What's the hardest language?

It depends on what you mean. Some languages are easier to speak than they are to read or write. Some languages are easier to read and/or write than they are to speak. I believe that it would be easier to learn how to speak an oriental language than it is to read it. As long as you are around people speaking it (and this goes for almost all languages) you can start to pick up bits and pieces. Enough saturation and you can probably speak it passably well. I think that English may be an extremely hard language to master. Not to speak or read or write, but to master. The language has so many grammar rules and little idiosyncrasies that it's almost ridiculous. Not to mention that the language itself is an amalgamation of several different ones. Thats why you can get a doctorate in the subject. We have words that are spelled the same yet mean completely different things. We have words that are spelled differently but are sounded exactly alike. We have things like "I before E except after C, or when sounding like A as in neighbor and weigh" but of course that little catechism doesn't cover words like protein or conceit or a hundred other ones. See what I mean. It's a language that most people can learn but even native English speakers can barely even begin to master.

Likewise, chinese, korean, japan, etc. are some of the languages that are very difficult to understand, write, or say. I think you need to learn this from a tutor for you to better understand these words. It would be a great advantage if you know how to speak in different languages.

I agree that Chinese must be at least one of the hardest, if not the hardest. Not only are there a lot of characters, but there are so many different dialects. For Westerners, most Oriental languages are harder because the characters are so different from our letters. I have the greatest respect for those Westerners that can learn an Oriental language, and equal respect for an Oriental who can learn any Western language. BTW, welcome to myLot. Great discussion!

Yah, i think chinese and japanese language are really hard. Everytime i see somw writings in that language it made me think how to do that. Their characters are long but nice to look at. I think Arabic language is also a hard language.

i agree! maybe its chinese and japanese. nipongo is very hard to understand including their written output.