Hello!
I hope that there is not a similar thread on this forum, but I just got an idea of making it.
Question to y’all is: What language that you studied/study was hardest for you?
I mean what language you have/had biggest problems with etc.
I don’t want you to prove what language is the hardest because we all know that it depends on a lots of factors, but I want to know what language is the hardest particularly FOR YOU.
I just think that it will be nice to read what people struggle with, I mean I can tell my story too, of course:
The hardest language for me I ever studied was Hungarian…After 3 months of studying I couldn’t say nothing. Grammar was quite difficult for me and I just couldn’t to start making sentences even when I had quite big vocabulary.
Comparison: I studied German for 2-3 weeks right now, and I can read a book with understanding main ideas etc. I can also communicate on satisfactory level even when grammar is not perfect. For me Hungarian is an HARD language for now. Maybe in the future I will get used to it, but right now I just can’t imagine speaking it fluently…
I’m waiting for your stories/responses, I just thought it will be nice to read some nice stories!!
I found English the hardest. Despite full immersion in the language, after three years, I was still babbling like a three year old. It took me forever to learn English. I still can’t spell properly (when writing this message, I originally tried to spell ‘immersion’ as ‘emmertion’ before getting the correction from the spell checker).
Hahaha… Yes, English is difficult for me too… After 7 years of learning (first 5 were in school) I still make a lot of dumb mistakes. Also English is ONE of the MOST unphonetic languages ever, IN MY OPINION.
Thank you for your post and I’m waiting for more people to write
@lestry. For me, it’s Czech. When I made my first attempt to learn the language in 2009, I gave up after a couple of weeks. It was also due to a lack of time, but I still remember that I thought I’d never be able to learn all those declension endings. Now I’ve been studying Czech for about 15 months and still find it extremely difficult to express myself and to understand people. On the other hand, the grammar isn’t that intimidating anymore. I still make tons of mistakes, of course. If I had started to learn Czech just for fun, I might have given up but I love the country and have a strong motivation because I plan to move to Prague when my daughter is old enough to live on her own. That will still take 2 - 4 years, so I’ve still got plenty of time to master Czech.
By the way, I understand your frustration about Hungarian. It’s a language I’ve been learning since February and I can’t say more than a few phrases like “Jó reggelt”, “Köszönöm szépen” or “Német vagyok”. However, although I like the language (and the country) very much, I’m currently not very serious about learning it. As far as the grammar is concerned it seems to be very logical but also very different from other languages and that makes it difficult.
I know a lot of people who learned english for more than five years, had an “I don´t have the language gene”-epiphany and gave up learning languages. My parents generation learned Russian instead of English, with the same outcome.
I “only” learn English and French, but English was harder for me.
Why? Because I learned English as a child and in a classroom environment.
Czech… I studied Czech after Russian and really enjoyed it. Which lessons are you studying? Are you able to read and listen to articles from Cesky Rozhlas. I have imported hundreds of them. I could share some of them with you.
For me it was English and Latin. I couldn’t get them into my head at school, they just didn’t make sense and held no interest for me. French was easier, funnily enough. These days I am forever giving up Russian and Swedish…
I’m mainly listening to intermediate 1 content like Jarda’s “Spontalní monology” but also content taken from The Lingust which is sometimes Intermediate 2, but as I’m familiar with the subject, I normally understand it after I have listened to it and read it often enough. I’m very interested in history, the relationship between the former Czechoslovakia and its neighbouring countries but also history of the former centuries, as well as literature and traditions, minorities in the Czech republic, travel documentaries etc. Well, almost everything apart from sports and current affairs (I simply find it boring to follow every day’s news and prefer to read something about certain events after some time has passed). Well, I have to take care that this doesn’t become too much off-topic. If you’d like to share some of your articles with me, I’d be happy. Thank you very much in advance.
mmm first of all I tried to learn Japanese. It’s very difficult and complicated maybe for a few information and resources about this language, in my country is very difficult to find a good japanese teacher.
Currently I lead two years studying English for myself. I think that I improve a lot in this last two years and I’m gonna follow studying a lot. I don’t know if my english written skills is alright or not. tell me.
All the languages in some way are hard. Of course, asian languages are harder than for those that their native language is indo-european. But I can’t say much because I’m just beginning to learn my first foreign language that is English.
@AlanC
Yes, I understand what you mean, but like I said in the first post: for every person some language is harder than for other person and I want to know what language is the hardest for THESE particular people.
Thanks for post and I wish you good luck learning English
Polish- I can read it fine, because of the other slavic languages I can recognize the words. But to actually speak or create my own sentences, I can not do haha.
@Lestry- Do you still study Hungarian? If so what resources are you using? If not, I’d still like to see what resources you used
To me it’s all about the complexity of the target language and how different the language is compared to one’s mother tongue. Being a Mandarin speaker, I find English to be the hardest one to study. The fact that English is my first foreign language also contributes greatly to the overall difficulties.
Now that I’ve gone through the hardest part (I hope) and that I can use English on a daily basis (I still struggle to get my English correct sometimes), I find language learning to be relatively easier. I started learning Swedish and didn’t find it very difficult. In about 6 months I have reached a proficiency level in Swedish that would have probably cost me 5 years to reach in English. I’ve even played with Italian for 3 months and find myself progressing even faster than I do in Swedish.
I haven’t studied any Slavic languages so far, so my experience has been very limited to just the Germanic and Romance languages. Maybe one day I’ll study Polish (I’ve visited the country, and I REALLY love what I’ve experienced there), and see how I manage when I cross language groups again. So far I’m very pleased that I’ve continued to study languages after English, otherwise I wouldn’t probably have enjoyed anything that is related to language learning.
