Difficulty of learning languages

You can approach the question of determining the most difficult natural language in two ways:

• L1 methods: determine the hardest language for infants to naturally acquire
• L2 methods: determine the hardest language for adults to learn as a second language

The question of the hardest language to acquire (L1) can be considered by determining when children are able to speak grammatically correctly, as judged by adult speakers. According to Wexler, the constructions that take children the longest to master are long-distance dependencies. The long-distance dependency of the reflexive pronoun in Korean is not implemented correctly by Korean children until the age of five (Wexler 1990, p. 109), making Korean the most difficult languages for toddlers to master, according to the Webler's study.

Learning a language as an adult (L2) strongly depends on the learner's native language. In general, the closer the language in relation to vocabulary and sentence structure (among other factors), the easier acquisition will be. This "proximity" of the target language is not necessarily a function of genetic relationship but may also be polyphyletic, such as a chance similarity of phonology. Differences in phonology are often insurmountable for the learner, and will be apparent in an accent in non-native speakers even after many years of proficient use of the learned language. Acquisition of native phonology is also complete very early in children's language acquisition, before the age of one year: that is, what is the "easiest" part of language acquisition for infants (completed first) is the "hardest" part for adult learners (completed last, if ever).

Immigrants tend to gravitate to the official language that is closer to their mother tongue, making allowance for considerations of their region of residence and the labor market.

The question which of two given languages A and B is more difficult to learn may be considered by comparing the performance of native speakers of A learning B with that of native speakers of B learning A. For example, a study on speech comprehension by German immigrants to the USA and American immigrants to Germany found that native English speakers learning German as adults had a disadvantage on certain grammatical tasks, while they had an advantage in lexical tasks compared to their native German-speaking counterparts learning English (Scherag et al. 2004).

There may also be a genetic disposition determining which aspects of language a learner will find most difficult. Ross and Bever (2004) propose that right-handed individuals with left-handed family members (left-handed familials, LHFs) and right-handed individuals with only right-handed family members (right-handed familials, RHFs) showed differences in language learning strategy, with RHFs focusing on grammatical relations and LHFs on lexical knowledge.

According to a survey by the British Foreign Office among its diplomatic staff, the most difficult language to learn for adult English speakers is Hungarian, followed by Japanese. This survey naturally included only languages that are used in diplomatic relations and does not rule out the possibility of other languages that are even more difficult to learn.

"The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) of the US Department of State has compiled approximate learning expectations for a number of languages"[1]. Of the 63 languages analyzed, the 5 most difficult languages to reach proficiency in speaking and proficiency in reading (for native English speakers who already know other languages), requiring 88 weeks, are: "Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean", with Japanese being the most difficult.

In the Defense Language Institute of the US Department of Defense, Korean is seen as the hardest of the Category IV languages, which are Arabic, Chinese, and Korean. "Right now only 8 Languages are being taught (for Navy). Cat IV: Arabic, Chinese, Korean. Cat III: Persian, Serb-Croatian, Hebrew, Russian. Cat I: Spanish. ...Korean is the hardest language here [Navy], apparently it is 75 weeks long now, and they are trying to make it a Cat V language."

See also

• Critical period hypothesis
• Language learning aptitude
• Motivation in second language learning
• Chomsky hierarchy
• planned languages such as Esperanto, Interlingua, and the even simpler Toki Pona
• Propaedeutic value of Esperanto -- it may take less time to learn a simple language first, then a harder language, than to learn the harder language by itself

External links

• What is the most difficult language to learn?, Johns Hopkins Magazine (1999)
• Which is the hardest language?
• the hardest language on earth