“Is Japanese the Hardest Language in the World?” and The Relative Difficulty of Language Learning

What makes a language feel difficult, and does Japanese deserve its reputation as the toughest?

Photo by Elisa Ventur on Unsplash

When considering a new language, many wonder, “What is the hardest language in the world?” This is a natural starting point; some might want a challenge, and others might need more time or mental bandwidth than they have to take on something so complex. Unfortunately, a learner’s difficulty with a language depends on many factors.

Rethinking the “Hardest Language” Myth

The challenge of learning a new language depends on various factors, such as exposure to similar languages, determination, mindset, mood on a study day, and, most importantly, the language or languages a learner already speaks.

The concept of linguistic distance also plays a crucial role here. How significant are the differences in grammar, vocabulary, writing systems, and the sounds used in a learner’s target language and the language(s) a learner already speaks?

An English speaker, for example, would have a more challenging time with Swedish than a German speaker, and an Italian speaker learning French might find it easier than a Spanish speaker.

This distance between two languages isn’t only reduced by “genetic” similarities, so to speak. Japanese, Korean, and even Vietnamese share cognates with Chinese due to the use of Hanzi, literally Chinese characters, throughout the region.

Despite not being related languages, Japanese and Korean share nearly identical grammar structures and use a similar system of showing politeness through word choice and verb conjugation patterns. Thanks to Al-Andalus, Spanish, Portuguese, and Arabic all share many cognates. And Japanese pseudo-anglicisms, called wasei-eigo, can cause headaches for English-speaking learners. However, the fact that most of the modern borrowings in Japanese come from English gives speakers of English a considerable advantage over other learners.

The Relative Difficulty of Japanese and English

Japanese is often considered one of the most challenging languages for English speakers. Even within the frequently cited U.S. Foreign Service Institute’s language difficulty rankings, studying Japanese is considered uniquely demanding, even among the languages in its most challenging category.

This perception stems from its complex writing system, which includes three different writing systems (kanji, hiragana, and katakana), the subject-object-verb sentence structure, and the seemingly endless levels of social striation embedded directly into the language.

On the other hand, Japanese speakers face challenges with English, such as the alphabet, irregular spelling and pronunciation patterns, and complex grammatical structures.

An English speaker would have to study a language like Hindi or Arabic, not Japanese, to appreciate what the average Japanese grade-schooler is going through in English class.

Both languages are challenging for speakers of the other to learn, but that difficulty is asymmetrical. It’s easier for an English speaker to learn Japanese than for a Japanese speaker to learn English.

Challenging Perceptions: Japanese vs. European Languages

While many English speakers assume that learning Japanese is more challenging than learning a European language, some aspects of Japanese can make the process easier.

One aspect is the consistency of Japanese pronunciation rules, contrasting with the varied series of exceptions we call English.

Speakers of Spanish or Italian would feel right at home with the five vowels and fifteen consonants of Japanese. And unlike many European languages, Japanese doesn’t conjugate verbs for person or number. Nor are there any verb-noun agreements or grammatical gender to memorize. There are just two verb conjugation patterns and two (and a half) irregular verbs.

Of course, the differences between English and Japanese grammar can lead to confusion, especially when meanings and use cases don’t map perfectly one-to-one. But unlike English’s three-tiered lexicons of Germanic, French, and Latin, as in the examples of kingly, royal, and regal, English speakers might feel that Japanese vocabulary is more straightforward. Even at times, reaching for a word that doesn’t exist or is uncommon just to replicate the same nuanced meaning that exists in English’s bloated inventory of words, most of which only exist in the sense that they are still printed in a dictionary.

Choosing a Language for Your Own Reasons

When it comes down to it, language learning in itself requires dedication, and choosing what language to learn should be motivated by personal interests, goals, and cultural connections rather than the perceived difficulty of that language.

What do you want to achieve through language learning?

Are you traveling, forming new friendships, pursuing professional development, or wanting to engage more deeply with foreign media and cultures?

As you learn, your goals will undoubtedly change, and that’s okay, but having clear goals can help motivate you to study even on the days you’d rather not.

Setting language learning goals is a bit outside the scope of this article, but a concrete goal, “I want to go to Italy next summer, order an espresso at a cafe in Rome, and strike up a conversation with the table next to me,” is always going to be more motivating than an abstract goal, “I wanna go to Italy someday.”

Conclusion

Ultimately, no language is inherently the “hardest” to learn. The journey of language learning is deeply personal and is influenced by each learner’s unique background and aspirations.

Even psychological factors like the affective filter and a learner’s mindset can affect the difficulty of language learning.

Even this overview of why “the hardest language in the world” is not a helpful question is limited by my knowledge of languages and linguistics.

Besides Japanese, I’m not very knowledgeable about languages outside of Western Europe, and even then, that knowledge is linguistic and not based on extensive personal study.

There are fascinating languages all over the world, and we should approach learning them with an open mind, embracing the challenges and joys they bring.