10 Challenging Languages for English Speakers to Learn

1. Hungarian

Hungarian and English are members of the same Indo-European language family, however it has intricate pronunciation and grammar. It consists of fourteen vowels with a wide variety of sounds, making it a complicated language.

2. Bulgarian

Due to Bulgarian using the Russian Cyrillic alphabet, English speakers have a difficult time comprehending this Eastern European language. The grammar and vocabulary are equally challenging, but with effort and commitment, nothing is impossible to learn.

3. Serbian

Like Bulgarian, Serbian is a Slavic language. Since it uses Latin and Cyrillic letters it is considered notoriously difficult. There are seven consonants that can also act as vowels. Being a phonetic language the words sound like they’re written.

4. Albanian

Albanian is another example of a unique type of Eastern European language. It is an Indo-European language but it is different from the rest. Albanian embodies complicated grammar rules and you have to memorize them to learn the language.

5. Turkish

Although Turkish follows the Latin script, its still a task to learn as an English speaker as you must memorize its grammar rules just like Albanian. Otherwise, you may confuse the suffixes and word order while speaking the language.

6. Farsi

Being an Indo-European language Farsi shares many words with English. However, it is still not the easiest to learn. In todays time, Farsi follows the Arabic script, and you have to read the language from left to right.

7. Greek

Greek is particularly difficult because several of its letters have English-like appearances but different pronunciations. Take P and the Greek P, for instance. The English R sound is more similar to the Greek P, or rho.

8. Russian

Russian is considered the mother of Slavic languages up to a certain extent. Firguring out the pronouncation is the difficule bit. B’s sound similar to V’s and H’s sound like N’s.

9. Hindi

Hindi is very challenging to learn because it is a language foreign to English speakers. It employs Devanagari, which is a separate alphabet category. The alphabet is difficult to master and has many tiny changes in words that are not that simple to pick up.

10. Vietnamese

Due to its pronunciation, this South-Asian language is challenging for most English speakers. It comprises six tonal variations, determined by speech and diacritics can change the context and meaning of words. Sounds tough right?