7 Most Confusing Languages for English Speakers

some languages are so confusing they will make your brain do triple backward somersault I'm talking shape-shifting verbs sounds you've never even heard before and all kinds of tricks that will make you question the idea of what a language is there are seven confusing languages in particular that you should know about and if nothing else they guaranteed to make for good trivia at your next dinner [Music] party I'm sorry what that's so cool th this is the coolest language listen we've got a real Fantastical world going on with Welsh and if you ever see a dragon and think it speaks Welsh well you might be on to something try to read this easy word out loud go on Welsh is a Celtic language one of the oldest languages in Europe it's been evolving for 4,000 years very poetic and beautiful but easy to figure out I think not I started a course 2 years ago 30 people started that course one block passed one passed three failed and 26 dead 26 people died trying to learn well can you one block choked and swallowed his tongue the for you seen this word okay we get it someone someone fell asleep on the keyboard didn't they but it begs the question can anyone actually say it right a long time ago I was actually there it's like a pretty typical Welsh Town it was a really pretty Place land for Fair well when does anyone know how to say this clan Fair pikia go go go so the obvious problem appears to be more than a few missing vowels maybe they're hiding in plain sight H but we have bigger worries Welsh nouns have genders but good luck guessing them there are no obvious markers like in Spanish or French so unfortunately there's no way to tell which is which except in addiction it's hard to really explain how to make it uh just experiment and don't make it too harsh so it's not know now try to Picture This a Welsh sentence goes verb subject object and the noun comes before the adjective most of the time so I like the white cat is like the cat white am I you're not Yoda good luck making sentences is all I'm going to say plurals are also not easy you can't just add an s in English sometimes you change the middle of the word sometimes the middle and the end of the word but you might replace the ending or add an ending stop me when you figure out the pattern here and a lot of plurals are shorter words than the singular some nouns even have two plural forms or just break all the rules completely basically it's completely different from English and as a beginner Welsh learner you can't tell they ask me to say something in Welsh and then immediately I forget every single word of Welsh a language that I normally speak better than my English often the vowel changes too little clue there but you haven't heard the most confusing thing of all ask any Welsh learner what makes their brain Spin and it'll be this m a vam but m a mob dim tro cath a GTH but c a let explain you know how some languages have these things called case endings well Welsh does this backwards the change comes on the front end you seeing this killer Dragon they call it a consonant mutation and there are three kinds the not the why do we do this uh basically because it flows better it sounds better so glad she cleared that one up aren't you C cat but we'd say Mar instead of needless to say it can be difficult to find words in dictionaries you first have to know the mutations otherwise you'll be searching for FW under F when they're really under B now about those missing vowels I I didn't forget great news turns out w and y are both vowels in Welsh problem solved now go back and try and pronounce those words again and me well when I hear Welsh singing that's all the convincing that I [Music] need of course real Welsh people speak in contractions and did I mention that there are five distinct dialects no I didn't but at least we've got a book of short stories in wellsh show if you do want to try learn well that might help you link in the [Music] description now the internet told me that it's statistically more likely to be struck by lightning than to meet an English person who speaks Czech fluently it is that rare because it is that confusing to learn it all starts off really cool and fun like you know how you say hello a a AO a yes we're pirat why do you ask ah I love it already also the spelling is about as close as you'll get to easy and that's because it's consistent some of the time but then the problems begin first off Czech is a Slavic language so the grammar is insane when compared with English and it all starts with the sounds and spelling shech yeah also the Czech Republic is the only country that has this extraordinary letter we have J and and and I remember being little and my uncle always making fun of me because I could never say which means in check three it's a very rich and nuanced vocabulary and when you practice actually talking once what's undeniably difficult is the stress not your stress I mean the pronunciation stress it's confusing see stress is always on the first syllable so a Czech sentence get a special and unique Rhythm nice but then you bump into three genders and while in English a woman is a woman in Czech a woman is all of these things because of all the seven cases you also have to know if a thing is living or non-living but it only matters with masculine nouns you see check this works like a sub gender say you have a bunch of masculine nouns like these two of those are not alive we hope so they might get different case endings to the others to make it worse animacy this concept is not even literal so plants and insects are non-living a Snowman and the deceased are living and a robot is Up For Debate and they still have to match the verbs with some missing rules I could list all the verb things but we won't have time here let's just say I think check verbs wake up each morning wondering who am I going to agree with today I mean it has nothing on the hardest language coming up later in this list but my God the drama but okay surely a simple conversation straightforward right well I'm glad you asked one of the most difficult things that I think makes the Czech language so hard is that there's essentially two different ways of speaking there's informal and formal VI and how about those triple negatives you heard me hold on I'm counting four let's just say in check making a sentence negative often has nothing nothing to do with logic and there are a lot of ways to say the exact same thing now cck might not be logical but here's something that is logical it's liking this video and subscribing to the channel so that we can keep meeting like this you and I your support count in a huge way and I really appreciate [Music] [Laughter] it positive if you fantasy the idea of finding your way out of a labyrinth you're going to like the confusion of Hungarian 44 letters and this is just one of them it's a uralic language and that's where the trouble begins you see it's nothing at all like its neighbors and just when you think you've beat the maze you hit another endless passage my friend you are going to need a sense of humor for this Iran Iran irano f and now in French now for SAS Hungarian is aguena one of my favorite words which means you can stack smaller words and end up with these ridiculously long words full of consonant clustered together like that again with those missing vowels and the meanings get hilariously specific are you allowed to breathe I honestly don't know like Formula 1 driving Hungarian is all about Precision y here come the noun cases the grand total of 18 of them what do 18 cases look like well they look a little bit like this [Music] so you want to talk about animals let's make it a cow a Hungarian cow can be any of these words depending on what this cow is up to actually one case ending is super rare and you wouldn't normally use it for a cow but if someone calls you a cow it's allowed as a cow I have to say let's keep the mooing on the farm come back aside you've got to learn all of these cases and then there's vowel Harmony there is no difference concerning the pronunciation only the rhythm is different because the first uh is short and the second U is long basically it's a vow matching game a word typically uses either all front vowels or all back vowels and the suffixes added to the word must match them did you count 14 vowel sounds Al together well good for you so you'll make mistakes constantly then come on what do you think but the real nightmare in Hungarian is conjugation wait for it a single verb can have more than 707 Z variations and even if you do something occasionally or in small amounts the verb will change for that precise meaning and the choice between definite and indefinite forms can subtly change the Nuance of a sentence and after all that you still have to think of intricate politeness levels to rival Japanese or Korean all I can say is Hungarian is a fascinating language you're going to need a significant memory load to master the different forms and rules and walk out of the maze is it worth it well for the feather in your cap yes it is maybe you should just try the next language what's it going to be Icelandic is fascinating pure beauty ancient and isolated full of archaic words unique what's really amazing is that it's the closest language to what's called Old nor which is the Scandinavian language that the Vikings spoke remember them which is wonderful and horribly mispronounced by humans it's like a tiny pet peeve that I have when they say like Odin and Thor like it probably sounds really cool for the Americans but for me it's just like Loki or ly now it's not your fault there are no lone words to help you at all but you've got to love the direct link to the Longboat Saga AR you and how cool are these leftover Old Norse letters the alphabet hides some very rare sounds that don't exist in English come on try this one out H Isler the Double L in Icelandic sound so nailed it did you okay now put it in this word I have I just follow J by huge clouds of Ash shot into the air by icelands I hope I'm saying this right volcano nice try can we get some real icelanders in please so it's like this it's a new one for me and they even have some bizarre voiceless sounds I believe Icelandic has an unvoiced N or a voiceless n and you can try this you make the n Sound n and then you turn off your vocal cords is basically just breathing through your nose so learning Icelandic words is daunting uh but it's hard not to love them they're so descriptive it's really quite addictive the longest iic word is forget the long words even with short ones there are so many different word endings to learn what's your favorite color you say blue sorry man you can't just learn the word for blue because all of these are blue and you have to pick the right one why well to compete with Hungarian obviously Icelandic nouns can be a nightmare at first we're talking four noun cases each with their own subclasses and three genders each with strong and weak options and the numbers how many ways can you say the number two cuz guess what there are cases for numbers and even cases for names though I don't know what's going on with Anna inconsistent much more confusing rules to learn sentence order goes subject verb object just like English but then they go and give you Freedom with that as well so uh good luck with reading although actually with this book it's quite fun to read Icelandic Link in the description and here is a fun struggle Icelandic adjective endings can be a real pain unlike English Icelandic uses strong and weak verb conjugations as well as strong and weak adjectives strong and weak adjectives that's right it's a bit like Old English see Icelandic is chalk full of wonderfully weird extras if you want to talk about the future you have to kind of hint at it and this one's a real curve pool ever heard of middle voice I know you've heard of Middle Earth I'm not talking about that middle voice isn't your typical active or passive voice but it's a very Icelandic mix of both say the window opens do you know who opened it well not me but someone knows it opened and that is called middle voice confused yet well stranger things are on the way by the way if you like stranger mysterious stories and you think it might be fun to learn a language through story you should check out story learning right here because that's exactly what we do we've taught tens of thousands of students a new language using stories because we've figured out that stories tend to clear up all the confusion because you learn naturally you don't have to rely on your brain to memorize all these silly rules so the language finally sticks in your head it really works and you really do learn faster this way and with less stress if you're Keen to see how story Learning Works you can get a free tour of the story learning method just look for my story learning kit in the video description below completely free there a link to click that will take you to the right place [Music] ever been to the far north of Spain near the French border well that's called Basque Country wonderful place and best thing about Basque is that there's no other language like it on Earth it's what's called a language isolate the last remaining descendant of a language of prehistoric Europe some of its words are from the Stone Age I'm not kidding so even if you've already learned 11 languages they won't help here learning to speak Basque what is pretty exciting argument it's where does that come from s and by no and yes that is amazing you know what I really love all the X's I mean seriously I've never seen a language with so many x's and Zeds it's pretty cool like that they're just messing with you the X's they're not even the hard [Music] part how do you say hello a really common cutesy way of saying hello in the bass country these days is Kao Kao like Hungarian it's aguena so you can build lots of words lots of long words like that everything from funny looking suffixes to long words Bas has 14 noun cases trying to steal someone's Thunder there are we but then it makes all of its own rules the grammar is Sy Sil it's a bit unusual and it's nothing like we're used to oh now weird sentence order is not going to shock you but get this Basque uses something very rare in languages it's called called ergative absolutive alignment yeah and what on Earth is this is a Star Trek reference or something no it's a fancy way of saying that the subject of a sentence can have two possible forms depending on whether they are doing the action or it's happening to them so here's a guy reading a book he's doing the action so his name gets a k added on strange right the point well even if you only hear part of the sentence you'll know that this dude is doing something I know it's weirdly clever seems like quite an alien way to speak but it's just another day in the land of Bas okay now remember what an auxiliary verb is you might remember this from school tiny little thing usually just wait though Basque auxiliaries are not tiny they're extremely powerful in Basque the helper verb changes based on who is doing the action who is affected by it and for whom it's being done one little auxiliary verb encoding all those details is quite remarkable and it agrees with the subject the object and even the indirect object so yes verbs are notoriously difficult and confusing but my favorite has to be the Intriguing confusing wonderful number system move over French Basque is in town 91 well it's 420s and 11 obviously 999 well it's 980 and 19 obviously [Music] georan is a Caucasian language yes that's a thing and it's one of those languages you don't really hear about if you're not from Europe but it's absolutely amazing and it neither looks nor sounds like any language on Earth the Georgian alphabet looks like curls and Loops straight out of a fantasy epic ever seen a script more beautiful than this how do you even tell these five letters apart now try saying this word I dare you yes that is one single syllable it means you peel us and it starts with you pronouncing a bunch of consonants before you get any relief with that vowel yeah the real meaning is tell us we can go even bigger how's this for drama I think you're going to agree that the biggest problem is the verbs but first where is Georgia well here we go georan is known for its adjective consonant what now well let's just say that there are some Unique Sounds let me present to you the one and only in order to pronounce c you need to click the back of your tongue up to the top of your mouth it's a rare one that's for sure you up for the challenge the next phrase we need to know uh is please and in Georgian you say it with two separate words two shades Le two shades Leba and the literal meaning for this phrase is if possible as a bonus I want to uh teach you how to ask for a check yeah yeah I wouldn't call that easy bro by the way they have different words meaning to have depends if the thing you have is alive or not but the verbs are where the real fun begins of course Georgian verbs are pretty daunting we're talking layer upon layer of meaning they have all kinds of weird things like screes and versions scree is an entire verb phrase packed into one word and a verer is a verb stuffed with so much subtle information about Direction Who's involved and so on might want to pause to take this in it's meant to help people speak more precisely but confusing yeah and if that's not enough we still have poly personal verbs you hadn't forgotten about those have you they can tell you things about two different people in one verb take a look did I mentioned that georan has at least seven noun cases to juggle and they all have to play nicely with these fancy verbs I mean really you got to be on your toes to survive this tangled web you can always learn the next language instead or [Music] can Navajo is an aasan language in the da family and if you want a language with no regular verbs well you come to the right place it's the most confusing language I have ever come across it isn't impossible to learn it but going from English as a starting point is very very very [Music] hard the sounds of Navajo are difficult good luck being able to say things like this there are pretty much no lone words from English and have you ever heard of speaking in the fourth person well Navajo has it but first you'll learn this incredible alphabet you're looking at 33 consonants and 12 vowels and I don't know how good your is but that equals a fairly big number of sounds you'll never make in English one of those sounds is a guttle stop and I don't care if you can do this of water you've got nothing on Navajo glottal stops are everyone's accent vowels can be long or short and you have to be Pitch Perfect with these four kinds of pitch you still with me basic word order is subject object verb but because of a thing called noun ranking the rules are mystifying this is animacy on steroids picture it everything in the Navajo world has a life force and they go into a hierarchy for how alive they are from people all the way down to rocks so you're going to look pretty silly if you say the wolf chased the man you have to say the man the wolf chased him man beats wolf and what does lightning beat how alive is a ghost how alive is AI yeah not so simple right 3:00 chapter meeting l so go tune in over there hurry up and I'll warn you now Navajo is not just big on verbs it's obsessed with them they're highly complex extremely precise and all irregular I mean look at this what you think's missing in Navajo nouns there are no adjectives and few nouns so verbs have to describe everything they practically have their own personality there's even a unique thing called handling verbs these verbs categorize objects according to shape size and texture and even how they are handled to say hand me a cup of coffee say go sha sh sha means to me means you give it and nikah specifically refers to you give that item that's in an open container it's quite mindboggling really I'm pretty sure I would skip school on grammar day now good luck learning all of this with no regular rules and I believe that's all you can handle for one day would you dare try any of these confusing languages well I hope you do but if you want to learn a more realistic language in the meantime we got you covered head on over to this video for some amazing fun ideas [Music]

Channel: Olly Richards

Views: 53,833

Keywords: language learning, how to learn a language, foreign languages, learn a language, learn languages, polyglot, learn a new language, languages, language, stories, storylearning, olly richards, hungarian, navajo, icelandic, basque, welsh, czech, georgian, language fast, learn language fast, learn fast, difficult language, hard languages, difficult languages, impossible, impossible languages, impossible language

Id: Cqzu_OLr5OA

Length: 23min 37sec (1417 seconds)

Published: Fri May 03 2024