What Are the Hardest Languages to Learn?

5 min readMay 3, 2024

This is a very subjective question.

What are the hardest languages to learn?

Ukrainian and Turkish, for example, are often touted as some of the most difficult languages to learn; yet, for me, learning them came rather easily.

Why is that, though? Am I special? Do I have a natural talent for learning languages, and so, does every language I learn come easily to me? Or do I work really hard, put in the hours, and reap the rewards (no matter how “hard” a language is)?

It turns out that some languages are harder to learn but that depends on a few factors.

Let’s briefly look at those before diving into some of the hardest-to-learn languages.

Factors that Influence How Difficult a Language Is to Learn

Firstly, “difficult” is such a subjective term. Language learning doesn’t come easily to most people.

In fact, about 40% of the world’s population is monolingual. In the U.S., the number of people who only speak English has increased by a fourth in four decades.

The urge to learn a new language may have decreased with translation apps, making international travel easier, but speaking a new language will always be a vital skill.

But just why is it difficult to learn a language?

Your motivation. If you aren’t motivated to learn a language for the right reasons (which are individual to you), then the target language naturally becomes (or feels) challenging to learn.
How much you need to know. If you’re traveling, you can get by with the basics, while if you’re relocating, you’ll need to know a lot (eventually), which also makes it harder to learn a language.
Your native language and the language family. For example, if you speak English, it may be easier to learn French, Dutch, Italian, and Spanish than Chinese, Russian, or Hindi. But if you speak Russian, the other Slavik languages would be right up your alley (#SameLanguageFamily), while Finnish may not be so easy.
Complex grammar rules, the writing system, and pronunciation. If a language has way more grammar rules and pronunciation that’s not at all like your native language, learning may be a challenge.
Tonal languages may be grueling to learn. For example, Mandarin has 4 tones, Cantonese has 6 tones, Dong has 9, and Wobé (spoken in Côte d’Ivoire) has 14 tones.
Opportunities to learn the language. Some languages have loads more resources available, making them easier to learn compared to a language that has limited resources.

5 Difficult Languages to Learn (+ the Whys)

Here are some of the most challenging languages to learn:

1. Mandarin

Mandarin is often cited as one of the toughest languages to learn. The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLIFLC) puts this language in its Category IV, a list of languages that English natives generally don’t learn easily.

While not everyone agrees with that assessment, there are a few reasons why Mandarin is challenging to learn.

Mandarin:

Is a tonal language, making pronunciation difficult
Has more than 100,000 characters, and you need to know roughly 3,000 of these to read the newspaper
Has different grammar compared to English

2. Navajo

Navajo uses the Latin alphabet so you’d think it’s an easy language to learn. However, here are common reasons why learning Navajo is tough.

Navajo:

Is a tonal language, so words with the same spelling are pronounced differently and have different meanings
Distinguishes between long and short vowels
Has a complex phenology with 33 consonants and 12 vowels that don’t exist in English
Is a verb-centric language with more than 7 different conjugations
Embodies the concept of animacy that influences the spelling and position of a noun in a sentence

Plus, for non-speakers, there are limited resources available.

3. Arabic

As another challenging language, Arabic has a non-Latin alphabet. Of course, learning the 28 script letters is easier than, say, learning thousands of Mandarin characters. The DLIFLC also grouped Arabic as a Category IV language.

However, there are other reasons that make Arabic difficult to learn.

Arabic:

Is written and read from right to left
Has sounds that don’t exist in many other languages (like English), such as 3 different “h” sounds
Has very few words in common with English
No vowels; however, these are included as short lines above or below the consonants in beginner language-learning resources and kids books

4. Xhosa

Xhosa (or IsiXhosa) is spoken in South Africa and parts of Lesotho and Zimbabwe, and it’s one of the most difficult African languages you can learn.

The African language uses 18 click consonants, and these are vocalized differently, such as the roof of your mouth.

Here are other reasons why Xhosa is a tough language to learn. Xhosa:

Is a tonal language with 2 tones
Is an agglutinative language where loads of prefixes and suffixes are added to words, depending on the context
Has an elaborate noun class system with 15 noun cases
Has gendered verbs

5. Turkish

If you are an English speaker, for example, I can understand why learning Turkish would be challenging. For one, it belongs in the Altaic language family, and according to the DLIFLC, it’s a Category III language.

Here are reasons why Turkish is a hard language to learn.

Turkish:

Uses the Latin alphabet and has 29 letters, but how a letter is pronounced depends on the next letter
Has a few non-English sounds
Is also an agglutinative language
Has 30 verb tenses
Has a complex conjugation system, and you need to conjugate a verb with the following in mind: the subject, number of entities, politeness, consonants, tense, and vowel harmony

Final Thoughts

More than 7,000 languages are spoken in the world, so the list of the hardest languages to learn is clearly a much longer one. I’m sure we can all find reasons that any language is challenging to learn, but if we really want to, we can master any language.

And depending on your language experience and motivation, you can find reasons that make learning a language easy — if you want to focus on the positive side.

But I’m curious, what language(s) did you find difficult to learn, and why?