A very common question when you get interested in languages is: “What is the hardest language to learn?”. The answer is a complicated one. This is because the answer varies from person to person and also depends on what your native language is.

Your Mother Tongue

There are no languages simple to learn, but the ones more closely related to your native language are certainly going to be easier to learn than ones that are not.

A completely different writing system (for example the one with ideograms) can also be a tough challenge, though that does not necessarily make a language more difficult. Grammar and sentence structure can often play a larger role in difficulty.

Most Difficult Language?

The statistics and rankings included in the infographic below are provided by the the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) of the US Department of State and are intended for native English speakers.