The Inkling Volume 1

Top 10 Hardest Languages to Learn for
English Speakers
Lauren Hook and Emma Wilder
We have compiled a list of ten languages with particularly difficult grammar, spelling and vocabulary.
All of these require a great deal of complex knowledge to fully understand, and are particularly different
to English.
10) Croatian - This is a hard language to learn due to its many different dialects. Also, Croatian uses a
wide variety of letters, which can be difficult to get your head around! Not only this, but the verbal
pronunciation can be very confusing due to its specificity.
9) Korean - Korean is ranked at number nine due its complex symbols and actual translation that differs
significantly from the English language. To summarise the language, symbols are placed together
(similar to Chinese or Japanese) which creates a larger symbol, like a syllable. The smaller symbols
each have small sounds attached to each other, so when put together they create words.
8) Gaelic - This language has two dialects- Scottish and Irish, both of which are quite hard to learn.
Although they both originate from the same root language, they differentiate greatly from each other.
Another feature that can be hard to get your head around within this language is the spelling, which is
known for being extremely tricky!
7) Basque - This language is less common than other languages on our list of top 10: only just over 1
million people in the world are able to speak it. Basque country is a small area on the border between
France and Spain, and only 28% of residents in the country speak its language. It is so hard for Englishspeaking
people to learn because it has no similarities to languages we are familiar with such as French
and German and so doesn’t sound the same (even though once you can understand it the pronunciation
is relatively easy).
6) Albanian - At number six is Albanian. Like Gaelic, this language is considered difficult due to the two
dialects which differ greatly from each other. The first is known as ‘Tosk’ and the second is ‘Gheg’.
Generally, Tosk is the standard dialect in North Albania and Gheg in the south (the divide being the
Shkumbin River). Albanian is very different to most European languages, and so many Albanians also
learn to speak another European language.
5) Icelandic - In the middle of our top ten is Icelandic. Known for its high levels of complexity in grammar
and pronunciation, this language would be sure to confuse you from time to time. Like Basque, this
language is not very common, with no more than around 320,000 native speakers. Icelandic is a nordic
language, and therefore is a branch of the Germanic languages (which include English, German and
Dutch).
4) Thai - Whilst this language isn’t hard to learn for people who already speak a local tongue, it most
definitely deserves the number four spot on as a mix of around four other languages make up 50% of
Thai. 20 million people now speak the language. It is almost identical to Laotian but still slightly different
in the way it is written. This is as they both branch off from Austric origins. The difficulty comes from
how the language is written...and because there is no punctuation!