This is a claim that seems inherently
counterintuitive, that there is no such thing as the hardest language to learn. But the truth is
there isn't, and I would even go one step further: that no language is any more complex than
any other language. From Spanish to Arabic to Mandarin to Dutch, none of these languages are
quote unquote simpler than any other. In order to understand how this is possible when it seems
so obvious that there are multiple aspects to a language that can make it feel over complicated,
we need to understand what we mean when we're talking about how complex a language is. For
this conversation I'm not talking about how difficult it would be to learn the language as an
adult. That is a very different conversation that entirely depends on what languages you already
know. I'm also not referring to the official, standardized, or nationally recognized version of
a language, so apologies to the French Academy, this is not about you. I'm talking about the
languages as native speakers naturally speak them. The way you talk to your family and verbalize your
thoughts in your own head. Is there anything that suggests that a baby born in China will learn a
fundamentally more difficult language than a baby born in the United States, regardless of their
education level? Or that a native speaker of any language can claim that their language is
richer or more complex than someone else's? The answer to both of these questions and every
variation of them, is no. Now there are a couple reasons that'll lead people, particularly English
speakers, to believe that a language is inherently more difficult to learn. If a language has
grammatical gender, obviously that would make it more complex, because on top of having to memorize
new vocabulary you have to consistently remember the gender of genderless objects. Additionally
English has very few verb conjugations, so clearly a language like Spanish, which has approximately
6,000 tenses, each of which equipped with multiple conjugations, would be more difficult to learn.
And if a language has noun declensions, meaning that the precise form of the noun changes
depending on how it's used in a sentence, then of course that would be more difficult to
master. Russian has six of these, meaning that the word pencil can be said six different ways
depending on if the pencil is the subject of the sentence, a direct object, in indirect object, a
possessive, an instrument to accomplish something, or follows a preposition. You're going to tell
me that a language like this is just as easy as English where the word pencil is always
just pencil? Yes. it's difficult to realize, particularly for monolingual English speakers
whose only experience with foreign languages is in a classroom, that there are many aspects that make
up how complex a language is. The complexity of a language is determined by a lot more than just
whether or not it has grammatical gender or how many verb conjugations you need to memorize. The
issue is most people only recognize complexities in other languages when it's ones they are not
already familiar with. If you're a native English speaker, you're by default not familiar with
grammatical gender and don't have to memorize that many verb conjugations, so those aspects will
seem particularly difficult if they're present in your target language. But just because those
two things aren't difficulties in English, does not mean that English itself does not have
difficulties. English has plenty of them. Here are a couple that, if you're a native English speaker,
you might have never noticed. English has, depending on who you ask, anywhere from 12 to
16 different tenses, made possible by the three worst words that plague every ESL learner across
the planet: have, had, and has. I have never had, nor will I ever have had, any trouble using
them correctly. Anyone who has had such trouble would say that I might have, had I had any
experience dealing with what they have had to, but I haven't. But if I had, then I would not
have been able to have the fluency that I have, have had, will have, and will continue to have
had. Now if you're a native English speaker, you might argue that this is still easier than a
language with dozens of conjugations because it's just three words and you don't have to memorize so
many unique forms. But I'll tell you that if your mother tongue is something like Russian or Arabic,
languages that only have one present one past and one future tense, the idea of over a dozen
time tenses, Each of which conveying something slightly different is incredibly difficult to
wrap your head around. It's the same reason English speakers struggle with differentiating
between quise and quería in Spanish, because they distinguish between tenses that we do not,
so it takes an incredibly long time for English speakers to be able to understand when to use each
form. Perhaps one of the most frustrating things in English has to be phrasal verbs, which is when
a verb is combined with another word to convey an entirely separate meaning that it would not have
on its own. The first thing that makes learning this difficult is that they often have absolutely
nothing to do with each other. "Keep up" means to move at a certain pace. "keep down" means to
not vomit, but if you said "keep it down", well now I'm asking you to be quiet. "Keep back"
means to stay away, and "keep forward" means... absolutely nothing, to my knowledge. Some phrasal
verbs are separable, for example you can "pick up the ball" or you can "pick the ball up", but
others aren't. You can "look up to your brother", but you can't "look your brother up to." You can,
however, "look your brother up", but of course that's entirely unrelated. I bring all these up
not to say that English is needlessly complicated, but to point out that very often when
people complain about the complexities of other languages, they often don't notice the
complexities of their own. And just to be clear, this conversation is strictly about spoken
language, the language you naturally acquire as a baby, regardless of your education. So while
there may be a case for which written language is the most difficult, that makes no difference here.
Now part of the reason you might think languages like Mandarin and Cantonese are objectively
harder than languages like Spanish or Italian, is because you might have heard that they are
officially ranked as part of the most difficult languages a person can learn, but that's not true.
The thing you are almost certainly thinking of is the Foreign Service Institute's or FSI's ranking
of foreign languages, which, yes, lists Mandarin, Cantonese, as well as Japanese, Arabic and
Korean as Category 5 languages, but this is very specifically based on how difficult it would be
for native English speakers to learn them, not on which languages are inherently more complex. The
FSI is the home to the US government's language training program for foreign diplomats, so the
only thing they're considering is how difficult it would be for English speakers to master these
languages, which is an entirely separate question. English speakers find Spanish easier to learn than
Mandarin, not because it is easier, but because Spanish is significantly more similar to English
than Mandarin is. If you're not convinced think about the inverse situation: do you think it would
be difficult for a Chinese person to learn English as an adult? Well if you've ever met a Chinese
adult attempting to learn English from scratch, then you know that the answer to that question
is yes, unequivocally yes. English is incredibly difficult for them to master, and if it is
just as difficult for a mandarin speaker to master English, as it is an English speaker
to master Mandarin, then that would indicate that the reason English speakers have difficulty
learning Mandarin has absolutely nothing to do with any inherent complexities, but rather because
these two languages are so vastly different. If Mandarin were truly more complicated just at a
base fundamental level, then you would expect to see Chinese adults having a significantly
easier time learning English than American adults learning Mandarin, but that's very clearly not
the case. Now you might say, "okay you all these are really interesting ramblings and all, but is
there any evidence for this?" And yes, there is. I'd say the biggest piece of evidence for this is
the fact that all humans across the planet learn their native language at virtually the same
rate. I'm unaware of any data that suggests that Chinese babies, Egyptian babies, or Icelandic
babies take longer to reach fluency than American ones. This is true even for deaf babies learning
sign languages. Now deaf babies will start signing individual words before hearing babies start
speaking, but this is primarily because babies's hands are more dextrous than their mouths are, so
it is easier for them to move their hands than it is for them to speak clearly, but the time to
comprehension and, more importantly, forming complete and coherent and fluent sentences, is
the same. By 5 years old, virtually all children, regardless of their native language, will be able
to speak at an adult-like level. Now when I say that, I'm not saying they'd be able to talk about
bilateral trade commissions, or the influence on French architecture from the fall of the Roman
Empire, but they will be able to fluidly use grammatically correct syntax, express thoughts
and feelings, and be able to talk to any other native speaker without difficulty. I used to play
Cowboys and Indians. Yeah, that's what I play. Do you? Yeah! Now before anybody brings up tokipona
as an example of an objectively easier language, know that we're talking about naturally occurring
languages, not constructed languages that have no native speakers. Any human language will develop
natural complexities just due to the fact that a language needs to reflect the complex ideas
that humans want to express, and the complexity of a language will be determined by how complex
the language can, be while still being simple enough to communicate effectively, and it makes
sense that that would average the same level of complexity across large groups of people all using
the same language. And we can see objectively that any naturally occurring language will develop
these complexities just by looking at how complex slang can be within a language. In English the
word shit can mean many different things depending on which animal's shit we're talking about. If
something's bullshit, it's untrue. if something's dogshit, well that means it's terrible quality.
If it's horeshit, well then it's ridiculous and unfair. If something's apeshit, that means it's
alarmingly aggressive, but if something's batshit, then it's just crazy. Sometimes, slang can become
tonal. In New York the phrase "you good" can mean multiple different things depending on how it's
said. Do you need help? You good? What's up? (friendly) You good? Are you okay? You good? Don't
worry about it. You good. Stop. You good. If I put on a monotone tone voice and just said "YOU GOOD",
that doesn't mean anything. It's effectively nonsense; you have absolutely no idea what I'm
trying to say. It would be the equivalent of speaking Mandarin but ignoring all of the tones;
it wouldn't mean anything. Which, yes, means that some English slaying has gotten so complex it's
effectively become a tonal language. Now while I hope I've made it clear that there is no such
thing as the hardest language to learn, there is, however, an easiest language to learn, and that
language is English. Now this might seem to contradict literally everything thing I just said,
but it's true. English is significantly easier to learn than any other language, not because of
any inherent simplicity, but because English is unavoidable. If you've ever tried to become fluent
in a second language, then you probably know that you need to immerse yourself in order to truly
achieve fluency, and no matter where you live in the world, there's no easier language to immerse
yourself in than English. You can find signs written in English in nearly every single country
in the world, regardless of how much English is actually spoken there. English also has a bit
of a chokehold on virtually all popular media. The top 50 highest grossing films of all time
are all in English, as well as the top 20 highest grossing franchises. Of the 29 bestselling books
of all time, only seven of them have an original language other than English. Now you might not
think that this would be much of an issue, because subtitles and translations exist, but those are
not nearly as universal or accessible as you might think. For many languages in the world, accurate
subtitles for popular films are hard to come by, and the translations of bestselling novels are
often made entirely independently of the original and come out significantly later. For example,
if you want wanted to read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows when it first released, you'd
be able to do that on July 21st 2007, provided you knew English. If, however, you spoke Hebrew,
then you would have had to wait until December 24th 2007, over 5 months later. The translator
Gili Bar-Hillel Semo, like many other translators of famous works, had to fly to London in order
to pick up a copy of the book on its release date. And this 5-month delay was relatively fast.
The first Arabic translation of Game of Thrones wasn't published until 2015, 19 years after the
original release date. So if you want to read any of these books without having to wait years
for the necessary translations to come out, guess what? You got to learn English. Additionally, TV
and the internet have made it incredibly easy for people to immerse themselves in English without
even trying. 60% of all websites are primarily in English, and English TV is a staple for many
children across the world. It's why English slang has appeared in nearly every single language on
the planet. ...and then said "zeh lo big deal", as in, it's not a big deal. Then he looked at me and
asked, "Yuval, ata yodea ma zeh 'big deal'"? As in, do you know what a big deal is? That's right,
my uncle did not realize that the words "big deal" were English, and then went on to explain to me
how "big deal" was the Hebrew slang. So, because of how pervasive English is, something that we
can thank the British Empire for I suppose, it becomes significantly easier to immerse yourself
in, and thus master, English, than it would be for any other language. That and more people speak
English than any other language in the world, so it's going to be a lot easier to find fluent
speakers to practice with. Now of course I'm not saying that if you're having difficulty learning a
language you should stop complaining because it's actually really easy. I just like pointing out
that the only thing that really makes a language difficult, is not grammatical gender or how many
verb conjugations it has, but it's really just how much access you have to that language. And for
as difficult as the language is that you're trying to learn, it is really no more difficult
than the language that you already speak, a language that you manage to master just fine,
even with all of its complexities. Which means the complexities that you're struggling
with now, you can probably learn as well.
