25.10.2021
Alingua Author
It’s hard to compare languages to one another: they are divided into numerous categories and are characterised by numerous characteristics. Difficulty level is definitely one of them. Does it mean “easy” languages are somehow worse than those perceived as “difficult”? Not really – every single one of over 7000 languages present in the world has years of history, tradition, and cultural identity behind it. Moreover, each of them has easier and more challenging aspects: a language with relatively simple grammar can come with tricky pronunciation. What are the most difficult languages in the world – and what is so challenging about them? If we look deeper into this issue, we will immediately realise that various lists of world’s most difficult languages do not differ much. No wonder – the criteria allowing us to assess a language’s difficulty remain strongly subjective. Usually, a language with complicated grammatical structure, extensive lexicon or complicated alphabet is deemed to be demanding. It may also be characterised by complex pronunciation rules. Another way to assess the difficulty of a language is to check the number of hours needed to master it. As we can see, the above-mentioned criteria aren’t precise, which doesn’t make it any easier to unanimously arrange the languages by difficulty level. Languages of chilly north – Finnish and Icelandic Inventing Quenya, one of the languages of the Middle Earth, J.R.R. Tolkien took inspiration from, i.e., Finnish. Indeed, this language – which belongs to the Finno-Ugric language group – has a nice, melodic sound. At that, it comes with a relatively complicated grammatical structure (15 cases) and a challenging lexical pattern (Finnish is an agglutinative language, which can be easily noticed with words such as kaksikymmentäyksi). Icelandic alphabet, on the other hand, features characters that we are unlikely to see in other writing systems (ð, Þ i æ). The language itself has complex grammar and unique lexicon, which is a result of the country’s long-term isolation from external influences and linguistic purism…