Language is a sign system consisting of sounds, words and sentences. The sign system of each nation is unique due to its grammatical, morphological, phonetic and linguistic features. There are no simple languages, since each of them has its own difficulties, which are revealed during the study.

Below are the most complex languages world, the rating of which consists of 10 sign systems.

- This is one of the most difficult to pronounce. The sign system is also considered one of the most ancient languages. It contains linguistic units used only by native speakers. One of the biggest challenges in learning Icelandic is its phonetics, which only native speakers can convey accurately.

Finnish language

Finnish language deservedly considered one of the most complex sign systems in the world. It has 15 cases, as well as several hundred personal verb forms and conjugations. In it, graphic signs completely convey the sound form of a word (both written and pronounced), which simplifies the language. The grammar contains several past tense forms, but no future tense forms.

Navajo

Navajo- the language of the Indians, the peculiarity of which is considered to be verb forms formed and changed by persons with the help of prefixes. It is verbs that carry the main semantic information. The Navajos were used by the US military during World War II to transmit encrypted information.

In addition to vowels and consonants, the language contains 4 tones, which are called ascending - descending; high Low. At the moment, the fate of the Navajo is in jeopardy, as linguistic dictionaries are absent, and the younger generation of Indians switches exclusively to English.

It is one of the ten most difficult languages to learn. It has 35 case forms and is replete with vowel sounds, which are quite difficult to pronounce due to their length. The sign system has a rather complex grammar, in which there is an innumerable number of suffixes, as well as set expressions characteristic only of this language. A feature of the dictionary system is the presence of only 2 tense forms of the verb: present and past.

Eskimo

Eskimo and is considered one of the most complex in the world due to its numerous tense forms, of which there are up to 63 in the present tense alone. The case form of words has more than 200 inflections (word changes using endings, prefixes, suffixes). The Eskimo language is a language of images. For example, the meaning of the word “Internet” among the Eskimos would be “a journey through layers.” The Eskimo sign system is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as one of the most difficult.

One of the few languages listed in the Book due to its complexity. Its peculiarity lies in its numerous cases, of which there are 46. This is one of state languages residents of Dagestan, which has no prepositions. Postpositions are used instead. There are three types of dialects in the language, and each of them unites a certain group of dialects. The sign system borrows a lot from different languages: Persian, Azerbaijani, Arabic, Russian and others.

One of the oldest in Europe. It is owned by some residents of Southern France and Northern Spain. Basque contains 24 case forms, and does not belong to any branch language families. Dictionaries contain about half a million words, including dialects. Prefixes and suffixes are used to form new linguistic units.

The connection between words in a sentence is traced through changes in endings. Verb tense is indicated by changing the endings and beginnings of the word. Due to the not widespread use of the language, it was used by the American military during World War II to transmit classified information. Basque is rightfully considered one of the most difficult languages to learn.

Russian

Russian one of the three most difficult languages in the world. The main difficulty with “great and mighty” is the free stress. For example, in French The stress is always placed on the last syllable of the word. In Russian, the strong position can be anywhere: in the first or last syllable, or in the middle of a word. The meaning of many lexical units is determined by the place of stress, for example: flour - flour; organ – Organ. Also meaning polysemantic words, which are written and pronounced the same, are determined only in the context of the sentence.

Other linguistic units may differ in writing, but are pronounced the same and have a completely different meaning, for example: meadow - onion, etc. Our language is one of the richest in synonyms: one word can have up to a dozen linguistic units that are close in meaning. Punctuation also carries a large semantic load: the absence of one comma completely changes the meaning of the phrase. Remember the hackneyed phrase from school: “Execution cannot be pardoned”?

Arabic

Arabic– one of the most complex sign systems in the whole world. One letter has up to 4 different spellings: it all depends on the location of the symbol in the word. Not found in the Arabic vocabulary system lower case, word breaks for hyphenation are prohibited, and vowel symbols are not displayed on the letter. One of the individual features of the language is the way words are written - from right to left.

In Arabic, instead of the two numbers familiar to the Russian language, there are three numbers: singular, plural and dual. It is impossible to find identically pronounced words here, since each sound has 4 different tones, which will depend on its location.

Chinese

Chinese is an incredibly complex language. The first difficulty, if you want to study it, is total number hieroglyphs in the language. The modern Chinese dictionary contains about 87 thousand characters. The complexity lies not only in the sign system of the language, but also in correct spelling. A single incorrectly depicted line in one hieroglyph completely distorts the meaning of the word.

One Chinese "letter" can mean an entire word or even a sentence. A graphic symbol does not reflect the phonetic essence of a word - a person who does not know all the intricacies of this language will not be able to understand how to correctly pronounce a written word. Phonetics is quite complex: it has numerous homophones and contains 4 tones in the system. Learning Chinese is one of the most difficult tasks a foreigner can undertake.

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 on the planet, 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.

Instructions

In terms of proximity, the most difficult language in the world can be called Basque, which does not belong to any language group. Basque has 24 cases and is considered the oldest in Europe. This language uses suffixes, infixes and prefixes to form new words. Here, to indicate connections between words, we use case endings. The Basque language is very a complex system marking the subject, indirect and direct object. Today, approximately 700,000 people speak and write Basque.

Scientists from the American Institute of Foreign Languages have created a unique list of the most difficult languages to learn (for native English speakers). The most difficult languages for them were: Bengali, Burmese, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Finnish, Hebrew, Hungarian, Czech, Khmer, Lao, Nepali, Polish, Thai, Tamil, Vietnamese, Arabic, Chinese, Korean and Japanese languages.

In terms of writing, the most difficult languages are Chinese, Korean and Japanese. For example, the newest Chinese language, compiled in 1994, contains 85,568 characters. In Japan, children go to school for 12 years. To successfully pass the exam, a Japanese student must learn 1850 characters.

Russian is considered one of the most difficult languages in the world, but it will be quite accessible for a Serb, Pole or Ukrainian to learn, but for a Turk or Japanese, Russian will seem very difficult.

The number of languages spoken by the peoples of Dagestan cannot be accurately counted. The Tabasaran language was included in the Guinness Book of Records as containing the most a large number of cases - from 44 to 52. The Tabasaran language has 54 and 10 parts of speech.

The Eskimo language also became a record holder. There are 63 present tense forms. Native speakers of the Eskimo language think very figuratively. For example, the word “Internet” is expressed by the unpronounceable term “ikiaqqivik,” which literally means “travel through layers.”

Israeli scientists conducted an interesting experiment among speakers of Hebrew, Arabic and English. The results turned out to be very interesting. Native speakers of Hebrew and English were able to easily read words using only one hemisphere of the brain independently of the other. Native speakers actively used both hemispheres of the brain simultaneously when reading. Scientists' conclusion: when reading Arabic writing, the work of the cognitive systems of the brain is activated. So, if you want to develop your mind, then learning Arabic can help you do this.

Video on the topic

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Oddly enough, Chinese grammar is one of the simplest in the world.

Sources:

Which language is the most difficult - the eternal battles of linguists
10 most difficult languages

Tip 2: Which language is the most difficult and which is the easiest to learn?

Learning foreign languages opens up new career prospects, makes it possible to watch films and read books in the original, understand the meaning of songs, and simply trains your memory. However, not all languages are learned with equal ease - among them there are some that are very simple and those that are extremely difficult to learn.

One of the most difficult languages is Chinese. Each word is designated in it by a separate symbol, which, if you recognize it, you will still have no idea how to pronounce it. The difficulty is also great amount Homophones are words that are pronounced the same, but are spelled differently and mean different concepts. Tone system in Chinese also does not make things easier for the student. In addition to the general intonation of the sentence, each syllable is also pronounced with a different tonality, which determines the meaning of the word.

The Japanese language is not much inferior to Chinese in its complexity. Knowing the symbols also does not give an idea of their pronunciation. Japanese has three writing systems: kanji, which uses Chinese characters, hiragana, which is used to write grammatical particles and suffixes, and katakana, which represents loanwords.

It is estimated that students learning Japanese spend three times as much time studying as those learning English or French.

Arabic also poses a lot of difficulties. Vowels are not used when writing, but consonants have four spelling options depending on their position in the word. Nouns and verbs have to be studied in singular, dual and plural. The nouns themselves have three cases and two genders, and the verb in a sentence is placed before the predicate.

The dialects of Arabic are also of greater complexity, as they can vary as much as modern European languages differ from each other.

The easiest languages

Despite the fact that the English language has a lot of nuances (for example, words are often read differently from how they are written, and a lot of verbs are conjugated incorrectly), it has a simple grammar. Besides, in Everyday life people often encounter English in songs, films, brands and products on supermarket shelves. Getting to know this language better will not be so difficult.

Spanish is also quite easy to learn. The pronunciation is very similar to English, however, unlike the language of the UK and the USA, in Spanish the spelling of words coincides with their pronunciation. The sentence structure in this language is also easy to learn.

For a Russian-speaking person, learning other languages of the Slavic group will not be very difficult, and the closer they are to their native language, the easier the learning will be. You can learn Ukrainian and Belarusian the fastest; Bulgarian and Czech are somewhat more difficult. Polish is not considered a simple language - it has seven cases, and its grammar is replete with exceptions to the rules.

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 calls the most difficult languages 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 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 much 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, related to Semitic group Hebrew and Arabic were on different levels difficulties. This pattern is also true for speakers of both languages. As a study by scientists from the University of Haifa showed, texts in Arabic native language more difficult to read than for Jews and English (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. Wherein right hemisphere is responsible for intuition and is able to “understand” metaphors, that is, words and phrases with a veiled meaning, while the left 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 in 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 their native speech. In English-speaking subjects, only left hemisphere, and the Chinese have both.

Today there are about 6,000 languages in the world. Some are simple, some are more complex. And there are those that for foreigners are more like a cryptographic code than a language of communication. Here are the 10 most difficult languages to learn.

10. Tuyuka

“Think before you speak,” we were often told as children. But in the Tuyuca language, spoken by the Indians living in the Amazon, they always think about what they are talking about. After all, in the Tuyuka language there are special verb endings that allow the listener to understand how the speaker knows what he is talking about. And there is no way to do without them: the language demands it! So when you say something like “a woman is washing clothes,” you must add, “I know because I saw it myself.” In addition, this language has from 50 to 140 classes of nouns. The Tuyuka language is agglutinative, which means that one word can mean an entire phrase. And two whole words meaning the pronoun “we” - inclusive and exclusive.

The Abkhaz language has only three vowel sounds - a, ы and aa. The remaining vowels, denoted in writing by separate letters - e, o, i, u, are obtained from a combination of other vowels and consonants. The Abkhaz language compensates for its vocal poverty with an abundance of consonants: in literary language there are 58 of them, and in the Bzyb dialect there are as many as 67. By the way, the Abkhaz alphabet based on the Cyrillic alphabet was created in 1862, and three years later the Abkhaz primer was released. The manner of Abkhazians starting a word with the letter “a” has been joked about many times. But this prefix, or in common parlance a prefix, performs the same function in the Abkhaz language as the definite article in English. It is placed before all nouns, and according to the rules of the Abkhaz language, it is added to borrowed words too. So “the death of the air squadron” is not a joke.

Some Khoisan languages are endangered, and many have already become extinct. But still, approximately 370 thousand people speak these very unusual dialects. The fact is that in the languages spoken in southern Africa around the Kalahari Desert, there are so-called clicks or clicking consonants. The term “Khoisan” itself was constructed from words in the Khoisan Nama language: “Khoi” in it means person, and “San” means “Bushman”. Initially, this term was used to designate the physical-racial type of these peoples, and only much later, the American linguist Joseph Greenberg applied the term to the macrofamily of languages that use clicking sounds. Recently, genetic scientists confirmed the ancient isolation of the Khoisan people from the rest of humanity and discovered that the tribes living north and south of the Kalahari have been isolated from each other for at least 30 thousand years.

7. Finnish

Anyone who has tried to learn all fifteen Finnish cases and more than a hundred conjugations and personal forms of the verb will agree that the Finnish language is difficult. The Finns don't just burn their hearts with verbs - they inflect the verb like a noun! Add to this the alternation of consonants, an abundance of suffixes and mysterious postpositions, and verb control that is difficult for a foreigner - and it seems like it’s time to fall into despair. But don't rush: Finnish a lot of comfort for a diligent student. Words are heard, written and read exactly the same - there are no unpronounceable letters here. The stress always falls on the first syllable, and the category of gender is completely absent, which is quite capable of warming the soul of a supporter of equality. Finnish has several past tenses, but no future tense. Experts on national character claim that this is because Finns are accustomed to answering for the words spoken, and if a Finn has promised, he will definitely do it.

6. Chinese

The newest dictionary of the Chinese language, Zhonghua Zihai, compiled in 1994, contains - are you sitting? — 85,568 hieroglyphs. It would be more correct, however, to speak not about the Chinese language, but about the Chinese branch of languages, which unites many dialects, but there are still no easy ones among them. Take the hieroglyphs: as a consolation, we can immediately say that not all of the 85-odd thousand are actively used in modern language: the lion's share of them is found only in the commemorative literature of various Chinese dynasties and is no longer used in practice. For example, the hieroglyph "se", meaning "chatty", which consists of 64 strokes. However, today’s hieroglyphs are not so simple: for example, the hieroglyph “nan”, which means “stuffy nose”, is represented by 36 lines. Unlike happy Europeans who learn a few dozen letters, a resident of the Celestial Empire, in order to even begin to read, must memorize, at worst, at least 1,500 hieroglyphs. But you also have to learn how to draw each hieroglyph. Oh, you are heavy, Chinese letter!

The champion in verb forms is, of course, the language of the American Indians Chippewa, or, as they are more often called, Ojibwe. Linguists call the Chippewa language the southwestern dialect of the Ojibway language itself. So, in this language there are as many as 6 thousand verb forms! But even with all the complexity of this language, you, of course, know a couple of words from it: these are, for example, the words “wigwam” or “totem”. Henry Longfellow's epic poem is based on the legends of the Ojibwe people. The American classic used myths, place names and even words from the Ojibwe language, but like any outsider he was not able to take everything into account. So the mistake is right there on the cover: the legendary Ojibwe hero is called Nanobozho, because Hiawatha is a character from Iroquois mythology.

4. Eskimo

Are you familiar with the word “igloo”, which means the Eskimos’ winter home, built from blocks of snow or ice? Then congratulations: you know a word from the Eskimo language. It also rightfully takes its place of honor among the most difficult languages in the world: the Guinness Book of Records claims that it has 63 present tense forms, and simple nouns in it have 252 inflections. The term “inflection” in linguistics refers to different types changes to words or roots. Let’s just correct the Guinness Book: modern linguists do not distinguish the Eskimo language. Apparently, we are talking about the entire Eskimo branch of the Eskimo-Aleut languages. But the world record registrar is not mistaken about the main thing: all Eskimo languages are extremely complex: for example, up to 12 grammatical categories can be expressed in one verbal form using suffixes. Speakers of this language think figuratively: the word “Internet” in it is expressed by the term “ikiaqqivik”, which means “journey through layers.”

The number of languages spoken by the indigenous peoples of Dagestan cannot be accurately counted. We can only say that 14 of them have writing. The most complex of them and, according to the Guinness Book of Records, one of the most complex in the world is Tabasaran. The language of the Lezgin branch of the Nakh-Dagestan family of languages holds the world record for the number of cases - there are from 44 to 52 of them in the Tabasaran language! It has 54 letters and 10 parts of speech, and there are no prepositions, but postpositions are used instead. So that life does not seem like honey to a student of the Tabasaran language, there are as many as three dialects in the language. But the Tabasaran dictionary contains a lot of borrowings. The mountain residents borrowed ancient household, military and craft terminology from the Farsi language. The Tabasarans borrowed religious and scientific terms from Arabic. And the Russian language shared modern socio-political, scientific and technical vocabulary with Tabasaran. Just don't forget. that all these words change in more than 50 cases!

2. Navajo

The idea of using complex languages to transmit encrypted messages came to the Americans back in the First World War. world war: At that time, Choctaw Indians served in the US Army. During World War II they took advantage of this experience. And in addition to the complex Basque language, they began to transmit messages in the Navajo language. Fortunately, there were enough native speakers of this complex language, who also spoke English, but there was no written language in the language, and therefore no dictionaries at all. “Windtalkers,” that is, “speakers with the wind,” as the Navajo code talkers called themselves, were even forced to invent new words that were previously absent in their language. For example, the plane was called “ne-ahs-ya”, that is, “owl”, the submarine was called “besh-lo”, literally “iron fish”. And the Navajo signalmen called Hitler “posa-tai-wo,” that is, “crazy a white man" In addition to vowels and consonants, this language has four more tones - high, low, rising and falling. Particularly complex in the Navajo language are verb forms, which consist of a stem to which derivational and inflectional prefixes are added. The fascist himself will break his head!

1. Basque

In this unique, unlike any other European language, very ancient concepts have been preserved. For example, the word “knife” literally means “a stone that cuts,” and “ceiling” means “the roof of a cave.” We are talking about a language that its speakers call Euskara, and we call the Basque language. It is a so-called isolated language: it does not belong to any known language family. Now it is spoken and written by approximately 700 thousand people living for the most part on a coastal strip 50 kilometers wide from the Spanish city of Bilbao to the city of Bayonne in France. The Basque language is classified as an agglutinative language - this is what linguists call languages that use suffixes and prefixes to form new words, each of them carrying only one meaning. The Basque language dictionary contains about half a million words - approximately the same as in our great and mighty one. This is explained by the large number of synonyms and dialect variants. The obscurity and complexity of the Basque language played a positive role: during the Second World War, it was used by radio operators in the US Army.