The most difficult languages ​​to pronounce. The most difficult languages. The most difficult of the Eastern and Asian

Linguists from the University of Oslo have named the most difficult language to master in the world, which has the most complex phonetics. According to scientists, this is the dialect of the Pirahã people living in the Amazon jungle of Brazil. The researchers explained that the reason for the complexity of the Pirahãs is due to the many whistling sounds.

Sign language. How to find out the secret thoughts of your interlocutor?

As Izvestia writes, representatives of this tribe whistle words and entire sentences to each other. In this case, sounds travel over a long distance. With the help of the language, the Pirahans navigate in space, making their way through the jungle or crossing a river. It is also used for hunting.

It is interesting that the verbs here are used only in the future and past tense. Also, the language does not have singular or singular nouns. plural. Speech, based on one consonant and one vowel, can sound in different keys.

Let us note, according to neurophysiologists, that even the wearer’s brain has difficulty perceiving them. For example, Chinese and Arabic.

In response to the favorite question of everyone who has encountered learning a foreign language - what is the most difficult language on Earth? - linguists chuckle: it is impossible to give a definite answer. In their opinion, the difficulties depend primarily on the student himself, namely on what dialect is native to him. The rather difficult Russian language will not be so difficult for a Czech or Ukrainian, but a Turk or Japanese may not be able to handle it.

From the point of view of “relatedness”, the Basque language (Euskara) is called one of the most difficult to learn - it is not related to any of the currently known groups of languages, living or dead. Everyone is equal in the face of the difficulties of mastering Euskara. The Guinness Book of Records names the most difficult languages ​​as Chippewa (the dialect of the Ojibwe Indian people in Canada and the USA), Haida (the language of the Haida Indian people living in the northwest of North America), Tabasaran (spoken by one of the indigenous peoples of Dagestan), Eskimo and Chinese .

The most difficult languages ​​in terms of writing are Chinese, Japanese and Korean. They are difficult even for the native speakers themselves. For example, in Japan, school education lasts as long as 12 years, and half of this time is devoted to just two subjects - the native language and mathematics. More from preschool age Developmental activities are conducted with Japanese children to train their memory. To pass the final exams, they need to learn about 1850 hieroglyphs, and to understand a note printed in a newspaper - about 3 thousand.

In the group of the lightest (again, for carriers in English) included Danish, Dutch, French, Haitian, Creole, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Swahili and Swedish. The second most difficult languages ​​were Bulgarian, Dari, Farsi (Persian), German, Modern Greek, Hindi-Urdu, Indonesian and Malay.

Amharic, Bengali, and Burmese are considered even more challenging by American teachers and students, as are Czech, Finnish, Modern Hebrew, Hungarian, Lao, Nepali, Polish, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Sinhala, Thai, Tamil, Turkish, and Vietnamese. The most difficult languages ​​for English-speaking students were Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

It is curious that despite the relationship and obvious similarity in spelling, Hebrew and Arabic belonging to the Semitic group turned out to be on the same page. different levels difficulties. This pattern is also true for speakers of both languages. As a study by scientists from the University of Haifa has shown, it is more difficult for Arabs to read texts in their native language than for Jews and the British (or Americans). The reason is simple but surprising: the brain processes the graphic characters of these languages ​​differently.

As you know, the functions of the left and right hemispheres are different. The right one, for example, “specializes” in solving spatial problems and patterned information processing, while the left one is responsible for speech recognition and detailed processing of text messages. In this case, the right hemisphere is responsible for intuition and is able to “understand” metaphors, that is, words and phrases with a veiled meaning, while the left hemisphere is responsible for understanding only the literal meaning.

Israeli scientists analyzed brain activity during reading and word recognition in people whose native language was English, Arabic or Hebrew. Volunteers were offered two experiments. In the first, they were shown words or meaningless combinations of letters in their native language on a screen. The subject had to determine whether a given word made sense, and the researchers recorded the speed and accuracy of the answer.

In the second test, volunteers were shown words simultaneously on the left and right sides screen - sometimes on one, sometimes on both. Thus, the brain was faced with the task of processing the shown symbols with the left or right hemisphere separately.

The resulting picture turned out to be interesting. English-speaking volunteers and those whose native language was Hebrew easily “read” words in one hemisphere independently of the other. But the Arabs had it worse: when reading Arabic, the right hemisphere cannot function without using the resources of the left. Reading Arabic characters uniquely activates the cognitive systems of the brain, scientists conclude. If you want to develop your mind, learn Arabic!

By the way, the same pattern was previously discovered for the Chinese language compared to English. In the study, scientists observed the brain activity of Chinese and English speakers, respectively, while they listened to native speech. In English-speaking subjects, only left hemisphere, and the Chinese have both.

A person’s ability for languages ​​is laid in the very early period its development. If a child develops in society and masters the language of his environment, this means that he is, in principle, capable of mastering any other language that is not initially native to him. But what determines how difficult or easy it will be for a particular person to learn a particular language?

Difficulties in learning languages

Scientists have found that in learning a foreign language there are a number of difficulties for a person, both subjective and objective.

• With subjective ones, everything is more or less clear, despite the fact that they can be so diverse among different representatives of humanity. First of all, subjective simplicity or complexity in the perception and mastery of a language is determined by the degree of relationship of the language being studied with the native language. The similarity or difference of linguistic categories is also important. For example, a person whose native language is Russian will find it difficult to perceive such features of Russian as declensions and gender of nouns, the category of verb aspect, that is, everything that is absent in the English language. The fact that the Russian language, like English, belongs to the group of Indo-European languages, does not in any way contribute to simplifying its perception by native speakers.
• Also a subjective factor in comprehending languages ​​are individual characteristics personality: for example, exceptional visual memory, which allows one to remember the complex spelling of the target language on the fly, even though the individual’s native language has no similarities with it. Or developed mathematical abilities, which will always give their owner a head start when studying languages ​​of the analytical type, again, regardless of the rules and characteristics of the native language.
• But over objective difficulties, battles among linguists are still ongoing. What is considered such difficulties is clear. But on what scale should we evaluate them? There is no consensus today. What should be taken as a universal unit of complexity: the number and variety of vowels or consonants of a language, grammatical structure, plurality of verb forms, or something else? The Hungarian language has 35 cases, but the Eskimo language has 63 present tense forms, so how can you determine which one is more difficult? In other words, how do you measure the complexity of a language?

Gradations of language complexity

American scientists from the Foreign Service Institute of the US State Department took the amount of time required to master the basics of a particular language as a unit of complexity, and determined the following gradations of difficulty in learning languages.

• The first category includes fairly simple languages ​​that can be mastered in approximately 600 hours of classroom instruction. These are Spanish and Swedish. That is, if you devote two hours a day, 6 times a week, to studying one of the above-mentioned languages, then in a year you can actually master it quite well. high level. Why not?
• Icelandic and Russian fell into the next category - more complex languages. It will take at least 1100 hours to master them.
• Japanese, Arabic and Chinese are classified as the most difficult languages, as they require 2,200 hours or more to master. Scientists include Estonian, Finnish and Hungarian in this very complex group of languages.

Do you agree with this system of grading the complexity of languages?

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Guinness Book of Records

And here is information about complex languages ​​according to the Guinness Book of Records.

1. The Chinese language is due to the hieroglyphic writing system, which does not directly correspond to the sound of the words and concepts conveyed by the hieroglyphs. And also because of the system of semantic tones, of which there are 4 in the Chinese language. If you pronounce a certain word in an inappropriate tone, then this word can take on a completely opposite meaning, or even lose its meaning altogether.
2. Tabasaran language, which is one of the state languages Dagestan, which has 48 cases of nouns.
3. The language of the Haida Indians living in North America, is recognized as the most complex due to the record number of prefixes (prefixes) - more than 70 of them.
4. Language North American Indians Chippewa, which has about 6,000 verb forms.
5. The Eskimo language includes 63 present tense forms and 252 noun endings.

Conclusions of neurophysiologists

Neuroscientists have come to the conclusion that the most complex languages ​​are those that are difficult for the brain to comprehend even for native speakers of such languages. Among such languages, scientists name Chinese and Arabic. An interesting fact is that when using these languages, the mechanisms of both the left and right hemispheres of the brain are activated in the brains of their speakers, while when communicating in all other languages, only one of the brain hemispheres is activated.

Therefore, if you want to effectively develop your brain, start learning Arabic or Chinese. Fortunately, in last years they are increasingly in demand on the world stage.

Motivation is everything

No matter how difficult the language you are going to conquer is, it can turn out to be much easier and more interesting for you, provided you have a strong motivation to study it. The result depends only on you, your perseverance and passion. As they say, if there is a desire!

What do you think: what is the most important thing for effective language acquisition and what importance does its complexity or simplicity have?

I, like any teacher, am often asked: “What is the most difficult language in the world?”, “What is more difficult: French or Spanish?”, “Which language is the easiest to learn?” or “Why is English so difficult?” All these questions indicate that people have an intuitive sense that languages ​​differ in complexity, but they are unable to construct a consistent “scale.”

Generally speaking, such scales exist. For example, the American Foreign Service Institute at the State Department (FSI) divides all languages ​​into 5 categories depending on how many hours it takes to study them somewhere up to level C1 (Upper-Intermediate / Advanced). In the first, easiest category (600 hours) are Danish, Dutch, French, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Italian and Swedish. The most difficult, the fifth (2200 hours), includes Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Russian fell into the fourth category; According to the State Department, one can speak it well after 1,100 hours of training. The entire plaque can be viewed in its entirety.

From this, for example, it should follow that the Russian language is 1.83 times more complex than Romanian, but twice as simple as Arabic. Is it really? Unfortunately no. Firstly, these data are provided only for native English speakers. Therefore, Danish, which is related to English, is in the first group. Secondly, FSI is very conservative educational institution, where they teach languages ​​according to university programs - that is, slow and aimed at in-depth study of language culture - programs. If you need the language for everyday communication on simple topics, this classification is not for you.

I’ll say right away: there is no universal “gradation of languages” based on the difficulty of learning. All living languages ​​are used by their native speakers and mastered by foreigners (even if we are talking about two neighboring tribes in the Amazon forests - there are always some kind of interpreters). All languages ​​can be described by linguists. All languages ​​serve the needs of native speakers well. Therefore, compare languages entirely- a thankless task. But in some individual aspects, languages ​​can indeed differ significantly in complexity. This is what I want to write about below.

THE COMPLEXITY OF A NEW LANGUAGE IS DETERMINED BY THE LANGUAGES YOU ALREADY KNOW

Each of us has a native language. If this language is Russian, then we can easily cope with learning another Slavic language. This ease, of course, is relative. Due to the similarity to Russian, you will most likely sometimes substitute foreign words and forms are native. In addition, closely related languages ​​always look and sound a little “funny.” A Russian will find many funny words in Bulgarian, a Czech in Polish, a German in Dutch, and an Azerbaijani in Turkish.

If you already know some foreign language, then other languages ​​of the same group will seem easier to you. For example, Dutch is easiest to learn if you speak English and German. Another thing is that this task, due to its ease, may seem uninteresting (for example, I read Dutch, but I don’t want to learn it: it’s boring).

THE COMPLEXITY OF A LANGUAGE DEPENDS ON THE CULTURE

Almost any language reflects the cultural ties of the people speaking it. This is especially true for writing and “high”, “abstract” vocabulary. For example, the Russian language, like many other Orthodox nations, uses the Cyrillic alphabet. The source of book and scientific vocabulary for the Russian language was the closely related Church Slavonic and Latin. Thanks to this last fact, we can easily detect “similar” words in almost all European languages. The Russian “revolution” is easily recognized in the Polish “rewolucja”, Romanian “revoluție”, English “revolution” or Spanish “revolución”. But there are also European languages ​​that prefer to create “native” equivalents of such concepts. The same “revolution” in Irish will be “réabhlóid”, and in Hungarian “forradalom”.

Things are even “worse” for us in languages ​​belonging to completely different linguistic “civilizations.” For example, in all languages ​​associated with Islamic culture (Turkic, Iranian, etc.), “high” vocabulary is borrowed from classical Arabic. Arabic turns out to be “easier” for speakers of these languages ​​than for us. IN South-East Asia Classical Chinese performed a similar function. We will not find any Latinisms that make life easier, much less Church Slavonicisms.

COMMON LANGUAGES EASIER

Answering the question “which language is the easiest?”, it is worth paying attention to the fact that the languages ​​spoken big number people and which are actively studied (or even completely borrowed) by other peoples, often turn out to be simpler in some respects than those limited to one small territory. This is especially true for grammar. There are two reasons for this: firstly, foreigners or new speakers of such languages ​​intuitively “simplify” them for ease of use. This is exactly what happened with Latin. For example, having forgotten their Celtic language, the ancestors of the French, the Gauls, switched not to classical, but to a significantly simplified (folk) Latin. In the end, the matter ended with the fact that the declension of nouns disappeared in modern French. Secondly, the lighter the language, the more likely it is to spread faster.

EVERY LANGUAGE HAS SOMETHING EASYAND PLEASANT

Comparing languages ​​in general is, as I already wrote, a thankless task. But in certain aspects one language can easily be easier than another. Moreover: every language has some kind of easy-to-learn pleasantness (at least from the point of view of a Russian speaker).

For example, in Italian or Spanish the pronunciation is very easy from the Russian point of view. In Chinese - surprise, surprise! - very easy grammar (that is, there is almost none). In modern literary Arabic, the grammar is also not very complex. The Turkic and Finno-Ugric languages ​​have a very transparent word structure (the endings do not “merge” with each other, but are clearly separated from each other and unambiguous in meaning). German has a simple and consistent spelling, and the pronunciation is quite simple. From the point of view of a foreigner who is a native speaker of a Western European language, Russian has a fairly simple system of tenses.

In short, there is no language that doesn't have a pleasant surprise waiting for you!

IN ANY LANGUAGE THERE IS SOME FUCKING COMPLEXITY

You can’t say about any particular language that it is the most difficult language in the world. Each of them has its own characteristics. But, alas, in any natural language there are some unpleasant features for a foreigner (or even a native speaker!).

In case of Chinese These problem areas are obvious: tones and hieroglyphs. Moreover, the latter also cause difficulties for native speakers, significantly delaying school literacy education. That is why he is considered one of the most difficult languages in the world. Arabic is also complex in terms of phonetics and writing (although much easier than Chinese). Italian, Spanish and French have a huge number of tenses, irregular verbs and not quite natural for Russian rules for the use of verbal moods. There are really few tenses in the Russian language, but there is a verb form (did / made), the rules of use of which can easily drive foreigners crazy.

The English language is relatively simple in everything... Almost. The fact is that due to the huge number of regional variants and dialects, learning to understand natural English speech by ear is not easy. Although many people believe that it is the easiest language to learn.

SIMPLE DOESN'T MEAN EASY

It turns out that in any language there are “easier” and “harder” things. Therefore, in my opinion, in general, all languages ​​are quite well “balanced” and in this they are not too different from each other. If suddenly you are faced with the need to learn some “difficult” language in your opinion (Japanese or Arabic, for example), do not despair: for every difficulty encountered, they will always reveal some pleasant and easy phenomenon.

But here I would like to make one reservation: systemic “simplicity” does not always mean “ease” of assimilation. Let’s take as an example those that set everyone’s teeth on edge English Times. Formally, they are arranged extremely simply: there are four auxiliary verbs (be, have, do, will), four forms of the verb (infinitive, present participle of –ing, past participle of –ed and simple past tense –ed) and one miserable ending -s. All times are built from combinations of these elementary “bricks” (and not even all of them). But precisely because small quantity“bricks” and the variety of their combinations, the confusion that is so familiar to many occurs.

Andrey Logutov

Language is a sign system consisting of sounds and words. Each nation has its own unique sign system due to its phonetic, grammatical, morphological and linguistic features. Moreover, simple languages can not be. Each of them has its own difficulties, which are immediately revealed during the study process. Below are the most complex languages planets, the rating of which includes ten sign systems.

# 10 #

Finnish language

Finnish language It is considered one of the most difficult sign systems in the world and deservedly so. It has up to 16 cases and several hundred verb forms and conjugations.

Here, graphic signs convey the phonetics of the word in full (everything is pronounced as it is written). This simplifies the language a bit. Finnish grammar contains several past tense forms and no future tense forms at all.

# 9 #

Icelandic

Icelandic is one of the most difficult languages ​​to pronounce. Its sign system is considered to be associated with one of the oldest languages ​​in the world. It contains linguistic units that are used only by native speakers themselves.

Phonetics is a big challenge for learning the Icelandic language. Only native speakers can accurately convey it.

# 8 #

Hungarian

Hungarian It is one of the top ten most difficult languages ​​to learn in the world. It has 35 case forms and a lot of vowel sounds, which are quite difficult due to their long pronunciation.

The sign system of the Hungarian language has a complex grammar. It contains an innumerable number of suffixes and fixed expressions that are characteristic only of this language. The vocabulary system of this language is distinguished by the presence of only two tense forms of the verb: past and present.

Language is a complex system of 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 changed by persons through the addition of prefixes, and in addition to vowels and consonants, there are 4 special 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 of stable 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. The Basque language was also used by cunning American intelligence officers who participated in World War II, transmitting secret information to headquarters.

3. Russian

Yes, yes, our native language is in third place in terms of difficulty to learn. 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 Arabic may have 4 spelling options, 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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