Learning a language can be challenging depending on your native language, previous language learning experience, the resources available to you, and the amount of time you have to devote to the process. The following languages are often cited as being particularly challenging for English speakers due to their complex grammar, vocabulary, and/or writing systems:

individual’s native language and language learning background.

1. Mandarin Chinese
   • Description: Mandarin Chinese is the official language of China.
   • Why it’s difficult: It’s a tonal language, meaning that the same word can have different meanings depending on the tone used to express it. Additionally, it uses a logographic writing system instead of an alphabet.
   • Characters: More than 50,000, with around 5,000 commonly used.
   • Speakers: Approximately 1.3 billion speakers as of 2021.
   • Age: Written records date back to the Shang Dynasty in 1200 BCE.
2. Arabic
   • Description: Arabic is the liturgical language of Islam and the official language in many Middle Eastern and North African countries.
   • Why it’s difficult: It uses a non-Latin script and is written from right to left. Arabic also has many dialects, making universal comprehension challenging.
   • Characters: 28 in the Arabic alphabet.
   • Speakers: Approximately 420 million speakers as of 2021.
   • Age: Classical Arabic dates back to the 7th century CE.
3. Japanese
   • Description: Japanese is the official language of Japan.
   • Why it’s difficult: It has complex grammar rules and three different writing systems: Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana.
   • Characters: Around 50,000 Kanji characters exist, but most Japanese people know about 2,000. Hiragana and Katakana each have 46 basic characters.
   • Speakers: Around 128 million speakers as of 2021.
   • Age: Early records of Japanese date back to the 8th century CE.
4. Korean
   • Description: Korean is the official language of both South and North Korea.
   • Why it’s difficult: It has a different grammar structure compared to English and many levels of formality.
   • Characters: 14 basic consonants and 10 basic vowels in Hangul, the Korean alphabet.
   • Speakers: Around 77 million speakers as of 2021.
   • Age: The Korean language has a history of over 1,500 years.
5. Hungarian
   • Description: Hungarian is the official language of Hungary.
   • Why it’s difficult: Its grammar structure is complex with 18 cases, and it’s not related to most other languages, making it difficult to find common ground.
   • Characters: 44 in the Hungarian alphabet.
   • Speakers: Around 13 million speakers as of 2021.
   • Age: It’s a Uralic language dating back thousands of years, with the earliest written records from the 12th century CE.
6. Finnish
   • Description: Finnish is one of the two official languages of Finland.
   • Why it’s difficult: It has 15 cases and a unique grammar structure, and it’s not Indo-European, making it difficult for speakers of those languages.
   • Characters: 29 in the Finnish alphabet.
   • Speakers: Around 5 million speakers as of 2021.
   • Age: The Finnish language has a written history of about 500 years.
7. Navajo
   • Description: Navajo is a Native American language spoken in the Southwestern United States.
   • Why it’s difficult: It has a complex verb system and uncommon sounds.
   • Characters: 26 basic characters in the Latin-based Navajo alphabet.
   • Speakers: Around 170,000 speakers as of 2021.
   • Age: While the precise age of the language is unknown, Navajo is part of the Athabaskan language family, which dates back at least a few centuries.
8. Icelandic
   • Description: Icelandic is the national language of Iceland.
   • Why it’s difficult: It has complex grammar rules, including four cases, and the pronunciation is tough for English speakers.
   • Characters: 32 in the Icelandic alphabet.
   • Speakers: Around 358,000 speakers as of 2021.
   • Age: Old Norse, from which Icelandic derives, dates back to the 9th century.
9. Basque
   • Description: Basque is spoken in the Basque Country, spanning parts of Spain and France.
   • Why it’s difficult: It’s a language isolate, meaning it has no known relations to any other languages, which makes learning it quite challenging.
   • Characters: 27 in the Basque alphabet.
   • Speakers: Around 750,000 speakers as of 2021.
   • Age: It’s believed to be one of the oldest languages in Europe, possibly predating the arrival of Indo-European languages.
10. Polish
    • Description: Polish is the official language of Poland.
    • Why it’s difficult: Polish has seven cases and complex grammar. Pronunciation can also be difficult for English speakers.
    • Characters: 32 in the Polish alphabet.
    • Speakers: Around 40 million speakers as of 2021.
    • Age: Polish has been a distinct language since at least the 10th century.
11. Vietnamese
    • Description: Vietnamese is the national and official language of Vietnam.
    • Why it’s difficult: It’s a tonal language, which means the meaning of a word can change based on tone. It also contains sounds that are not present in English.
    • Characters: Vietnamese uses a Latin alphabet with additional diacritics for tones and certain vowel sounds. There are 29 letters in the modern Vietnamese alphabet.
    • Speakers: Approximately 76 million speakers as of 2021.
    • Age: Vietnamese as an independent language has been in existence for over 1,000 years.