Being a multilingual involves a lot of skill and effort .But the ability to communicate in various languages and understand different cultures at the same time is also rewarding. Nowadays, language exchange has been a trend among people of different nations and many would spare time and money just to learn a new language.

In case you’re up for the challenge, here is a list of the top 10 most difficult languages to learn.

1. Chinese/Mandarin

ChineseMandarin

If you’re a native English speaker who has known only the 26 letters the alphabet, then Mandarin might be a tough language to learn. You have to learn atleast 5, 000 new characters on top of mastering the 4 different intonations of words and phrases in Chinese.

2. Japanese

Japanese

Like Chinese, Japanese also involves learning characters. In Japanese, characters come in three sets namely: Hiragana, Katakana,and Kanji. The sentence construction is also different from English so constructing sentences can be a real challenge.

3. Arabic

Arabic

Arabic is very different from languages that originate in European languages. The written Arabic consists of few vowels and may, therefore, be difficult to read.

4. French

French

French is relatively hard for those who don’t have a good grasp of Roman languages such as Spanish and Italian. The pronunciation follows strictly the spelling and the rolling of the tongue may take some time to master.

5. Danish

Danish

On the average, you need to devote 570- 600 hours of learning time for Danish. The phonetics is quiet complicated from among the other languages.

6. Russian

Russian

To achieve proficiency in this language, you need to spend 44 weeks learning or approximately 1,110 class hours.

7. German

German

German has grammatical gender which requires lots of memorizations. Some dialects are also incorporated in the language.

8. Finnish

Finnish

What makes Finnish difficult to learn is its extremely complicated grammar and “endless derivative suffixes”. The modifiers in their nouns and verbs may vary from sentence to sentence.

9. Greek

Greek

Greek language is one of the oldest and most historically documented. But throughout its history, the syllabic structure remained unchanged. The language is characterized by complicated combinations of sounds and numerous derivational affixes.

10. Icelandic

Icelandic

The Icelandic vocabulary is relatively old and the grammar rules are so complex. The reason why Icelandic is seemingly so ancient is because it retained ancient Germanic languages.

Source: http://www.prouddamnews.com/2015/06/top-10-most-difficult-languages-to.html

Japanese? Ok learning to read it is hard but learning to speak it is easy and fun. Arigato gozaimasu.