"UNESCO's List of the 10 Hardest Languages to Master"
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has a mission to preserve and promote the world's diverse languages, particularly endangered ones such as Okinawan, Kaqchikel Maya, and Ainu. However, it's essential to note that UNESCO does not publish a list ranking the "top 10 most difficult languages to learn" based on their complexity.
Instead, UNESCO focuses on documenting and supporting multilingual education worldwide. Language difficulty, according to UNESCO, often depends on factors such as script complexity, phonetics and pronunciation challenges, grammar complexity and irregularities, vocabulary distance from the learner’s native language, and cultural and contextual uniqueness.
While UNESCO does not provide a direct ranking, linguists and language learners often cite certain languages as particularly challenging. Among these are Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, Japanese, Korean, Hungarian, Finnish, Navajo, Icelandic, Georgian, and Vietnamese.
Mandarin Chinese, for instance, presents difficulties due to its tonal system, thousands of characters, and the lack of cognates for English speakers. Arabic, on the other hand, is complex due to its unique calligraphy, challenging pronunciation with very few vowels and many guttural consonants, and the presence of different written and spoken forms.
Japanese, with its multiple scripts (hiragana, katakana, kanji) and complex honorifics, is another language that learners find challenging. Korean, too, poses difficulties with its unique grammar structure, honorifics, and complex verb conjugations.
Hungarian, Finnish, and Navajo are also known for their complex grammar structures, extensive case systems, and complex word formation. Icelandic, with its archaic vocabulary and complex grammar and inflection, is another challenging language.
Georgian, with its unique script and complex verb system and phonology, and Vietnamese, with its tonal language and diacritics impacting pronunciation, are other languages that learners find difficult.
If you're looking for a ranking of the most difficult languages to learn, resources from language teaching institutions like the U.S. Foreign Service Institute or linguistics research might be more relevant. However, it's important to remember that the difficulty of learning a language can vary greatly depending on the individual learner and their native language.
In short, UNESCO does not provide a "top 10 most difficult languages" list. Their focus is on language endangerment and cultural preservation. If you're interested in understanding why particular languages are challenging based on their linguistic features, I can provide more detailed explanations.
In-flights magazine might feature articles about the challenges of learning languages such as Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, Japanese, Korean, Hungarian, Finnish, Navajo, Icelandic, Georgian, and Vietnamese, due to their complexities in terms of script, pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary.
Travelers who are language enthusiasts may find it intriguing to explore these challenging languages as part of their lifestyle, particularly when they visit regions where these languages are native, such as China, the Middle East, Japan, Korea, Hungary, Finland, Native American reservations, Iceland, Georgia, or Vietnam.
