Hardest languages to learn - 25 ranked

[Johann]

For myself, I was looking at brushing up on my French and maybe even learn Spanish (or an easy language). I just came across a page in regard to 'hardest' languages to learn, these are ranked.

If you're interested in learning a language, you may want to review the difficulty that language may have for English speakers or those who have English as their first language. Good luck...

Link: 25 Hardest Languages to Learn, Ranked | Far & Wide (farandwide.com)

This is another of those ad-cluttered clickbait thingies - that's two today. 

I'm amazed at what got included and what got left out. The entire continent of Africa got no mention at all (except a brief mention that Arabic is also spoken in some countries there.) There are at least 250 Native languages in Nigeria alone - one country. And some African languages have very high levels of difficulty. Some languages of the Bantu group have up to NINE genders: the three we observe in English (m f, n) plus half a dozen others for round objects, long objects etc.

And not one mention of hundreds of Native languages of the Americas. Ever try Navajo? Quechua? Nahuatl? Maya? Anishnaabe? If so, then you know how complex Indigenous Languages of the Americas can be. There should be at least one on the list, surely. Many of the "most difficult" seem to be European. And largely (but not all) from the same "branch" of the Indo-European "tree." (Albanian being the exception - it's from another of the 8 or so "branches" of the Indo-European tree. And Estonian, Finnish and Hungarian aren't on that "tree" at all. They're Finno-Ugrian. ) The author seems to think that a fairly high number of noun cases increases the difficulty. Not really. It puts a good measure of order into things - makes it easier, I think. Russian gets along nicely with seven, Latin got along 2,000 years ago with six (still had the same ones when I learned it in the 1950s.) and ancient Greek had five - people still learn those languages today. Okay - they DID list 14 cases for Estonian - I agree. That's not "fairly high" - more like "unfairly high."

They listed ALL the Finno- Ugrian group - Estonian Finnish and Hungarian, in the Top 25. They're difficult, all right - and, as I mentioned, non-Indo-European. All three in the Top 25 world-wide? I don't know... No mention of other non-Indo-European languages, like the Circumpolar peoples - Saami (wrongly-called Lapps) in Northern Scandinavia and Nenets, Yukaghir (now Sakha,) Even and others  in the north of Russia. And there's Basque - all on its own - a language that seems to have grown up "in place" thousands of years ago - no known antecedents. All possibilities for a top-25 spot. 

They got at least ONE thing right, though, as I see it. I've "been to school" - to some extent or other - for about nine languages. I've NOT been to school, but learned something of a couple more. Top difficulty marks DEFINITELY go to - Mandarin Chinese. And this article agrees. Reason: It's like no other language I've seen, in school or out. It's tonal, which European languages aren't. A tone change means a total meaning change. A wrong one or two can render your entire sentence either embarrassing or totally meaningless. The grammar is unlike anything Western I've seen.  It doesn't have an alphabet. It has --- pictographs! No letters - or even a syllabary. Pretty hard to learn pronunciation; as beginners in a Conversational class, we used  "pin yin" - Roman characters. Consequently, we learned to ask directions, but we couldn't read signs. We could order food, but we couldn't read a Chinese menu.  

Altogether - I think this article was far from a thorough picture. If it's a real sample of what's available in Language Difficulty Rankings, then perhaps they're like most "University Rankings" we see, i.e. largely meaningless. And the ad-filled format is also one of the most annoying things on the planet. I usually skip these.