 |
| Chinese | Sino-Tibetan>Sinitic | 100 |
| Taiwanese Hokkien | Sino-Tibetan>Sinitic>Min | 100 |
| Thai | Tai-Kadai | 100 |
| Finnish | Uralic>Finnic | 100 |
| Hungarian | Uralic>Ugric | 100 |
Syntax and Grammar for Fluency
English: SVO, AN, GN, DN, NR, 0, 2, 2, 1, preposition (base language)
In order of difficulty (these numbers depend on the base language):
| Language | Points |
|---|---|
| Taiwanese Hokkien | 3 |
| Thai | 3 |
| Vietnamese | 3 |
| Chinese | 4 |
| Finnish | 6 |
| Ubykh | 6 |
| Japanese | 9 |
| Hungarian | 9 |
| Korean | 10 |
| French | 11 |
| Spanish | 11 |
| Georgian | 15 |
| Arabic | 21 |
| German | 21 |
| Russian | 25 |
| Polish | 28 |
Phonology for Fluency
English: 39 phonemes including allophones (American English base language)
In order of difficulty (these numbers depend on the base language):
| Language | Points |
|---|---|
| Finnish | 4 |
| Georgian | 4 |
| Spanish | 4 |
| French | 5 |
| Arabic | 6 |
| Japanese | 6 |
| Vietnamese-Northern | 6 |
| German | 7 |
| Hungarian | 8 |
| Mandarin Chinese-Taiwan | 10 |
| Thai | 11 |
| Mandarin Chinese-Beijing | 13 |
| Polish | 16 |
| Taiwanese Hokkien | 19 |
| Korean | 20 |
| Russian | 23 |
| Ubykh | 57 |
Total Scores and Rank on a 10-Point Scale for Fluency
| Language | Points | 10-Point Scale | Glossika Fluency Course |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spanish | 20 | 1 | Spanish |
| French | 21 | 1 | French |
| German | 28 | 2 | German |
| Polish | 54 | 3 | Polish |
| Russian | 58 | 3 | Russian |
| Vietnamese | 109 | 6 | Vietnamese |
| Finnish | 110 | 6 | Finnish |
| Mandarin Chinese-Taiwan | 114 | 7 | Mandarin-Taiwan |
| Thai | 114 | 7 | Thai | Japanese | 115 | 7 | Japanese |
| Hungarian | 117 | 7 | Hungarian |
| Mandarin Chinese-Beijing | 117 | 7 | Mandarin-Beijing |
| Georgian | 119 | 7 | Georgian |
| Taiwanese Hokkien | 122 | 7 | Taiwanese |
| Arabic | 127 | 7 | Arabic |
| Korean | 130 | 8 | Korean |
| Ubykh | 163 | 10 | no plans for this |
Reaction to Results
I must say that I'm quite surprised with the final difficulty ranking for Korean. Out of the languages I know (which doesn't include Ubykh) I was actually expecting Taiwanese Hokkien to take the crown for most difficult due to its insane tone sandhi and nasals. But Taiwanese Hokkien has few points of articulation and relatively simple grammar.
Let's compare these results with the Voxy.com article "hardest-languages-infographic". I've included our total points after each language for comparison.
- Easy: Portuguese (19), Spanish (20), French (21), Italian (20), Dutch (19), Swedish, Afrikaans, Norwegian.
- Medium: Hindi (51), Russian (58), Vietnamese (114), Turkish (116), Polish (54), Thai (114), Serbian, Greek, Hebrew, Finnish (110)
- Hard: Arabic (127), Chinese (114), Japanese (115), Korean (130)
There's no reason to put Vietnamese, Turkish, Thai and Finnish in the Medium group at all. These are clearly easy languages in terms of grammar and in terms of phonology. The only thing difficult about them is that the vocabulary is completely foreign.
If we ignore vocabulary, Arabic (27) is one point easier than German (28); Chinese (14) is one point easier than Spanish (15), Japanese and Spanish are the same (15), and Korean (30) is only two points more difficult than German (28) and fourteen points easier than Polish (44).
Stay tuned because we'll be talking a lot about language difficulty in up-coming posts!
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