5 REALLY Hard Languages for English Speakers

💪🏼 No foreign language is impossible to learn. If you put in enough time and effort, you can definitely get fluent in ANY language you want. But... I must admit that SOME languages are hard. Really, REALLY hard. 😰 In this video, I share 5 of the most difficult languages for native speakers of English, including one that I have learned myself (which you will hear me speak later in the video).
😬 WE GOOFED!
In this video, we claim that Navajo is the most widely spoken North American indigenous language. Nahuatl, rather, has more than 1.5 million speakers, mostly living in Mexico!
📖 LEARN A LANGUAGE THROUGH THE POWER OF STORY
Stories are the best way I have found to learn ANY language (even the difficult ones). Forget the boring textbooks and time-wasting apps and learn a language the natural, effective way with one of my story-based courses.
👉🏼bit.ly/storylearningcourses
📺 WATCH NEXT:
Top 5 Easiest Languages To Learn For English Speakers
👉🏼 • Top 5 Easiest Language...
How Navajo Code Talkers Helped Win WWII (The Unbreakable Code)
👉🏼 • This Secret Language H...
📚 RESOURCES MENTIONED:
Even the toughest languages can be cracked through the power of story. Learn how with my free StoryLearning® Kit! 👉🏼 iwillteachyoualanguage.com/kit
✍🏼 BLOG VERSION:
Want to read about even more difficult languages? Click here:
👉🏼 bit.ly/11hardestlanguages
⏱ TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 - Intro
0:18 - Hard Language #5
4:57 - Hard Language #4
9:12 - Hard Language #3
11:43 - Hard Language #2
15:45 - Hard Language #1
📜 SOURCES & FEATURED CLIPS:
WIKITONGUES: Ioanna speaking Greek
• Video
The trick to pronouncing Gamma (Γ,γ) & Chi (Χ,χ) | Easy Greek 9
• The trick to pronounci...
WIKITONGUES: Lolly speaking Zulu
• WIKITONGUES: Lolly spe...
How to pronounce Zulu Clicks with Sakhile from Safari and Surf - Wilderness Adventures
• How to pronounce Zulu ...
WIKITONGUES: Orsolya speaking Hungarian
• WIKITONGUES: Orsolya s...
Navajo President speaks
• Navajo President speaks
Navajo Consonants
• Video
HOW TO SPEAK NAVAJO
• HOW TO SPEAK NAVAJO 1_...
WIKITONGUES: Joyce speaking Cantonese
• WIKITONGUES: Joyce spe...

[@storylearning]

Even the toughest languages can be cracked through the power of story. Learn how with my free StoryLearning Kit! 👉🏼 bit.ly/freestorylearningkit

[@salah777]

Arabic has more sounds than Greek and the Arabic grammar is much difficult

[@ulical]

Where did you get the data proving that these languages are the hardest for English speakers to learn? I can tell you that, in the US military, languages are placed into categories (Category 1, Category 2, etc...) with the hardest being placed in Category 4. Those languages are Arabic, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese Mandarin. Of these four languages, Arabic has by far the lowest graduation rate, primarily because of the grammar and the difficulty for English speakers to pronounce Arabic sounds properly.

[@salah777]

@@ulical yes for example the sound ض do not exist in any other language and there are other hard sounds like ق ص ط خ ع ظ which are difficult for western people to pronouce

[@nightslasher9384]

Could have warned me about spiders… I accidentally tosses my phone on the wall because of that. >^

[@ulical]

@@salah777 Yes, that's completely correct. I speak Arabic myself and the sounds of those letters are what usually get people.

[@Pakanahymni]

The true "hardest" languages are probably unstudied minority languages in Africa, Americas and Asia, where you'd have to be a trained field linguist to even begin documenting the language in order to learn it.

[@cheersfor6323]

Nailed it

[@lisanarramore222]

I'm sure one day Olly will make a video about the hardest languages on earth. 🙂

[@karlmakhwa4182]

Great point! I'm kind of at the in-between stage, having become interested in the indigenous languages of Russia and the Caucasus, and I'm learning one primarily with the help of native speakers because of the obvious dearth of resources.

[@SaeSaeyoungyoung]

In Guatemala we have the Kaqchikel language as an obligatory class. Nobody in my class speaks kaqchikel, like, for real. So, kaqchikel is obligatory because the goverment added it to avoid losing the language. BUT, most of our schools don't really care about teaching it. Our teachers aren't really people who speak the language, they're mostly *ladinos* without any training in the language, they just show what is on their books. Kaqchikel is not the only language in Guatemala, we have A LOT, and a lot of them are just losing speakers because in our country, instead of trying to acknoledge and love them, racism wins. Kinda sad, i would really like to understand kaqchikel :(.

[@laur-unstagenameactuallyca1587]

yes very true. i wonder where the Hadza tribe's language would fit on the list for English speakers

[@pinecone_88]

for those who don’t have time: #1 cantonese #2 navajo #3 hungarian #4 zulu #5 greek

[@carendosagomi6440]

*Laughs in Polish*

[@sara.o_c]

*laughs in Arabic*

[@HawaiiYou88]

Laughs in Vietnamese

[@lucinka1306]

Laughs in Czech

[@ValDarArts]

Laughs in URDU lmao

[@edim108]

As a Slavic language speaker, it sounds like Greek might actually be one of the easier foreign languages to learn for us. A good bit of similar grammar, mostly similar phonetics and writing system that is pretty straight forward to get a hang of if you already know Cyrillic. It's a lot more familiar feeling that English or German grammar at least, and has the added benefit of making you sound smart, even when you're ordering a gyros in a takeout spot 😂

[@stopthelightskinguilt.3775]

Lol like me a native English speaker German is soo freaking easy 😅I love it. It really depends on your mother tongue to determine what’s and easy language to learn.

[@rosseslife5887]

@@stopthelightskinguilt.3775 fax

[@fionaslifechannel]

@@stopthelightskinguilt.3775 ehm well me as a native german speaker i am always wondering what English native speakers are trying to say in German because it sound so off 😅 It may be you are different but yeah thats my perspective 😊

[@stopthelightskinguilt.3775]

@@fionaslifechannel lol I’m sure it does sound off 😂

[@fionaslifechannel]

@@stopthelightskinguilt.3775 Yeah your right 😂

[@AbbieLo925]

As a native Cantonese speaker, I hope people won't be scared off from learning Cantonese, it's really an interesting language. But I'm really struggling when I want to teach my foreign friends Cantonese as I don't know how I learn it myself. We didn't have "lessons" in class that teach the grammar, pronunciation etc of it, instead when we're in class, we just learn a similar word if we ever encounter a new word. My whole Cantonese learning experience is 100% immersive (though I know that there's definitely some kind of classes that you can take to learn the rules), so yeah, being immersed into a Cantonese environment ins important.

[@patcountryball_lover]

You live in Hong Kong like me

[@seard8442]

其實粵語最精髓的地方是粗口w

[@thedustwhispered]

my mother is from HK, and while i can understand it mostly, i just can't recall how to speak when i have to speak (the vocabulary, the grammar.. i forget it all). there are very few opportunities for overseas chinese to immerse as you suggested, or at least without guidance. in any case i ended up better at speaking mandarin..

[@sanaxthetic]

@@seard8442 xD

[@kikiww198]

Can I say Cantonese is my mother language? I could speak Cantonese until I was six years old, but when I went to primary school and everyone spoke Mandarin,(our school on mainland are all Mandarin environment) 🥲 I forget how to speak Cantonese

[@ronweasley1354]

Knowing how to read Cyrillic makes Greek writing make a lot more sense

[@bhami]

I think of Cyrillic as 60% Latin, 20% Greek, and 20% its own thing.

[@akl2k7]

And then there's the Coptic alphabet, which is Greek's with a few extra symbols, though that's only useful for one ancient, dead language.

[@theKRUGMEISTER]

I was thinking the same thing. Every character he showed I was like “oh yeah that’s how the Russians pronounce it too”

[@highviewbarbell]

No really, i can read cyrillic like the back of my hand and looking at Greek is like alien writing to me, and I've already spent several days trying to understand and pronounce it where cyrillic took about 30 minutes to master

[@magroves]

Not at all to me :( I know both alphabets well, some conversational Russian and took a year of Greek. My mom's family is Greek, my YiaYia taught me the alphabet as a kid, sang me to bed with feggariki mou lambro. I still have trouble reading Greek words. The letters can stand for so many things. υ can even make a "f" sound. ευχαριστώ Ζευς etc. I had no clue it could sound like f, i was taught it was a vowel that sounded like "ee" In short, there are lots of little quirks about modern Greek and it takes more than a simple cursory "learning the rules" to be able to pronounce it. I think the rules might have been simple once upon a time but the language evolved, just like English and not every evolution is treated the same way in spelling. I wish it was more simple "this always makes this sound" but there are so many tricky moments

[@yeungyuetyancharlotte8972]

I feel like people who are born speaking Cantonese are so lucky. It’s just that it’s like one of the hardest languages to learn and we automatically learn it when our language-learning ability is the highest-merely newborn. Also, most places that speak Cantonese also speaks mandarin and English, like Hong Kong and Macau, therefore we know three languages by heart since we were babies and we don’t even need to put that much effort. (Respect to those who struggle)

[@ShinChan-ke5ei]

香港人？👁👄👁

[@__Poli_]

Me too, I speak Cantonese, Chinese, and English And I totally understand

[@weirddude9832]

Same i learn Cantonese from my dad and all the relatives during Chinese new year . I know Chinese and English and Malay too

[@NecronHandlee]

gifted basically

[@EG_800]

Yea I understand but it’s so hard to learn that I get like 62% in my tests

[@AVANGuAR]

Depends on the origin of English speakers. For Americans the most difficult language is Geography

[@dutchessdreamer4543]

I took World Geography classes in high school (we learned about the culture as well). I am American.

[@praneethmashetty591]

@@dutchessdreamer4543 it's a joke bro chill(i'm american too btw before you say anything)

[@WilhelmFreidrich]

Weak joke.

[@saulhinojozagalvan3227]

Facts

[@indetif839]

Sometimes it seems like English is the most difficult language for Americans.

[@candyflossz099]

As a native Cantonese speaker I’m very proud Cantonese is on the top of the list Also he’s not just simply ranking languages according to their difficulties but gives full introduction about that language and reasons

[@Lemon-sz4sy]

Same I'm a native Cantonese speaker too I'm born in hk

[@erinwashere3757]

I often wake up to my partner saying “good morning” in Cantonese before he remembers I’m merely an English speaker. I asked him to teach me Cantonese. He said good luck 😂

[@arvin7386]

cantonese is my native language

[@szecr]

@@arvin7386 same

[@erinwashere3757]

@@MichaelTheophilus906 I am super confused about your reply. What does my comment have to do with my gender?

[@erinwashere3757]

@@MichaelTheophilus906 I mean it doesn’t. Anyone can refer to the person they are in a relationship with as a partner. Even if I was in a same sex relationship, what would that have to do with my comment? It doesn’t change the context at all

[@doger944]

If you have a dedicated native speaker to teach you, it probably won't be as impossible as you think. It's worth learning your partner's native language, just stick at it!

[@annalise9011]

Me: Laughs in native Cantonese Funny thing, English is actually considered a hard language to master for us, so I'm very proud of the fact that I can speak both languages fluently and without accents. Yay!

[@otakuforever9165]

Well it's not really the case for us arabic people. I don't know why but it's kind of easy to learn for native speakers even if we don't have the same alphabet ( I speak for the majority, cuz I have a lonnnnng way to go, i'm just 15 ^^" )

[@inachan1540]

@@otakuforever9165 الأمر يتعلق المخارج الحروف العربية التي تسمح لنا بنطق كل الحروف مهما كانت صعبة + عند العرب ذكاء لغوي 😏😏

[@otakuforever9165]

ذكاء لغوي..... احب هذه العبارة 😁 لاول مرة ساعتبر نفسي ذكية في مادة ما 😜

[@inachan1540]

@@otakuforever9165 العرب عموما يحق لهم يفخرون بفصاحتهم وطلاقة ألسنتهم😏👌🏻

[@EG_800]

English is not that hard actually *gets 95-100% in tests*

[@bananaeater8458]

Cantonese is a very difficult language to understand. Even my grandma, who spoke two Hakka dialects, putonghua, Hokkien and could understand Shanghainese had problems understanding Cantonese. She understood some of course, because she had a lot of exposure to it through Cantonese dramas, but her understanding was still very limited.

[@zyrob3435]

That's the opposite of my parents' experience though. Both my parents, who speak Mandarin and Hokkien, picked up Cantonese fairly easily from watching lots of Cantonese dramas in their teenage years. They told me it was very common among their generation. They still retain much understanding of Cantonese now though they struggle with speaking it.

[@wonyoung_i]

My dad was from Shanghai and moved to hk when he was 10 I was born in hk and Cantonese is my first language it’s hard to switch from canto to mandarin my English is fluent tho

[@steveunderwood3683]

I know a few people from northern China who moved to HK in their teens who told me it was easier learning English as a Mandarin speaker than it was for them to learn Cantonese.

[@richard999]

I was amused to find Hungarian at number 3. I know this is traditionally a difficult language but I lived in Hungary for two years and became quite proficient for a non-native especially in pronunciation. Hungary is a lovely country and I really enjoyed my time there.

[@Nerurin0]

We're glad you enjoyed your time! ☺️

[@kevhynaleks2631]

Yes, to speak on basic not so difficult. And Hungarians adore you, if you try to speak their language...

[@kellysoo8615]

Richard, I agree. I lived in Hungary as a 'diak' decades ago in college. The pronunciation is relatively easy for an English speaker. Grammar and everything else difficult. It is an agglutinative language and I think many English/Romance lang speakers initially find that characteristic difficult. But as a Korean speaker, I found this aspect intuitive. Enjoyed my time there. Vislat.

[@TheHesseJames]

It is only difficult if compared to learning another Indo-European language as a native Indo-European speaker. I think Navajo and Zulu are much more difficult.

[@RiverWorksCo]

​@@kellysoo8615yeah I guess Asians have less difficulty learning Hungarian than a native English speaker. After all, even if it was a long time ago, we also come from that part of the world.

[@Abiodun92]

Hungarian sounds weirdly nostalgic to my Finnish ears, it's how they pronounce the words, the vowel harmony and the way the language "flows" it has a very Finno-Ugric quality to it, despite being completely unintelligible for us. Every time I hear Hungarian from a distance, I mistake it for Finnish until I get closer and then it becomes clear that it isn't Finnish. 🇫🇮❤️🇭🇺

[@Julieseven]

I learned this about fifteen years ago when I worked with a woman with Hungarian roots. She said the exact same thing about Finnish. She told me that she watched the TV coverage of the ice hockey world championship in Finland, and she first thought that the Finnish commentators were speaking Hungarian because the sound of the words were so familiar to her. And because I've always been a language nerd, I did some research and found out that Hungarian is the only Finno-Ugric language spoken in central Europe, and no one knows why. Absolutely fascinating!

[@sarapaltan8207]

Im from Hungary, and it is very difficult for you to understand what we are saying lol

[@Manoka0923]

I agree

[@Manoka0923]

I agree @Sára Paltán

[@dfrose2120]

Moro miten menee

[@arjay9745]

I knew Hungarian would be on this list, but it's not as hard as the description makes it sound. I learned it to practically native level in just a couple years. The nice thing about Hungarian is that every single rule has a purpose. Nothing is there just to frustrate you. Everything is there to help you do something or accomplish something in communication. Once you learn what it's FOR, you realize you've just been liberated a little further in expressing yourself. Seriously, I like speaking it better than my own mother tongue because there's just nothing it can't do. Also, it's freaking regular. Nothing stupid to memorize 'just because'.

[@arieltineo1605]

Please Help me!! Could you share with me a pdf book to learn Hungarian? It can also be a website or a channel on KZbin

[@ImSlayah]

How does someone go about learning Hungarian? Would you mind sharing how you did it?

[@arjay9745]

@@arieltineo1605 I learned it 30 years ago, before the Internet, so I can't help you there, though I'll look around maybe and get back to you. I had a three-pronged attack myself. 1. I bought this weird, old communist-era grammar book that was, in fact, brilliant, because it recognised that structure will be a foreigner's main challenge, and though the sentences were nonsense, it carefully built up its examples one bit at a time to convey how simple thoughts are layered into more complex ones; in parallel to that, I read children's books, because Hungarians have written some amazing ones, particularly those by Lázár Ervin and Janikovszky Éva; and finally, I watched loads of those old-fashioned, completely chill, low-budget/high-quality Hungarian TV shows like Másfélmillió Lépés Magyarországon, A Desszert, and Lehetetlen!. Hungarian is spoken slowly as a rule and words are carefully articulated, so its easy to pick out the vocabulary you've learned from your books, spoken in context.

[@arjay9745]

@@ImSlayah Beyond repeating what I just wrote in response to Ariel, I'd mention that I didn't push myself to start speaking right away. Olly's right that it's so different, you sort of have to let go of your mother tongue a bit and your native way of thinking and be more like a baby starting from zero. The reason more people don't succeed in learning Hungarian, in my opinion, is that they try to compare words and sentences to their native tongues, which is something that works for languages closer on the tree to their own. Also, Hungarian has far fewer words than English altogether, but uses more on average in everyday speech, so there's a hump to get over before you can start. I was almost mute for a year or so, just watching, reading, and listening. Then one day I opened my mouth and that was it, I was off.

[@user-ry2nq7ng5e]

I concur. Hungarian has a tidy structure and quite intuitive when you get into it, unlike Russian that even the exceptions form new rules that again have exceptions. Also lots of crazy rules that you need to memorize. The textbooks in Hungarian usually don't present the many cases with their names, because, as you said, there is a purpose for each rule, ..case suffix etc.. Nevertheless Russian is interesting and fascinating in its own way. I think I will be brushing up on my Hungarian soon as well.

[@nellitheretrogamer8666]

Finland here. One of the hardest things about learning foreign languages, in my experience, is when something that is very common in your own language is missing from the other language. One of the difficult things about English for me is that English doesn't have genitive forms for the words "this" and "that". As a result, some things that are very easy to say in Finnish sometimes result in ridiculously complex sentence structures when translated into English.

[@SiiriRebane]

@@JimCarner yes, please? i mean, nelli the retro etc. i'm neither english or finnish, but can understand some; i guess in english you just use 'it' and genitive 'its' when you need it, or 'of this' or 'of that'?

[@user-zh8hf8bq3x]

Well, Finnish is a very powerful language. For example on word: "saadakseni" ( saada = to get; ksi/e = in order to or at the aim of; ni = me ) translates to any other language with at least five words: "in order for me to get".

[@nellitheretrogamer8666]

@@JimCarner for example, in Finnish I can say "tämän näköinen" which translates into English as "something that looks like this". The Finnish words literally sort of translate as "this's looking", with the genitive form of "this" in the beginning there. There's a lot of things like this... for example, in Finnish I would just say "tämän värinen", but if I try to say it in English, it would become "something that is the same color as this". Grammatically, it is possible to say "the color of this" in English but no one really says it like that. By now I know that native speakers of English would simply say "this color" and would not feel the need to have the genitive there, but a Finnish speaker, especially someone who is still learning English, would try to form a genitive and when that is not possible, ends up having to form a much longer sentence.

[@vaenii5056]

When speaking / writing English the thing I miss the most are the particles such as -pa, -han, -kaan and so on. You can express many things with them depending on context and in Finnish they are used all the time. Sometimes they can be translated and sometimes not, but even when translated the translations are often somewhat clumsy approximations. The lack of these particles is also why Finns often sound blunt when speaking English - these are often used to soften questions, avoid the imperative and so on. Not to mention "intensifiers" which are also used very frequently. These are pretty much untranslatable even though they can significantly affect the feeling of a sentence.

[@samuelwaller4924]

@@nellitheretrogamer8666 as an american native english speaker, "the color of this" sounds perfectly fine to me. in fact I personally would be more likely to say that over "this color" as it is more laid back and matches my personality better. its a very subjective language lol

[@user-dd8ev2xr7f]

I’m Greek and the fist language I had to learn was english. The only thing that had me confused was the grammar, because our language is so flexible but English has a more straightforward way of expressing one’s feeling. Well whatever kisses from Greece 🇬🇷

[@za-mm]

the same for me, portuguese has a lot more of words that help you to express better

[@flyvez2303]

Greek is my favourite foreign language, greetings from Italy

[@FlorPerezLascano]

Αγαπώ τα ελληνικά!! Άρχισα να τα μαθαίνω το 2020 και έγινε εμμονή για μένα.

[@user-pp9lt7vy5c]

As a Greek I'm telling you, the funny thing is that we have words that sound the same but if you replace one letter, it changes the meaning totally! It may be difficult for a foreigner to learn it, although most of the medical and scientific terms and words used worldwide, have their roots in Ancient Greek!

[@oliversissonphone6143]

And Latin..?

[@user-pp9lt7vy5c]

@@oliversissonphone6143 Even Latin got influenced by Ancient Greek but ok... I m not gonna argue

[@whatsinthename21]

I learned all the greek Alphabets in my physics and mathematics classes. Lol And I'm interested in this language.

[@Jimboy12]

True

[@LegoCityFilms]

Panaglooths Tsoonhsh? I really tried to translate that with my own Greek ability and keyboard 😅😅

[@vilarinforte]

As someone from Poland i do feel really lucky, when compared to English speakers. Thanks to very melodic letters and nuances of my mother language I am able to literally speak in every language. I might not be able to learn them all, but our Polish tongues are flexible enough to spell literally everything!

[@Vaniego.]

Hej hej hej sokoły!

[@penguinbic]

Same for me, as a czech! :D

[@H4nn4H404]

To może być prawda This can be true

[@NiveaCow]

I still remember my Mandarin teacher being shocked how well I can pronounce all the sounds with no effort. She planned a week for phonetic practise and I pretty much nailed them on my first try. All the ż, dż, sz, ś sounds are in our language too, they are just spelled differently. But I was her first Polish student, she was used to teaching English speakers. ;)

[@sachimei959]

That's true. When I started learning Mandarin my teacher said that Polish people can grasp pronunciation cuz we are used to say "ch" "sz" etc.

[@crazybomb888]

as a cantonese speaker, i thank you for highlighting some of the most challenging aspects in cantonese that are often overlooked in other difficult language videos (e.g. synonyms, particles(!)). it is very obvious that these are coming from someone who has put in much effort in learning the language. hats off to you!

[@christopherlord3441]

Hats off to Olly for learning Cantonese. The only people I know who have managed it learned it as children. But I would add to his explanation of Navajo that it also has an incredibly complicated grammar, with a three-level aspect system that I would say makes it basically impossible for non-natives to learn.

[@Lemon-sz4sy]

ye that's kinda true coz I'm a Hong konger and I've NEVER heard a non native Cantonese speaker speak it perfectly

[@shaohtsai]

I managed to somewhat do the clicks, but combining them with actual sounds seems impossible. What a fascinating language!

[@bafanaramodibe1387]

😂 😂 It's not that hard once you practice them.

[@nightyonetwothree]

lol, have ezly do all the clicks, even they aren't even used in my language (russian). Just it was a fun to do these sounds when being a child.

[@fourteens2336]

It sounds so cool. Bit like dolphin language. :D

[@vuyisilemyeni6198]

Lol it's my native language and it's not that hard, maybe I'm biased since it's my language but Zulu isn't that hard tbh

[@ThapeloMKT]

@@vuyisilemyeni6198 i refuse say words starting with gq or gx

[@dancingddh8063]

I feel lucky to be a native Cantonese speaker. Can’t imagine others learning our language. It’s not just the 9 tones, there are many slangs that sometimes even I don’t understand. For those who are working hard to learn Cantonese, keep going don’t give up!

[@aotuman7879]

It really is, we don't have alphabets, each word have to be memorised and can only be learned by simply repeat writing that word everyday, even I'm Cantonese there are even some high - level word that I've never heard.

[@onewayraildex4827]

I found it kinda strange that they consider several consonant ending sounds, their own tones For example the ending sound K is considered a different tone like "black and white"黑白(yes I know it's in simplified) would be "Hak Bak" The ending sound of T like in 发出 or "Fat Chut" The ending sound of P like in 碟 or 级 “Dip or Kap”

[@dancingddh8063]

@@onewayraildex4827 I get what u mean that’s why many Cantonese speakers miss the ending sounds in english

[@bobollj6111]

I’m from HK :D

[@Hana-qs9zg]

It’s nice living in mainland because I’m exposed to mandarin and can detect Cantonese by the tones. I can understand some of the wording too due to understanding some mandarin. But overall the hardest part is understanding when someone is calling from waimai 😅

[@koeki7750]

Absolutely adore your effort in learning Cantonese, keep up the good work ! Love from Hong Kong ❤️

[@lisaahmari7199]

For anyone studying French, Spanish or Italian and feeling frustrated with the difficulty: force yourself for three days to study Mandarin, Russian or Greek. I promise you, you will running screaming back to your Romance language, embracing it and blubbering great gratitude for its simplicity! I do this any time I am feeling too challenged by French and Spanish. Works every time for me. I start sobbing within two hours of trying to learn Mandarin.....and am so relieved to go back to my mystifying Subjunctive. Even Verlan seems easy in comparison!😅🤣

[@stillnotstill]

Honestly? Not for everyone, I'd say. I'm a native English speaker. I took Latin in school. As an adult I moved from the USA to Canada. Because French is prevalent in Canada I tried to learn it and quickly became incredibly frustrated and stopped. Now I am trying to learn Mandarin and it feels so much more welcoming to me. I prefer tones and even trying to read over trying to memorize word endings and figure out pronunciation that doesn't make any sense to me. At least with Mandarin I know it's hard. With French I feel like it should be a little easier with my Romance language background but I look at all the endings and the letters that in my mind should. Not. Be. There. and I kind of freak out about it. Mandarin I feel willing to put in the work for.

[@lisaahmari7199]

@stillnotstill Maybe you have a gift for intonation! I sure wish I was the way you are, with Chinese! And that was a hilarious way to describe French and its spelling! It is how we all feel, too!😅

[@stillnotstill]

@@lisaahmari7199 Oh yay! I know not everyone turns on notifications / sees replies and I was hoping you would see 😄 And your kind reply made me smile. Hope you have a great day and best of luck on your language journeys!

[@lisaahmari7199]

@@stillnotstill You too!😊

[@dollypanda90]

French is my mother tongue, and I studied a lot of languages, I still believe French is the hardest. I even speak Japanese and let me tell you, it is far easier than French XD I even found Polish to be easier. Plus, in Canada, we have unique pronunciation and way of saying things that if you studied French from France, you will be lost here. I highly prefer to indulge myself into the 2000 kanji in Japanese rather than French verbs lol

[@Maya_Ruinz]

Greek sounds so beautiful, it really feels ancient in its sound.

[@beafoxxylady]

Has I’m ancient lool

[@liampos_21]

well i guess I am ancient now

[@user-ji9qo1qh5t]

Είναι πολύ ωραία γλώσσα, meaning "it's a beautiful language".

[@AFFoC]

It sounds like a latinized Slavic language.

[@mtmcommunity]

Heard this school in Nashville sing in Greek in this Coliseum and the echo was godly

[@saroltahajdu3599]

Im watching this as a Hungarian person, and I want to tell you guys that if you learn Hungarian then just don't give up. After a while you are going to find it so much easier. You can do it❤️

[@kezako6783]

I confirm : I learned it and the 6-10 first months felt like hell. After that, it became "easy" enough. Very logical, very few exceptions. Haven't practiced in 10 years so it's pretty much gone and I was never close to native level but I was fluent enough. I've been learning Japanese for 2 years now, I still don't feel like the worst part is behind me.

[@Daneelro]

My sister is a language teacher and her students include foreigners learning Hungarian, and their experience is similar. There is a lot to learn, but once you get the basic logic of the language, you get by. on the other hand, progressing to accent-free pronunciation and zero mistakes in conjugation still takes a long time. Also, in the reverse direction, while I would rate my written English as better than that of most native speakers, my English pronunciation is atrocious, which is not made easier by my familiarity with both British and American English (I shift between the two even mid-sentence and don't always know which is which).

[@sss1969]

thats so nice 💜

[@DayD1v3]

Im half Hungarian lol

[@Dr.Jegesmedve]

Amúgy ez igaz. Ha valaki az alapokat megtanulja nagyon könnyen elboldogul onnantól, mert logikus a nyelv és csak 3 igeidő van, ami könnyebbség az angollal szemben. A magyarban igazán az a nehéz, hogy rengeteg olyan kifejezés van, ami más nyelvekben nincs. English: Yes, It's real. If anyone learn the bases, he would be good because the language is logical and just have 3 tenses contrast to English. It is more difficult in Hungarian compared to other languages ​​that there are many more terms and idioms that cannot really be translated. Sorry for the not too good translate but I'm a beginner in English.

[@Cipotalp]

9:18 As a native Hungarian I can confirm.... Our language is really f***ng hard XD

[@deechsea]

Mind completely blown by Navajo. Neat! Thank you for including it.

[@BlankCanvas88]

My American friend moved to Hungary a few years ago, and I was astounded that about a couple years into her being there she put up a video of her interpreting an American's speech into Hungarian. She worked her butt off to get there! I'm so proud of her. :)

[@RobloxAdoptmeSupport]

Amazing! The best way to truly learn a new language is to live a couple years in the country.

[@RiverWorksCo]

Not many people have the courage to learn Hungarian after seeing its complexity, so tell her, well done. You probably did tell that to her already tho...😅

[@zakzag]

My wife is indonesian, speaking probably one of the easiest language of the world. She started the basic level course second time and still knows almost nothing. Which is mostly becausevof the teachers' skills and her diligence. But she learned english by herself. Hungarian is difficult.

[@duncanb4835]

Aquanet hairdos ...tits teeth and ass gets you ANYWHERE in the world 😅

[@Imamotherfreakingavocado]

I've been trying to learn Hungarian because my friend Karmen is from Hungary, so I want to be able to speak it so I can talk to her in her native language. I can say it's hard as hell man, I respect anyone who's learning it for sure

[@ateex8070]

Heyya, currently 8th main comment on this vid, Ar Jay, and the subcomments are talking about it and how he learned Hungarian himself. Maybe you could ask them if you happen to need some help ;)

[@lilianaj.1108]

keep it up! hello from Hungary 🇭🇺

[@noemifarkas1813]

Tudom, hogy nehéz, de a magyar egy nagyon szép nyelv;) I know it's hard, but hungarian is a beautiful language;) (Sorry, for bad english)

[@LegoCityFilms]

@@noemifarkas1813 no your English is great

[@noemifarkas1813]

@@LegoCityFilms Thank you:)

[@JimmyMidnite]

Good to know that, while Japanese (which I'm learning) is extremely complex, there's at least 5 languages harder for English speakers 🙂

[@vaenii5056]

The writing system in Japanese is difficult to learn, for obvious reasons, but other than that it shouldn't be more difficult than any other non Indo-European language for an English speaker.

[@JimmyMidnite]

@@vaenii5056 4 months later, I’d say the hardest parts are kanji and just getting used to the different verb and noun placement. On the upside, many of the sounds are similar to English.

[@tinalettieri]

English speakers who move to Israel have a really hard time learning Hebrew. My late husband had learned to read Hebrew well for his bar mitzva, even if he didn't know what he was reading he could recite perfectly. He struggled to speak for years until I told him, "look, you read well, start reading more and you'll learn, to speak better" and he did. hebrew grammar is really simple compared to many languages. I could speak better but couldn't read. He passed a little over 2 years ago so I lost my "eyes" so to speak. I HAD to learn to read and it is starting to come to me. I have some visual difficulty with some of the fonts but simple, modern ones are ok.

[@nerdyguy5086]

as a cantonese speaker, i actually have never even heard about the tone system. We just say things naturally.

[@caim3465]

Master Yoda!

[@alishanightshade3270]

Me too. Didn't learn that

[@kat1345]

lol same

[@Kiki15578]

I learn about the tone system during form 4 because of my cool Chinese teacher

[@gaming4K]

Exactly, you don't need the grammar rules to learn a language. 🤷🏻‍♂️

[@run2fire]

The Navajo language was instrumental in helping the USA defeat the Japanese in the Pacific theatre during WW2. Many Navajos were US Marines and they used their native language to transmit information that the Japanese could not understand. Watch the movie “Windtalkers”

[@danbrodt977]

And they took it one step further to make it even harder to decode. They would replace most military vocabulary with other words. For instance, they would replace the word "tank" with "turtle."

[@aeganratheesh]

...and they probably hold responsibility in fkin up the world

[@laur-unstagenameactuallyca1587]

@@aeganratheesh why would they hold responsibility for that you dummy. the US government is the one that nuked Naga&Hiroshima

[@lewjames6688]

Yep. SFMF.

[@bshbhyuh]

@@aeganratheesh American imperialism pre- and post-WWII doesn’t negate the fact that the 2nd World War itself was a just war. I’ll go on all day about how American imperialism screwed up different parts of the world, but the fight against literal monarcho-fascists and the fucking actual nazis was a net good. Those Navajo men bore no responsibility for US foreign policy regardless, so I don’t know why they’re being blamed here in your comment

[@FlorPerezLascano]

I really recommend everyone to learn modern greek. I was starting german because my favorite composer is Schubert when some day I watched a movie in greek and decided to drop german and give my full attention to greek. It is fascinating how it has so many ties with every european language through latin. It is also very logical, has science, mythology and many other interesting things. I started in 2020 and it became an obsession. It is like doing archaeology with a modern language. ❤️

[@siirsimaytaskran2714]

I am Turkish, but sometimes there are places where we have difficulty with words even in Turkish. 

[@emilianofuentes4129]

I, being a Mexican myself, would say Greek is easy to Spanish speakers to pronounce, besides it's the non-romance language most easy to understand or comprehend due to its similarities in pronounciation in common with the Castillian Spanish from Spain and also because of the many Greek-borrowed words we have in Spanish. Greek's numbered among the five languages I really want to learn (I'm studying English, Portuguese and I want to learn Italian, French and Greek) and actually I know how to read it, I mean, I know Greek alphabet, and not to mention its pronounciation, which is beautiful, and I also master it.

[@A-ID-A-M]

Not understand. Pronounce.

[@SaeSaeyoungyoung]

For real, i was like "this is like watching someone from spain-"

[@emilianofuentes4129]

@@A-ID-A-M We in Spanish have TONS of borrowed words from Greek, that's why I said 'understand', because I can understand a little of Greek. Perhaps it isn't easy to understand but to pronounce it really is to us.

[@YouAwakeYet]

@@emilianofuentes4129 really!? Like what words? I'm a Spanish speaker. I know we have tons of Arabic words but I didn't know we had Greek words

[@zara7478]

@@YouAwakeYet Because Spanish comes from latin, we have a lot of words that come from greek in our lexicon due to romans. Some words: Cadera, esqueleto, arteria, camaleón, sepia, dromedario, geranio, teatro, narciso, tragedia, comedia, monje, obispo, iglesia, Cristo, bodega, sandalia, geografía, psicología (y demás disciplinas/ciencias con el término logía) trigonometría, esfera, autonomía, rinoceronte, etc.

[@koveek]

The clicks alone isn't really a problem for me though. The problem starts when you need to use them in the middle of a word xD

[@mahatmaniggandhi2898]

exactly 😂

[@Emma.S.]

Imagine you’re in a stressful situation and have to talk real fast to a group of people, rapid clicks

[@Sthuthukile]

Well they're consonants, not just random sounds. They're part of the word

[@koveek]

@@Sthuthukile I know they are, it doesn't change the sense of me comment though. It's still hella difficult without practice 😂❤

[@medi06]

If you're referring about zulu, it's actually harder than you think. You use a specific click, and whist talking, if you're not use to it, you 'pronounce' the clicks wrong which then automatically the word is pronounced wrong

[@three-side-cube]

As a Cantonese native speaker. I'm surprised that Cantonese is the hardest language to learn for English speakers. I thought Mandarin will be one of the hardest languages to learn before I watch the video but never thought Cantonese will be the hardest.

[@daleneswanepoel7586]

Makes me feel super proud to be South African: most of us speak 2 languages (standard). A home language and then a language that is common in your your region so you can communicate with people that have another home language. So...I speak Afrikaans, English is my second language. We had Xhosa (with all those clicks that Zulu has) as a 3rd language in school.

[@firegaze21]

I tried to learn some basic Hungarian before taking a trip there. I thought my brain was suddenly broken because nothing would stick or make sense. I felt relieved when I discovered how different its family is, where it originated, and seeing it on many lists of hardest languages for native English speakers to learn. Kind of a fascinating history really.

[@clury9477]

Hey, Hungarian person here! We appreciate the effort that you put into learning some of our language. Even as a native speaker I have to admit that I get a few things mixed up sometimes so don't worry about it.

[@belstar1128]

I can understand some Hungarian but i have a hard time getting the grammar right.

[@magicofshootingstar5825]

I was sure to find Finnish in the list since everybody says it's hard for foreigners. Until there was Hungarian and I knew our language group had already been covered. 😂

[@zombiechocolate541]

Its funny, because as a Hungarian, i sometimes mindlessly switch thru foreign channels, to randomly find a "Hungarian one" later, to relalize its Finnish and i cant understand one word, just the vowel harmony and the flow of the speaking, is so similar, it makes me mistake it for Hungarian for a whole minute :D

[@forgottenforgetfulness6643]

Estonian is hard for foreigners too. Uralic languages in general. At least I find them difficult. 🇪🇪 🇫🇮 🇭🇺

[@FluffySylveonBoi]

Try Czech too ^^

[@tonipalm]

@@zombiechocolate541 :D I randomly clicked the video where she's speaking Hungarian and took me moment to catch that she's not speaking Finnish :D First I thought she's just having some Russian-type accent until I noticed I understood zero words. I think it's the vowel harmony and rhythm that fooled me. Estonian is easy to spot since they don't have vowel harmony although from Estonian us Finns can guess quite many words :)

[@prplt]

I'm Finnish learning Hungarian and I think Hungarian is much easier than Finnish, for example in Hungarian if you have an adjective+noun and you have to decline them the adjective doesn't change and only the noun does (whereas in Finnish you must decline all words) for example "new red car" = új piros autó (H) uusi punainen auto (FI) "in a new red car"= új piros autóban uudessa punaisessa autossa plus in Hungarian the declination is usually done just by adding an ending, whereas in Finnish you often have to change the middle of the word as well (like uusi became uudessa) another thing is that spoken Finnish is extremely different from standard written Finnish, for example in standard Finnish "I am" is "minä olen" but in spoken language most people would say "mä oon" (and this happens for many other verbs as well) whereas in Hungarian it's more or less the same one thing where Hungarian is more difficult tho is that many verbs have 2 forms depending on whether the action is definite or indefinite, in Finnish we have only 1 form

[@janettesinclair6279]

Wow! I am practising my Zulu "tics" and trying to remember my Navajo word precedence... What an interesting video, well done on learning Cantonese.

[@codyscott8687]

I worked on the Navajo rez for 2ish years and I learned some basic words, but the language is very difficult. But so beautiful to hear it spoken. A lot of the elderly are Navajo speaking only and translators were in high demand in the hospitals

[@stelinakritsepis2813]

I am so glad to see and hear from people that are interested in greek language. I am greek and i love all these reactions and laughs about our language. In Greece children start learning foreign languages by the age of seven or eight or later at nine. I started learning french at six and english at 9. I told one of my foreign friends and she told me " THEY ARE TORTURING YOU!!!!! SO YOUNG!?" . Well that's our reality. Not many people speak our language so we have to learn theirs. #GREEKGIRL

[@sugakookies8063]

It’s also best to learn languages when you’re young

[@atomicdancer]

2:40 *laughs in Greek*

[@Jimboy12]

Not always at that big degree but it's true

[@philomelodia]

They should teach you Spanish. Pronouncing our language would be as easy as falling out of bed for you. We have the same sounds.

[@ddpmk355]

@@philomelodia The first time I heard Spanish I was 6 and I asked my father why they were speaking so strange that I couldn’t understand. He told me it was another language, not Greek and I insisted it wasn’t!! 😄😄😄 Now when I hear European (not Latin American) Spanish sometimes it takes me 2-3 seconds to realize it is not Greek.

[@Danny30011980]

I am learing Hungarian for 8 years now too and love it. It is not easy alright, lots of cases, lots of different endings, the conjugations in definite and indefinite is defo a challenge. But I love the sound of it

[@from_wonderland]

Szia, hogyhogy magyart tanulsz?

[@goldpaulike5304]

@@from_wonderland With talent

[@mila0525]

@@goldpaulike5304 the translation is wrong

[@sakuraogami9946]

@@from_wonderland Ugye, én se értem, minek tanulna bárki magyart? Ronda nyelv, és még csak nem is hasznos. English translation: I know right, I don't get it either, why would anyone study Hungarian? It's an ugly language, and it's not even useful either. (native Hungarian over here)

[@from_wonderland]

@@sakuraogami9946 nem azért kérdeztem, én szeretem a magyar nyelvet 😅

[@joyousmonkey6085]

I'm glad you discussed Navajo. This wonderful language is well worth exploring for its use of roots for building up more complex ideas, and its verb system. The Navajo Verb by Faltz is absolutely mind-blowing. Quite a few of the other Native American languages are similarly complicated when compared to English and the Indo-European family. Lakota, Cree, Tlingit, Lushootseed, Haida... just to name a few. There are linguistic concepts totally alien to English. For example, quite a few Native American languages have 4 persons against the 3 persons of English (I/You/He-She-It and then He-She_it who isn't here but is being referred to in relation to someone who is here.) Surprised you didn't mention Basque. Loads of wonderful cases and as a language isolate, it's a breath of fresh air. Even more clicky than isiZulu or isiXhosa - try Ju/'hoan. It has 4 basic clicks. Another Khoisan language is Hoa, which has 5 basic clicks, including a bilabial plosive. And if you want a fiendishly complicated writing system, try hieroglyphic Maya.

[@oliviersavard8676]

i was waiting for basque as well

[@user-jh9rq4zc7v]

Your Cantonese sounds so good! One of the best aspects of Mandarin and Cantonese is, it's one syllable per word (or at least, there's a one syllable expression for most meanings), which means one word can be placed on one note in music. For Contonese, the tones can also match the tones of notes, which is grainy. Although some styles and genres were imported from the west and Japan, Cantonese lyrics just hit different.

[@eleniyo1992]

As a native Greek speaker I think that Greek is damn hard to master academically, like spelling and intense rules of grammar, but easy enough to learn in a conversational level. As long as you get the pronunciation right, you can pretty much say anything and learn pretty fast the common speech

[@user-it6qf1uy4t]

Well depends on whom you ask because if you ask a native friend and not a tutor, teacher or someone close to those professions or a relative you might have who knows greek ,you will be taught the basic curses like Malaka, Ilithie, gamisou etc. (I say this because i am a greek myself and i have seen things that confirm this)

[@TarisSinclair]

As a non-native non-speaker (!!!) who had ventured to Greece for a number of years to spend summer in the Cyclades (Andros stole my heart), I picked up enough just to get by on a daily basis. Conversational? No way. But I learned enough to not be totally lost without an interpreter. Making the effort is what counts. Even if my Greek was atrocious, with vocabulary of maybe 200 words, mixing declinations, conjugation, and tenses, once locals saw that I made the effort to learn and pick up even more, they were eager to help and their attitude made a 180 turn from "another vacationer" to "actually someone I like".

[@blacktiger2154]

I recently met a native German speaker who learned Greek and speaks it pretty good and I must say that I have so much respect towards them, because in my opinion as a native Greek speaker it actually is very difficult. I mean, learning a couple of words and phrases, ok, but actually conversing with someone, nonetheless on an intellectual level, is something I completely understand why many struggle with.

[@user-hl4vl8qd7h]

Greeks is a hard language to learn even to start a small conversation!! It has many grammatical rules, thousands of words and a flexibilty to use and make new ones complaining two or three together! Also we use the same words with different meaning so it must be really confusing for forgein learners!! Thats why I found quite easy to learn germans and french! As for tatalog I tried but no... Mandarin were easier so finally I can say that I'm quite fluent to it!

[@TKDDLJ09]

I would love to learn Greek! Just the alphabet alone is so pretty looking. And the history of Greece is just everything! I have yet to visit, but man do I want too, I just need to save up a lot of money and a lot of vacation days, because a week will not be enough in Greece for me. Just the historic sites alone would take me ages!

[@sadunlap]

Cantonese also has words that do not occur in standard written Chinese. So the Cantonese have to create their own adaptations of standard characters. If you study Mandarin/Standard Chinese look at a Cantonese newspaper sometime. You'll see characters you will never find in a standard Chinese dictionary.

[@mahatmaniggandhi2898]

the way he said you think one language and say something else makes no sense at all! he thinks that cantonese is a local "variation" of mandarin and that mandarin is the "literary" form of the language, while they just have a common ancestor. and the writing doesn't matter if you use latin to learn it. and another thing is that from what i've heard wenzhounese is much harder

[@user-db2sy4nk7f]

I think it is a normal phenomenon, because Cantonese is not the official language, so a lot of word don't have Written Word is normally. In ancient, there are a lot of Ancient Chinese didn't have Character, so they Borrow some wors which have same sound, for example: 能néng means Bear originally, but Ancestors want to write Ability能力 which didn't have Character and same sound with 能, so they borrowed 能 for 能力 and create a new word 熊xióng for Bear.

[@jennifer9047]

哈哈 BIANG

[@azukichiu]

@@jennifer9047 biangbiangmian

[@kingking1223]

Actually all the words come are in Morden Chinese, but since the 1910s which a lot Mainlander come to Hong Kong because of the Civil War in Mainland, they don’t know those word. Since the 60s, they start creating words for the word they don’t know and have to use.

[@SuperSuperTimon]

Olly you are very good my friend! With your video I realised how difficult is Greek language! Love from Athens, Greece! Να είσαι πάντα καλά! Argyris

[@callmeswivelhips8229]

My grandmother spoke Finnish, as her parents emigrated form Finland to the States. Someday, I can see myself learning the language. I want to know how it impacts your world view. And I'd like to do it as a homage to her. But right now, I'm still mastering Spanish. And I'm starting to get exposed to more and more Portuguese via my Capoeira training. So I can see myself learning that language next! Finnish is my personal hobby language essentially. I don't know anyone that speaks it. Not even in my own family.

[@Aavikkonaali]

How cool it is to see someone wanting to learn Finnish! Onnea opintoihisi ja terveisiä Suomesta! 😊

[@DominikVarga0207]

@@Aavikkonaali I am just started learing it too, by myself. I don't know anyone that speaks it either. suomalainen kieli on kaunis. terveisiä Unkarista

[@magiruthia]

Good Luck! Learning Finnish myself as my boyfriend is Finnish and I hope to move to Finland in a year or so's time. I think the conjugation and spoken language will be what sends me insane first 😂

[@bigstitchydreams9065]

Oh I love this! As a learner of Russian playing the guessing game with Greek alphabet filled me with such satisfaction

[@ajramirez77]

Same lol I saw Х and thought холодно

[@user-ry2nq7ng5e]

Yes, most of the Cyrillic script is based on Greek, some others from other scripts, f.ex. Cyrillic ш (sha) probably from the Hebrew ש (shin) (?). And I think I read somewhere that я и where just flipped R and N lead letters and introduced to the Cyrillic. Maybe somebody could confirm that..

[@negan.defender]

same lol

[@parabot19]

I learnt Russian to an advanced level at school. Thrn learnt Greek some 30 years later. Everything was fine till I tried to read Russian again. It was incredibly difficult!

[@robyncorson4002]

I visited Hungary and was shocked at how hard it was to learn basic things. Truly amazing.

[@markvizsolyi1769]

@Megmondó jogos😂

[@AlvinSeville1]

értesz magyarul?

[@jyrkilehtinen9886]

For a Finn hungarian is an interesting language. You do not understand anything beforehand (just like with english and greek) but all the peculiarietes of the grammar and so on are the same as in Finnish: lots of cases, vowel harmony, long and short vowels, and, no gender in personal pronouns. And what makes it easier, the writing system is almost totally phonetic, like in Finnish but unlike in English. And of course then the cognate words: veri - ver (blood), käsi - kez (hand), mennä - menni (to go), elää - elem (to live), vesi - viz (water) etc.

[@hhgygy]

@@jyrkilehtinen9886 elää - elem (to live) it's not elem (which means element or (electric) battery) but élni

[@eschweiler2]

I am a German speaker and I had problems with English in school and Latin was rather easy to me. But I realised the Easyness of Latin when I started to learn Ancient Greek. I never managed to reach a reasonable speaking level, although I like to hear the language, even more than Latin.

[@johnevoice]

Wonderful and educational video mixed with your great presentation. Btw - you cannot forget the autonomous language of my people - Basque!

[@FoScoJo]

When I worked at Microsoft, I spent some time on the Complex Script languages (Thai, Arabic, Hebrew, Vietnamese, and Hindi) team even though I only speak English. So Microsoft put us through a crash course in those languages. It was more for fun team building event as knowing the languages didn't really affect our ability to code and test the software elements we handled. It has been a couple of decades but from what I remember of Thai, it was something like no spaces between words and words at the end of the sentence can change the pronunciation of the words at the beginning that completely broke my brain.

[@vorpal22]

Many Asian languages have no spaces between words. All forms of Chinese (Cantonese, Mandarin, etc.) and Japanese certainly don't. Japanese is fairly easy, though, in this regard (just hard in every other regard) because concepts are usually separated by particles, so you can roughly guess where words or short bursts of words begin / end.

[@aced_pomachu1]

@@vorpal22 As a Vietnamese, I'm surprised some don't even have spaces. Welp! My bad spacing can come in handy after all!

[@vorpal22]

@@aced_pomachu1 The spacing can definitely be very tough in Chinese and Japanese (don't know about others), but when you reach a certain point, especially in Japanese with the tons of particles, filling in the spacing is easy. Chinese is easy because words tend to be 1-3 characters.

[@vorpal22]

@@aced_pomachu1 But LOL it is amazing how all these languages evolved and almost none of them are easily to learn... in fact, they seem to go out of their way to be hard to learn! Look at English! It's crazy.

[@aced_pomachu1]

@@vorpal22different the English, we put noun then adjective , for example, jacket purple, but there can be things like “dried squid” instead on some occasions

[@sylviap6890]

Thank you for adding greek! I’m a greek tutor and I teach foreigners. It has an extremely unique and difficult grammar and it’s typically difficult for english speakers to wrapt their head around it. It’s one of the most underrated hard languages in the world.

[@vell2994]

I'm learning greek and it's so nice to hear someone explaining my struggle so well !!!! 🤣😅😅🤣😅🤣

[@MaryMagdaleneMagdalene]

😂I’m a Cantonese speaker and never realised Cantonese is that hard lol btw Olly’s Cantonese is very impressive!!!

[@jeffreysommer3292]

I've studied Mandarin for thirty years, but Cantonese just throws me. My ear just fails to understand the entering tones.

[@tanvt8924]

It because mandarin do not have entering tone. Basically entering tone only uses in -p, -t, and -k ending. Because mandarin don't have those final so mandarin don't have entering tone.

[@belstar1128]

I am just having a hard time finding basic content in Cantonese because of they fascist Chinese gov blocking youtube.

[@janicesee__]

@@belstar1128 would you like some Hong Kong KZbin channel recommendedations?

[@belstar1128]

@@janicesee__ Yea please give me some recommendations but i don't like "mainstream" youtubers i love science news gaming (but not most big popular games like minecraft mobas and fps games) audio books technology history and other hobby videos.

[@israellai]

That's because entering tones aren't tones, but they're just regular tones with particular endings. If you can tell bee from beat, you can understand them.

[@946abc]

As a Hongkonger speaking both Cantonese and English, I didn't know it was that hard😂 有無香港人係度～

[@kingking1223]

有~

[@oanson7250]

勁搞笑

[@brianplum1825]

I find very few of the former (and present) British who lived for decades in Hong Kong able to speak Cantonese. If one of them manages to speak Cantonese, he's viewed by locals with amazement like a circus animal that learned to ride a bicycle.

[@chloe-lp9jj]

有~

[@tcfung754]

@@brianplum1825 it could be partially due to their superior social status during the British war colonial period so they simply have no such motivation or simply couldn’t be bothered to learn Cantonese. However, there have been a few Europeans / non Chinese who take HK as their second home could speak Cantonese quite well over there.

[@xaviotesharris891]

Can't tell you how pleased I was to learn that the language I picked up in my 40s ranked as #5 most difficult. I mean, I'm not fluent or anything, but I don't have to speak English when I'm in Greece. I remember the joy of getting to that place of learning Greek adverbs, at least, were impervious to declensions or conjugations.

[@oliverstjohn2406]

This is fascinating stuff - I’d be curious to hear your take on Georgian, Basque and Nahuatl in terms of how they compare difficulty-wise.

[@jalatlaco9827]

I thought of Nahuatl too wondering how it compares.

[@chipchilinka5645]

I live in region where Hungarians lived in ancient times. Here are many finno-ugor nations that has own languages and there are many similarities with hungarian. Like Komi, Mordva or Udmurt

[@marsukarhu9477]

I met a guy in Finland who was a Mari speaker and he had moved to Helsinki about a year and a half prior... and he spoke perfect Finnish! So I guess it's pretty easy to learn for other Finnic languages.

[@ridita5221]

Say hi for our distant relatives!

[@lynns_studio]

It makes me feel special and proud to have Cantonese as my native language! To anyone who wants to learn the language, good luck because you need it!

[@keidanekeith668]

So hard

[@mikasaackerman6448]

It's the most difficult language in the world , by the way, it has the most Native speakers what an interesting information i just found on google lol

[@antoniotadeupassarelli4605]

I taught myself Finnish would be difficult 'cause it has 15 DECLINATIONS plus a 16th historical one. But at least all the wowels sound as they ARE (not like in English...). My native idiom is Portuguese, so beautiful. Great post, friend! Abraços!!!

[@brianponikvar9927]

Learning Greek now and I agree its the hardest language I've studied so far. Love the retracted S sound though. Very similar to my favorite Spanish accent.

[@ajramirez77]

Russian should've been on the list. As a English speaker who has learned Russian to a B2/C1 level, I can say it has been very challenging. The Russian alphabet (Cyrillic) has letters from Greek and it has sounds that English speakers have never heard before. You have 6 cases, 3 genders, and aspect for verbs. Don't get me started on motion verbs! Any Russian learner knows how difficult these can be. I know English and Spanish and I've never seen anything like motion verbs. And Russian has some idioms that don't exactly make sense even if you know the words. Overall, the language is beautiful and very worth knowing, but if you're an English speaker just know that it will take a bit longer to learn Russian than it would other European languages.

[@storylearning]

There were lots of hard languages I would’ve put on the list, but had to choose only five 😃

[@user-ry2nq7ng5e]

And not to mention Russian numbers (cases, rules, exceptions with these), aspects, stress patterns... and the list goes on and on ... 😰

[@Svensk7119]

@@user-ry2nq7ng5e Well, in English every vowel has at least three sounds... not that I disagree. I only remember the first three letters and the last, ya. A backwards R! Who'd'a thunk it?

[@videogamerka0009]

I think Polish, Czech or Slovak are more difficult than Russian despite latin alphabet

[@user-ry2nq7ng5e]

@@videogamerka0009 Yeah, I think I would agree, having looking into it. E.g. verb forms, pronunciations etc. Some things are easier in the West Slavic languages than Russian, e.g. the unpredictable stress in Russian words and inclensions/conjugations, but on contrary there are other things that are probably more tricky in the West Slavic languages.

[@meeple39397]

I’m lucky Navajo is my native language, plus another reason why it is difficult to learn is lack of resources. I noticed that non native speakers have trouble finding material to learn. So far there’s mostly Rosetta Stone and Duolingo. I’m fluent in terms of understanding and pronunciation but I’m terrible at making conversation. I never noticed that the tones could be hard to pronounce for others. Also congrats on hitting 100k subscribers!

[@jlizard8500]

yá'át'ééh I'm half navajo and lived on the rez for almost 6 years and I still don't know how to speak Navajo, even though I have grandparents who speak it. It really is hard to have resources, because they always have to be payed for and I'm broke.

[@shiyang2030]

A good video with one fundamental flaw: Cantonese is not widely spoken in Taiwan but in Hong Kong and the surrounding areas including Guangdong and Guangxin Provinces and part of Hainan Province. Also, Japanese and Welsh are both very difficult, too.

[@southprockhard]

Cantonese learner here. It's definitely difficult, but if you focus just on speaking and listening and look at reading and writing later, it's a lot less difficult!!

[@heatherwood2664]

*I only lived in South Africa for three months, however, I learned Zulu well enough to communicate with my household staff. all it took was a positive attitude that I could learn the important parts, and I did!*

[@Nix_-us3qf]

3 izinyanga ukuthi Ibe mfushane

[@juliandeveaux2848]

I would definitely watch a whole video solely about the Navajo language and how it works. There aren't many resources. It's such a shame that such an interesting language and so many others like it were completely or nearly wiped out.

[@gamermapper]

There's even less resources for other Athabaskan languages

[@drts6955]

I was surprised to learn it's one of the most spoken indigenous languages. If I recall correctly more people speak than Irish but we've lots of resources to learn that in Ireland. Pity the same can't be said of Navajo (or any American language I believe).

[@accessnavajo3128]

Kudos to Olly for including Navajo! He has actually trod softly as regards the difficulty involved in learning this language. In addition to some new consonants, there are short and long vowels (as in Japanese, Arabic). The long vowels can come in any of four tones (rising, high flat, falling, low flat) similar to Mandarin, but with the third tone in Mandarin having been replaced with a low flat tone. All of the vowels also have nasal forms. There is also a ton of vowel harmonization/assimilation and consonant harmonization that takes place, as in Turkish. The really cool part is the verb stems and how they work. To build a typical verb, you start with a stem set (gis, géés, giz, gis, géés) (see Fun With Navajo Verbs, Book 1, V-29) (corresponding to future, imperfective, perfective, usitative/iterative, optative modes) to build up to seven modes (in addition to the six above, there is also a progressive mode for some verbs). These stem sets themselves come in patterns based on whether the final consonant is voiced, unvoiced, or a glottal (AABAA, ABBAB, etc.; see Fun With Navajo Verbs, Book 2). There are three main patterns, each with about a half dozen subpatterns. You then build a given verb form by adding various components in front of the stem (not after the stem as is done in Japanese, etc.). Again, the modes involve patterns, which then combine into further overarching conjugation patterns. For a great rundown of how you build verb forms from stem sets, see Faltz, The Navajo Verb, UNM Press. Once you have gained a basic understanding of how that works, you might use Perkins, Fun With Navajo Verbs Books 1-4, Access Navajo (there are free downloadable software games associated with the books for practicing various elements of conjugation, practice sentence patterns, and building vocabulary). You see, there are now some EXCELLENT materials available. If you can master Navajo, you should have a fighting chance at learning any of the Asian languages. Have fun!

[@roshn.i]

there's a Duolingo course i believe

[@TrumanStalls18]

There are actually lots of resources on it.

[@Fallen_Ember]

A friend of mine from highschool was fluent in both Greek and English from childhood. She's honestly the only reason I know of the term Hellenic language!

[@dj12dj12dj12dj12]

As a Cantonese speaker from Hong Kong, I do really appreciate your efforts in learning this wonderful language, but just one thing Cantonese really is NOT a dialect Thankyou 😊

[@dwarfanakuma7481]

Thank you for mentioning Diné Bizaad and other Native American languages!!! I speak 3 languages (Mandarin, English, Japanese) to an academic level and I'm learning Mi'kmaw (an Algonquian language, on Northern East Coast NA). It is so very different from sino-tibetan, germanic or japonic languages, is verb-centric, and has complete free word order. They might be hard but very fascinating. I hope more polyglots can work on endangered languages as well.

[@lisanarramore222]

I agree! And Mi'kmaw sounds fascinating.

[@karlmakhwa4182]

I completely agree with you! Not quite as endangered as Mi'kmaw, but I'm learning one. Have you heard of Kabardian/the Circassians?

[@dwarfanakuma7481]

@@karlmakhwa4182 Only the name. I just searched and there are so many consonants in Kabardian! It must be a super cool language to learn

[@tallspoon0224]

すごいですね！日本人ですが初めて聞きました〜 まだまだ知らない言語もいっぱいあるんですね 僕も日英は分かるのですが、ヘブライ語とかアラビア語に興味を持ってますが、英語からも日本語からも遠くて難しいです😇（日本語で失礼します😂🙏）

[@Val.Kyrie.]

They teach mi’kmaq out east. It’s quite interesting.

[@Csili86]

As a Hungarian I am obsessed with other languages. Thank you for this video! Actually I missed you saying: zulu is a beatboxing language - with a serious face 🤣 I really enjoyed hearing zulu letters, it's crazy they do a click or a pop in the middle of the word i love it 😃

[@AlvinSeville1]

I know the feeling. If it was up to me I'd know 20+ languages, and perhaps, add Hungarian to the list. 🙂

[@retrieveri]

As a Finn I can imagine that to English speaking people Finnish and Hungarian sound about the same. And the grammars are close to each other. But there are only a few similar words - mostly old words like blood (veri - vér), water (vesi - víz), hand (käsi - kéz), arrow (nuoli-nyíl)....

[@nataliexhjztew9251]

@@retrieveri I’m from St. Petersburg. As for me Finnish is very unique and doesn’t sound like any other language. It’s very melodic and lingering. And also it’s really complicated. I tried to learn it by myself, but in the very beginning realized that it’s totally tricky. Now I regret that I didn’t continue studying it.

[@theartfuldodger5326]

Love these videos! My only request- can you please make the audio louder? Danke!

[@shaash5236]

I love this video. Thanks.

[@CaptNaptastic]

I'm Native American from Oklahoma. My tribal language is massively much easier to learn than Navajo. My friend from college was Navajo and tried to teach me. It's so hard. Lol I have a bad mumble and could never say "thank you" because of all the 'h' sounds. Lol

[@accessnavajo3128]

Kudos to Olly for including Navajo! He has actually trod softly as regards the difficulty involved in learning this language. In addition to some new consonants, there are short and long vowels (as in Japanese, Arabic). The long vowels can come in any of four tones (rising, high flat, falling, low flat) similar to Mandarin, but with the third tone in Mandarin having been replaced with a low flat tone. All of the vowels also have nasal forms. There is also a ton of vowel harmonization/assimilation and consonant harmonization that takes place, as in Turkish. The really cool part is the verb stems and how they work. To build a typical verb, you start with a stem set (gis, géés, giz, gis, géés) (see Fun With Navajo Verbs, Book 1, V-29) (corresponding to future, imperfective, perfective, usitative/iterative, optative modes) to build up to seven modes (in addition to the six above, there is also a progressive mode for some verbs). These stem sets themselves come in patterns based on whether the final consonant is voiced, unvoiced, or a glottal (AABAA, ABBAB, etc.; see Fun With Navajo Verbs, Book 2). There are three main patterns, each with about a half dozen subpatterns. You then build a given verb form by adding various components in front of the stem (not after the stem as is done in Japanese, etc.). Again, the modes involve patterns, which then combine into further overarching conjugation patterns. For a great rundown of how you build verb forms from stem sets, see Faltz, The Navajo Verb, UNM Press. Once you have gained a basic understanding of how that works, you might use Perkins, Fun With Navajo Verbs Books 1-4, Access Navajo (there are free downloadable software games associated with the books for practicing various elements of conjugation, practice sentence patterns, and building vocabulary). You see, there are now some EXCELLENT materials available. If you can master Navajo, you should have a fighting chance at learning any of the Asian languages. Have fun!

[@s20091504]

I'm so proud to be a native Cantonese speaker. As a native, I notice the girl who demonstrate speaking Cantonese, casually inserts english words in a Cantonese sentense. It's a trend in modern spoken Cantonese. Honestly I do that quite a lot, mainly because sometimes the English word just come into my mind way quicker than the appropreate Cantonese word. ( Sometimes I never come up with a more appropriate Cantonese word to replace that particular English word, even after finishing my whole sentense.) 😂

[@Songfugel]

Love the specification for English speakers, makes the video so much more accurate, even though I don't agree with the picks

[@troyrowe7670]

I think the hardest part about learning Modern Greek for me, is it's numerous different noun paradigms that are needed to be memorized. Within one gender, there can be 10 different noun paradigms that you need to master

[@teeheethatlesbian]

native Zulu speaker here. it's nice to be represented, it's hard to find videos mentioning Zulu! there are so many different languages in South Africa alone that are not studied or really looked into which is a shame as Africa is full of culture

[@BrownSugaBabe]

I was sitting here in complete awe of how absolutely beautiful the Zulu language is! I work in a prison and there are a few native Zulu speakers that work with me that speak fluent English but when they are together and speaking Zulu it literally stops me in my tracks of how beautiful it sounds when native speakers are talking to each other. I always tell them I'm just listening to how they sound and they tell me whenever I want to learn they will help me. I have a heavy Southern drawl when I talk and I would probably sound odd but I told them I'm willing to learn. They said if they mastered English I can learn Zulu. I'm definitely going to take them up on it!!

[@abelgarciachavez4809]

just found your channel and i am learning greek but it doesn't trip me up to much i have been learning it quite fast and well actually, mostly cause i have greek friends 😅😂

[@chantii.5420]

As a hungarian, I clicked immediately just to check if hungarian is on the list, and yeah, I wasn't disappointed. It's so true. Also I'm glad that the algorythm chose to show me this video, I love channels related to all kinds of languages :)

[@adrian.sin01]

Cantonese is my first language (although I'm Australian born) - your knowledge of Cantonese is very impressive!

[@storylearning]

One of my favourite languages!

[@lindy9741]

I'm South African I hear them speak regularly around us . We have 11 languages in our country ❤❤❤❤❤

[@ajitthomas4855]

My country India has 28 official languages

[@lindy9741]

@@ajitthomas4855 ..okay.. Good to know

[@kingking1223]

In my country we 70+ languages

[@lindy9741]

@@kingking1223 Okay its not a competition 🤣🤣👌🏻❤ good to know 💋💗💓💛

[@kingking1223]

:)

[@razziade]

Navajo:. I asked my grandma how to say 'Germany' in Navajo (back in 1985). Translated to English, "Land of the people with the pointed hats.'. I'm assuming she was referring to the Kaiser's helmets. Love you grandma!

[@DonG191]

As a HK native Cantonese speaker, I never hear people asking 你去邊處呀? (Malaysian Cantonese?) Usually they would ask 你去邊度? The Malaysians like putting 啦 or 呀at the end of the sentences.

[@Andrea-xs4ny]

Ha! I knew Hungarian must be on your list. It's my first language, but I haven't been around it for over 40 years. I recently started to refresh my spoken Hungarian, but those darned agglutinations are tricky. I am glad I'm not starting from scratch, but it's still challenging. Thanks for a great video! Like pretty much everyone here, I love learning about languages.

[@Gold26502]

i love hungarian as an albanian if it wasn’t so hard i would definitely learn it

[@nikonone9091]

@@Gold26502 If you love it just go for it. It is really difficult at the beginning, but it it will get easier and easier. After that it will be really hard again, but you just have to push through that phase, and bamm, you speak Hungarian. I am learning Polish as a Hungarian now, and I'm struggling with it (been learning for around 6 months or so), but I feel like I know more every week. And trust me, Polish is also very very difficult, and very different from Hungarian :D

[@Andrea-xs4ny]

@Artur Bruen Rosin I haven't completely forgotten it, but am rusty.

[@mikebrown3032]

Totally understandable: use it or lose it😊

[@ponta1162]

Hi👋 I'm a native Cantonese speaker. I'm really love to learn languages and I've learnt more than 10 languages... Although they're in different levels and i still struggle to learn English. I agree with you that Cantonese is a very hard language, not only because the pronunciation, also the traditional writting system. But I'm very proud of my mother tongue.😃 I love your videos and want to say: 100,000 subscribers, congratulations! 👏👏👏

[@bryansproles2879]

I have a ton of trouble speaking the 4 tones of Mandarin. I can say words individually without problems, but I have to think about what tone the next word is gonna have before I say it. Canto is like 8 or 9 tones if I remember, which is insane. I wanted to pick up a bit of Hokkien too, but I believe it also has about 8 tones... 😅

[@ponta1162]

@@bryansproles2879 I had learnt a little Hokkien before. I don't know exactly how many tones it has... it is also a hard language. But I feel like Hokkien pronunciation is closer to Mandarin than Cantonese.

[@misstigerrose]

Im glad you included Navajo lol where i live, we have a small nation and ucwalmíwcts is what our language is called. Found a lot of similarities. Our verbal stop (the middle of uh-oh) is signified with a 7 and t' sounds a lot like cl to most lol

[@bbenjoe]

11:27 - huh, that's so true and we often don't even notice ourselves.

[@Uyuayoung]

This is soo fascinating to me. Listening to how different languages are constructed is so interesting, I could listen to these kinds of things for hours and hours. It reminds me of why I love learning languages. Loved the video!

[@abdullahabdilaahi3872]

That’s nice to know. How many languages do you know how to speak by the way?

[@Uyuayoung]

@@abdullahabdilaahi3872 Recently I started studying a new language, which is the 5th for me ☺️

[@lookits_fran]

hii what languages are you learning?~

[@Uyuayoung]

@@lookits_fran I'm currently focussing mostly on Korean and, well, Klingon haha 🖖🏼

[@lookits_fran]

@@Uyuayoung oh I've been studying Korean too~ but it's hard ;_;

[@cantthinkofaname9829]

I grew up in a cantonese background, so I'm familiar with speaking it. Sometimes it doesn't go well with mandarin because we use many slangs.

[@zackreagin8384]

Although I'm not fluent in any of the languages mentioned in this video, I have had some experience studying each of them. The aspects of these languages which were featured to demonstrate their difficulty may seem intimidating when you're not familiar with them, but if you put in the effort, they're really not too bad to get the hang of. Personally, I enjoy learning a language that has features that I've never encountered before. It's refreshing, and can be a lot of fun trying to master them.