According to SIL International, there are over 7000 languages throughout the world. The vast majority of people speak only one of them as a first language, and learn several as second languages throughout their lifetime. Each language is unique in its own way, with lexical and grammatical differences that distinguish them from their linguistic peers. Some of them are closely related while others bear no resemblance whatsoever to any other language.
Determining which language is the hardest to learn rests on these factors, but not these factors alone.
Language Families
Learning a language that is closely related to the first-language of the learner can generally be said to be an easier endeavor than learning a language that bears no relation at all. Thus, for an English speaker, many other European languages are easier to learn than for example, Vietnamese, Nahuatl, or Navajo!
The closer a language is on the family tree to English, the easier it is for an English speaker to learn. English belongs to the Germanic group of languages which also includes German (obviously), Dutch, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, and Afrikaans.
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Related to this group are other European language groups such as the Romance languages which include French, Romanian, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. From an English perspective Learning one of these languages is generally considered more difficult than learning a Germanic language, but a lot easier than learning a completely unrelated language like Arabic.
Another major group of European languages is the Slavic group which contains Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Bulgarian, Serbian, and Croatian.
Other languages such as Finnish, Hungarian, and Estonian belong to the Uralic Language group and are even further removed from English. Finnish and Hungarian have even gained reputations as being notoriously difficult to learn.
Foreign Service Institute Ranking
The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) is the United States’ primary training institution for members of the US foreign service community. As such, the FSI is responsible for helping professionals and other diplomats learn languages in order to promote US foreign policy. The FSI categorizes languages based on how easy they are to learn from an English perspective. Languages are ranked from Category I (easiest) to Category V (hardest). Category I includes languages that require 23-24 weeks (575-600 hours) to learn. Several Germanic and Romance languages fall into this category, and include Norwegian, Afrikaans, French, and Spanish.
Although German is closely related to English, it has significant complexities that differentiate it from English, and make it a more difficult language to learn than Category I languages. It is a Category II language and learners can expect to master the language only after 30 weeks (750 hours) of intense study. Moving into language groups unrelated to English, Malaysian, Indonesian, and Swahili are category III languages requiring 36 weeks (900 hours) of study.
Category IV Languages require at least 44 weeks (1100 hours) of study, and include Bulgarian, Hindi (very distantly related to English), Russian, Greek, Czech, Thai, Finnish, Estonian, Tagalog, Xhosa, and Zulu, among many others.
Category V: The Hardest Languages to Learn (From an English Perspective!)
Reaching Category V and requiring 88 weeks (2200 hours) to learn, there are a handful of languages that require intense study to be able to master. These languages are Chinese Mandarin, Chinese Cantonese, Arabic, Korean, and Japanese. Of these languages, Japanese, with its differing syntax, three different writing systems and its complicated hierarchy of etiquette, is considered the most difficult.
Conclusion
There is no single way to determine what the hardest language to learn is. Every learner has unique strengths and weaknesses. Yet from an English-speaking perspective, certain generalizations can be made, and a few languages can be singled out as being particularly difficult to learn. Grammar, phonetics, writing systems, and vocabulary concepts are just some of the things to consider when determining how difficult a language is to learn.
