5 Impossible Languages for English Speakers
🤯 What makes a language impossible to learn? Do you think you could master one?
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⏱ TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 - Intro
0:20 - Impossible Language 1
4:10 - Impossible Language 2
08:46 - Impossible Language 3
11:46 - Impossible Language 4
17:29 - Impossible Language 5
📜 SOURCES & ATTRIBUTIONS:
🎬 Video Clips:
Star Wars - briefing scene HD
• Star Wars - briefing s...
LOTR The Fellowship of the Ring - Extended Edition - Lothlórien
• LOTR The Fellowship of...
People Afraid Of Roller-Coasters Ride One For The First Time (360° Video)
• People Afraid Of Rolle...
• Cantonese is easy, or ...
• Funny Xhosa Argument W...
• Steve cannot pronounce...
• Learn The Click Langua...
• How to Q Click in Xhosa
• White People Speaking ...
• Learn IsiXhosa | Campu...
• Learn IsiXhosa | Quick...
• Learn Xhosa: The Click...
• How to pronounce the X...
• Judy Brummer Speaks Xh...
• Pronouncing tones for ...
www.tiktok.com/@brucee_the_en...
• Speaking Fluent Finnish?!
• Video In Finnish! (wit...
• FOREIGNERS TRYING TO S...
• Difference Between A &...
• HARDEST Words to Prono...
• Speaking Finnish With ...
• Differences between sp...
• Why is the Finnish lan...
• Why is the Finnish lan...
• Learn Finnish with Ste...
• How To Survive In Pola...
• 11 Foreigners Trying t...
• British Boy Speaks Polish
• Asian guy trying to te...
• Is Polish Really the M...
• Can You Pronounce Thes...
• Polish alphabet. Pronu...
• 混血宝宝如何教外国老爸温柔地说粤语？
• 超爆笑廣東話PK！美國人挑戰講廣東話，香港和...
• AMA with Chinese Canad...
• When Cantonese 粵語 Beat...
• Sound of Cantonese : I...
• 廣東話教學（粵語教學）--九聲六調口訣（下集...
• Cantonese 2-month prog...
• Wayne's World (2/10) M...
• How I taught my husban...
• White guy speaking Can...
• White guy sings in Can...
• Australians (try to) s...
• Magyarország egyik leg...
• Australians (try to) s...
• Hungarian Lessons - Ho...
• Hungarian explained - ...
• Blooper reel: Learning...
• Trying to speak Hungar...
• How and why I learn Hu...
🖼 Images:
“Tolkien in the 1920s” by Unknown is licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R...
“Cantonese tones” by Saurmandal is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantone...
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I always liked it when I look at something and it says save something crazy like 6400 dollars and then I realized that there was no chance at all that I was even going to spend that amount of money to buy it in the first place. I still like your short stories but Rock on Clozemaster Busuu Duolingo Lingo pie Lirica Low rate lifetime subscription rule! Babadum is also fun
Is there some kind of test to find out which level to buy?
Does Storylearning include traditional Chinese or only simplified Chinese?
At 20:39 you happened to misspell "Szív" (heart) as "Sziz".
Is your Norwegian course launching soon? I presume it won't be until after the sale but I'm still excited to see it!
As a Pole, I feel honored that my language is included in this film. And I wish good luck to people who are trying to learn Polish!
it doesn't sound that hard from czech side! even i actually don't speak polish I do understand a lot and it's not that hard for me to mimic your lovely cute and funny language :) pozdrowienia do polski! :D
@@ondrejlukas4727 actually Czech is not hard for me too! Our languages are so similar and many words in them are similar. I'm learning Czech and I know some phrases. But Polish has many tenses, variations, etc. and for people who are(for example) from UK my language is hard to learn. Sometimes even I make mistakes😭
@@unhaklover same here, same here :) only what confuses me is that sometimes your RZ sounds exactly like Ř, but other time its more like ŘŽ RZż :) btw, did you know that probably only other language with such sound is gaelic? :)
I tried, then I switched to Mandarin 7 yrs ago and now I’m quite fluent. Way easier…. 😛
@@losmosquitos1108 No way! :D
Hungarian is actually Polish spoken backwards ;) Cheers to all our Hungarian brothers ;)
that's how i feel about portuguese and Spanish hahah cheers brothers!
@@tomekville7 to me Portugese sounds like a if a Spanish person drank too much and tried to speak French XD
And if you speak Hungarian backwards again, you get Finnish
Ain't even related to each other, like the languages are not related, although they are cool
@@tomekville7😂
Once in Portugal me and my wife were talking in a café (we are Hungarians). Then a gentleman from a distant table approached us and asked if we were Finnish. He was fluent in it and said from a fair distance our talking sounded like Finnish.
I am a Finn, and even I have couple of times thought that I heard finnish, and then by closer hearing it was hungarian language.
Hungarian is in the same family tree as finnish.
@@LuciaSims745 Yes, finno-ugric.
@@lumi7243 Probably that Hungarian language sounds like Finnish, but unfortunately the two languages are not mutually intelligible, like for example Czech (or Slovak) with Polish.
@@laszlovondracsek That is right, we dont understand each other at all, like we do understand some estonian. I have once visited Hungary, few years ago. I was in train, and then when I looked around, people looked just like we Finns, it was just like in Finland. I was just thinkink, that we have to be somekind relatives. May be not, may be it is just coincidence.
There is the legend of Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz, Chrząszczyżewoszyce, powiat Łękołody. Greetings from Hungary!
The most fun part is that for basically any Polish native speaker this is a very easy to speak.
@@sebm8511 Partly. In a Polish comedy film, How I Unleashed World War II ("Jak rozpętałem II wojnę światową" in Polish), the hero, Franek Dolas is captured by the German army and is later questioned. To prank them, he purposely uses a fake name to confuse them. Officer: "First and last name?" Franek Dolas: "Brzęczyszczykiewicz, Grzegorz. Brzęczyszczykiewicz." Officer: "Shut up! Hans! Hans." Hans, a typist : "Yes, sir?" Officer (to Dolas): "Please go to the typing machine." Hans: "First and last name?" Dolas: "Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz" Hans: "How is that possible?” after a while, when poor-poor Hansi finally were able to type the name, he ask Dolas: „Born where?" Dolas: "Chrząszczyżewoszyce, powiat Łękołody" Hans: Whaaat? You should have seen the face of poor Hans! And the legendary hero of Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz had born!
@@sebm8511 "These words are fictional ones." Well, The real ones are cool enough. Not sure if you are Polish speaker or not (I am), the following is mostly for benefit of non-Polish speakers: Real words: Więckowski (my buddy from high school), Krzyszkowiak (Polish track-n-field I think), Krzyrzewski (USA collegial coach of Polsih origin), Kasperczak (Polish soccer player), trzcina (reed), sprawdzić (to check), tnąć (to cut) and more. Some of them only appear to be difficult: "rz" and "cz" are diagraphs corresponding to English "zh" (or "sh") and "ch", so Kasperczak would be Kasperchak. Some actually are difficult for speakers of many languages, like trzcina (tshcheena) or sprawdzić: spravjeetch, but requires palatalization of "j" and "tch". The alphabet is (mostly) phonetic (while English is mostly NOT), there were no significant vowels shifts in Polish language and if anything consonants get simpler, listen to Old-Church-Slavonic to appreciate how bad it could be!). But what remains on phonology is difficult enough: dotknąć (to touch), yes, three consonants and the "k" has to be there (because of dotnąć: to cut to).
Gřegoř Břentěštikevič in czech (rz=ř, cz=č, sz=š easy). Nechci tady machrovat ,ale myslím si, že čeština je ještě těžší než polština.
@@tomasnovotny2740Far from it. Czech phonetics is quite easy in comparison with Polish phonetics; so is Czech grammar. After spending 2 weeks in Prague, I could speak basic Czech (not without making mistakes, of course), but after having spent 2 weeks in Warsaw I could utter several words and some greeting phrases only. And believe me, I'm quite gifted as far as foreign languages are concerned 😃
As a Hungarian the most impossible language for me is any other language.
This is a language used by aliens.
@@natural76 I feel alienated.
Good answer!
@@natural76maybe YOU are an alien??? Or just lack all language abilities?
@@thombaz Channel you inner Kató Lomb
For the record about the Finnish language, Tolkien was indeed influenced by it in creating Quenya, but in this particular fragment of The Fellowship of the Ring, Haldir spoke to Legolas in Sindarin, which in turn was influenced by Welsh, not Finnish.
A fellow Tolkien fan! Yes, his languages were different and based on those you said. But I find he also mixed in elements of other Euro languages as well.
Oh good, someone commented that for me 😄
Came here to say that! In the movie, you can hear Quenya when Saruman is casting a spell to cause an avalanche on the pass of Caradhras.
of the 200 official languages in 192 countries of the world, Indonesian is the easiest language #( change my mind)
I'm not at all familiar with Quenya or Sindarin ... but I definitely picked up that what I heard there sounded very Welsh and nothing like Finnish (the latter of which I've been trying to learn for a while now). Thanks for confirming 🙂.
I learned Finnish. I lived in Finland for eight years. It definitely required effort as there were no classes. But I had the advantage of coworkers (other language teachers) who had permission to correct my Finnish with explanations for 7+ years. 40 years later my wife and I still use it as a secret language in public.
Sounds like you learned in openess and humility, a benefit to any language learner! 👍
Swedish gypsies does the same thing. Most of them are related to Finnish gypsies so they learn to speak Finnish. So bewere if you travel to Sweden at least gypsies and Finns that are living there or traveling there will understand your secrets 😁. I noticed this as i were young and traveled often from Finland to Sweden, mostly to Stockholm, but same thing when you cross the border from Tornio to Haparanda. Of course generally people at the crossing areas speak both laguages in both sides of the border. Also the differences in written language and spoken language might be quite different. And of course there is differences even in spoken language in different areas in Finland. Might be that people in neibourgh city or village have them own style so that propably makes finnish even more difficult to learn. For example: "Now i will go to the sauna" is "Nyt minä menen saunaan". So nobody actually say so. Rather "Mä meen nyt saunaan" or just simply "Meen saunaan". Or stronger accent "Nymmie mään saunaa". There are propapably at least dosen ways to say it. Even some times we have to think a while what the heck someone is speaking and even we don´t always understand the differences. I moved from my home city Kokkola to Tampere. At first everyone noticed for my speach that i had moved there from some other area. Sometimes still after six years of living here some people notice differences if i use some other word for impression as locals does. Locals also have difference as how the younger generation speaks as how the older speaks. I think that social media have the changed the way more similar in whole country. There is good and bad influences at that.
Sadly, even Finnish is not a safe secret language. Once my wife and I stopped at a roadside cafe in Germany. We were speaking English as my wife is British when a German couple from the adjoining table suddenly enquired whether we were from Finland. My accent had given us away. Then they started speaking in Finnish. Turned out they had spent their vacations in Finland for a generation or more...
My mother was born in Finland and we had Finnish relatives nearby. Over the generations, the language evolved into Finglish. It is a badass language. For instance to say "I love you in Finnish it's : "Minä rakastan sinua". The word rakastan is pronounced with a heavy roll on the r. and a vary hard k.
My kids and I speak Finnish when abroad just to minimize eavesdropping in public. In Warsaw recently I made the mistake of speaking Finnish to the staff in a touristy bar. It was quite funny how wide eyed they were when asking what the heck that was. They were native Poles (bloody hard language), lots of Asian tourists chattering away, they probably hear a fair bit of Russian and Hungarian too, but only Finnish provoked a "Good lord, WHAT was that!!!"
I am a native Cantonese speaker(so proud lol) who is learning Finnish 😊 I don't know Polish but i know Russian. For me Georgian is the hardest language so far. Nice video as always 👍 Kiitos paljon ! 😺
I guess the hardest language is some obscure Native American, Caucasian or East Asian language. For an official language, with quiet large number of speakers my guess that the hardest is Georgian
I would throw the austronesian languages in there too. Papua New Guinea has an absurd number of languages and learning a lot of them would be insanely difficult.
Plus some sign languages when they are supressed in the local deaf communities.
The hardest languages are those that haven’t been written down for hundreds and hundreds of years. The longer a language evolves without writing, the more complex it becomes; that’s my experience with the languages my family speaks (Chiac, Gàidhlig, Finnish, …) and the ones that I have learned so far.
I’ve looked into Georgian and omg just looking at the alphabet stresses me out
The alphabet is the easiest part of this language. Once you remember 33 letters you can read easily@@isaac_owens9110
As a native Hungarian, English was hard for me for the beginning. The Hungarians language and thinking is complicated sometimes overcomplicated and had a lot of synonym just for the word "walk" we use minimum 5 different words in the daily life (or more). If you interesting I left here some meaning of walk in hungarian: jár, megy, járkál, mászkál, slattyog, kullog, ballag, mendegél, bandukol, lépeget, lépdegél, lépdel, cammog, sétál, kutyagol, tipeg, baktat, battyog, poroszkál, gyalogol, totyog, kolbászol, andalog, cselleng, kódorog, lépked, caplat, kóvályog, gyüszmékel, sétálgat, csoszog, lépdes, cirkál, kóricál, talpal, császkál, korzózik, botorkál, jár-kel, lézeng, kószál, lődörög, bóklászik, flangál, kóborog, csatangol, lófrál, ténfereg, csavarog, tekereg, tébolyog, tévelyeg, bolyong, őgyeleg, kujtorog, barangol, kóborol, tántorog, csámborog, sétafikál, vándorol, szédeleg, téblábol, csalinkázik, kóringyál, lébecol, karistol, bódorog, ődöng :)
Ez igy igaz 69 féle variáció!😂
And here is how Google Translate translates your "walk" list: "walks, goes, walks, crawls, slattyog, clucks, balag, mendegel, bandukol, steps, steps, steps, steps, cammog, walks, doggo, tipeg, baktat, battyog, poroskál, walks, totyog, sausages, andalog, cselleng, coddling, step, caplat, wander, gather, walk, shuffle, stride, cruise, corical, tread, clatter, corroze, stumble, walk, loiter, ramble, ramble, wander, flang, wander, chatter, horsefry, squirm, twist, he wanders, he wanders, he wanders, he wanders, he wanders, he wanders, he wanders, he wanders, he wanders, he wanders, he wanders, he wanders, he wanders, he wanders, he wanders, he wanders, he staggers"
These were my thoughts, too. if it's possible for all theses nations (or mine) to learn english, then the reverse should be possible. The most difficult part is to allow a different logical process to lead you to the same meaning as our own language.
Walk, amble, stroll, step out, dawdle, wander, pace, march, ambulate, perambulate, strut, ramble, progress, dilly-dally; English is famous for it's synonyms because it ate so many other languages and yes they all mean slightly different things :-D :-) but it sounds like Finnish might have even more nuance of meaning which must be great!
I presume it's the same in other SOV languages. We explain with verbs, rather than relying heavily on adverbs. Thus, we can often abbreviate the subject.
I’m from Hong Kong and I gotta say you did amazing in your cover for 海闊天空 - I literally won’t be able to tell that you’re not a native from just your voice! It feels nice too when people learn about our culture and language and I hope you have fun doing so as well.
Could you tell me the song name in English, please? I really liked it, but if you can't, that's fine.
@@raabix_the_pineapple it's "海闊天空" which he already mentioned. You can just copy and paste for searching.
@@raabix_the_pineappleit is 'Alive sea and sky' probably [dont know what the 活 in 门 is supposed to be but the 1st means live]
For me I do speak Cantense but it sounds different from the one featured in the video
@@iceefaery574 Why didn't you just search for the title for this person, then let them know what it is? You seem to have a better grasp on things.
I learned Hungarian from zero when I was 28. I'm 60 now and haven't used it since I was about 33. I really haven't had much opportunity since leaving Budapest after Art Studies. I'm now reviewing it and it isn't totally gone. I guess I loved it and I still do. I think that was the key for me learning it and remembering it. It lives in my soul. But it is damned hard. No question about it.
Minden tudás érték. Remélem lessz alkalmad hasznosítani.
I survived being a high school exchange student to Miskolc, Hungary. 🇭🇺 I'm not fluent, but it will forever have a special place in my heart.
What is impressive to survive is not the hungarian language, but Miskolc.
I lived in Hong Kong for 12 years, Cantonese is a really expressive language which has a lot of sounds that aren't actually words on their own but which are used for various forms of emphasis. My experience was however that the locals show no mercy when yo I get your tones wrong.😅
I worked there as a police officer for 10 years. I had many colleagues who like me came from the UK with zero Cantonese. We all spoke it, to varying degrees. Some only basic phrases, some fluently and a lot like me who were conversationally very competent and certainly able to work in environments where English was absent. The expat community there, in my experience was quite divided between those of us in law enforcement and the rest.
come to me, Cantonese native speaker in Hong Kong
ai ya!
An expression that can convey so many things. Anger, delight, amazement, disbelief and many more 🙂@@skipperson4077
Diu lei Lo Mo hum Ka chan
I have been learning Hungarian for the pastvren years now. Not an easy language, but often very logic by meanings or hiw they can expess a whoke sentence in one single word. That's what i call efficiency Nagyon szeretem ezt a nyelvet!
Nagyon szépen köszönjük! Örülök, hogy találtál benne logikát (mert tényleg van benne) és igen kompakt nyelv. Szabadságot ad a gondolkodáshoz.
yeah, 'cause hungarians words are as long as an entire sentence, agglutinative languages can go crazy at times. (half joking)
@@zspe6465 Igen, jol mondta, a magyar nyelv szabadsagot ad a gondolkodashoz!👍👍
My South African friend, who speaks Sesotho, told me that one of the coolest things in the world is to stand near a group of people speaking Xhosa....all of that clicking is just fantastic! I was once talking with a woman of Polish descent who lived in Chicago and she told me that she loved living in that city because, among other things, everyone there could pronounce her Polish surname! My grandma's first name was a palindrome: Reber!
I'm English and learn languages as my job but also as a hobby. I have learned, to varying levels, three of these 'impossible' languages: Finnish, Polish and Hungarian. Finnish took the longest to learn but once you have got beyond the beginner phase it goes quite quickly because more advanced vocabulary is easy to work out. Polish was OK because I'd already studied Russian and Czech at university so the hard parts of Polish grammar were not new to me. Hungarian is very different but it is regular compared to for example Russian so it's a case of getting used to the sentence structures and vocabulary but it's not too bad really. No language is impossible to learn. It takes determination, motivation and time. You don't have to be a genius either. Just hard working. P.S. The hardest Slavonic language I ever tried a bit of was Slovene. I only got up to about A2 level but the grammar is hard.
Wow, is that even possible? That's really impressive. Congratulations
@@AJ-fo2pl It depends how much he speaks these languages. These are very difficult ones each takes ages to learn it.
Arvostan
^NATO needs this person^
Hello Mister! May I gently ask how you manage not to mix russian, czech and polish grammar? I kinda speak russian and understand much of polish being czech myself. But I will never speak properly russian without livinig with russians since the grammar is so similar at once but also so different other times. Especially russian language full of irregularities. We have also some but not that many. Anyway, I must say that attempting those languages is heroic attempt! :)
Don't complain about Hungarian vowels. They are clearly defined and consistently spelled. Everybody pronounces them the same way, unlike the English vowels which are crowded together in the middle of the vowel quadrangle and are practically undistiguishable from each other. Additionally every English dialects uses a different set of vowels, which makes English speech one of the most difficult languages to understand. And if this weren't enough, many speakers eliminate half of the vowels or replace them with a schwa.
@@jmwild22 of course I speak about sounds. Vowels are sounds, vowel letters er signs. It should be clear from the context.
English... awful and irregular spellings and pronunciation. Sometimes it sounds phonetic, other times it doesn't. I'm glad I learned the language as a child so I don't have to go through this mess as an adult learner.
I have a Russian speaking friend who found English to be highly challenging. She realized it could be mastered through tough thorough thought, though. 😂
For a native Lithuanian, Polish is like a pleasant conversation with the child . Estonian, Finnish, Hungarian, Basque are a real challenge for me
At university I studied Finnish for two years, I loved it! I'm Hungarian, so here's a correction: heart is "szív", not "sziz" (which has no meaning at all). We do not have genders either and it's also agglutinative.
My foreign friends are amazed by how Finns can produce words while inhaling. My mom often uses sigh-like phrases "joo-o" or "vai niin" (oh well/is that so), inhaling kind of underlines it :)
That is so funny! I tried it myself, and it reminded me that in fact "joo" is often inhaled in everyday spoken Finnish. I never thought about it. 😂
Producing sounds while inhaling is uncommon though 😂
@@prapanthebachelorette6803 Inhale "joo" and you sound a genuine Finn instantly 😁
hm. Like the Swedish do or is it still different (I know Swedish, so that's why I'm curious).
@@simonspethmann8086 My Swedish speaking Finnish friends do the same, didn't know there are "inhalers" in Sweden too 😁 Swedish is the 2nd official language in Finland, somewhat influenced by Finnish language.
Finally! I've been waiting ages for Olly to talk about Finnish. I've been studying Finnish on and off for 49 years, and it is absolutely the hardest language I've ever tried to learn. I'm still only at about a B1 level and I can barely understand a word! I have found Spanish, French, Swedish, and even Vietnamese a cakewalk in comparison.
I've been studying it for 8 years, and I feel the same. My reading and writing are still much better than my conversational skills. I'm slowly getting better but it's so hard!
Finnish is really not that hard, it's just different. I think you need to do the same as I did with Polish: just study vocabulary, vocabulary, vocabulary and forget about the grammar until you can't :)
Have you tried watching news in Finnish? I've done so since I've started (didn't understand anything for a long time, then the weather report, then more and more), there was only 1 radio station to hear abroad, but nowadays everything is available on the internet. KZhead doesn't allow links, but the public broadcaster of Finland (Yle) has a website and an app. There's even news in simplified Finnish (uutiset selkosuomeksi), and with subtitles.
Wow that's crazy, you'd think that because most Finns speak excellent English, the languages wouldn't be too different. I mean, I've studied both, but since my native language is Estonian, I naturally find Finnish easy to understand. English is in a different position as it's the global lingua franca, I don't even really remember what it was like learning it as a kid.
It isnt hard ive been speaking it 17 years already
I was in a choir that included many Poles. We also sang Polish songs from time to time. The Poles always told us how to pronounce something and we then wrote it over the lyrics. 😅 For example: "Dziękuję!" ➡️ "Tschinkuje" (I speak German, so I have no idea whether English speakers can do anything with it)
I'm Hungarian and I know how difficult my mother tongue is but, believe me, it's really worth the effort to learn it because it's beautiful. 😊
"Mother language" Pozdrawiam z Polski 😉
My wife's family immigrated from Hungary after WW2 and she was born here. I had to learn some Hungarian so I could talk to the cats. The cats would just stare blankly at me. My wife says I speak Hungarian with a French accent. I can handle French and even some Russian but Hungarian is beyond me.
😂Cats stare blankly
ilyenek ezek a magyar macskák:D
You speak better hungarian than I do then. When I speak hungarian to a hungarian cat it does not even look at me, or my direction, or at least move its ear....
@@istinagy5835 Don't try Russian, they'll plot your demise, justifiable. When I speak French they think they're getting fed, again.
Próbálkozz macskául! 😼
I am a week into learning Polish. I have a polish partner and we have a little baby on the way in 3 weeks time. We live in Scotland and want to make sure she is bilingual, hopefully it will be easier if both parents can speak Polish to her, even if mine isn't great to start with. I do wonder who will learn first, me or our child 😄
Congratulations! I think Polish gives an advantage to learn other languages. If your daughter knows Polish it would be easier for her to learn Spanish or German. Because Polish has gramatical genders, cases and declination like them. If you know how these work in Polish you can much easier understand how they work in other languages. Now I'm learning German (A2) and I see it's like simplified Polish - less cases, easier declination and no soft consonants.
Be careful if you ever visit the Czech Republic and think "maybe Polish and Czech are similar"... "I am looking for" in Polish sounds like "I want to fuck" in Czech - you're welcome :)
@@justmynickname What kind of joke is this? Please do not mislead.
@@jann.6627 What do you mean?
@@justmynickname There is no declension in Romance languages, and there are no articles in Polish. There are few similarities at all. Although maybe from the point of view of the English language it looks that way.
Linguaepassione's Finnish skills are really incredible! He speaks very fluently and almost without an accent.
Fun fact, Hungarian, Finnish, Turkish and Japanese languages have some similar features in sentence structure and word formation
I'd like to make an honourable mention in the Finno-Ugric group - Estonian. Estonian is closely related to Finnish. In fact, Estonians tend to understand quite a lot of Finnish even without any translation. While the language has more Germanic and Slavic loans (due to historic reasons), there are still 14 cases, 9 vowels and the word order is mostly free
Yes, actually, knowing one of the both makes the other quite understandable. When I read an Estonian sentence (knowing Finnish), I mostly see what it's about (not always what it exactly says).
I'm a Hungarian who learns Finnish. For me it's not only not impossible but even easy
Helps that they’re related languages. Hello from Finland, language cousin! 😊
I've been trying to teach myself Hungarian for over 30 years. I assisted a university history professor who was from Budapest, and he used to give me Hungarian dictation. It became very easy because the language is almost completely phonetic, although sometimes I'd get tripped up on words with _ly_ versus _j_ (say, in _ály_ and _áj_ or _ely_ and _ej._ Since then, I bought a book called _Beszéljünk magyarul!_ and a Hungarian-English dictionary, and I've learned about 2,500 words of vocab, so I can communicate in Magyar better than most other English speakers. The subtleties and nuances of the grammar are still locked to me, though.
What was your motive to learn this language back then? I mean you invested 3 decades in it. I am just curious.
Partly out of deep respect for Prof Martin L Kovács, who was like a father to me, but mostly _because_ it was hard. Also, I'm part Hungarian through my father's mother, though she never spoke it, just German.
j/ly is a challenge for many native Hungarians too.
Finnish and Hungarian only sound similar because in both languages the emphasis is always on the first syllable of words. In Swiss German, the first syllable is also stressed. That's why when I hear Swiss speaking from afar, it's a bit like they're speaking Hungarian. The location of the accent is extremely important for the sound character of a language.
I had been learning Fiinish in my school. It is a very beautiful language, and I find it extremely musical! And now... now I learn Arabic. Why do I keep torturing myself?
أتمنى لك النجاح
@@hml25 شكراً ))
You were learning Finnish in school?
@@jmwild22 Yes, optionally. I was studying in Saint Petersburg, it's about 150 kilometers away from the Russian-Finnish border.
Just to be better.
Hungarian here, the word for heart is “szív” not “sziz”, but I guess that just serves as proof of how difficult my language is. Finnish is one of my favourite languages and I plan to learn it to fluency one day, including it’s distant neighbour Estonian! Polish is another intriguing language I have thought of learning although it’s pronunciation is markedly more difficult that the former 2 mentioned languages.
Finnish and Estonian are more closely related to Hungarian than any of the three are to the majority of languages in Europe. So I imagine you would have an easier time with them than Polish, at least?
Well, for Polish, you could just go down the border and learn Croatian, it's complicated enough, grammar is basically same as Polish. And then the regional sub-languages with German, Italian and Turkish words.
@@isaacbruner65 "Finnish and Estonian are more closely related' Really? They say so, but it is just false. Not a single word is even close. heart, tree, head, eye, hand, man, horse, sun, grass finnish: sydän, puu, pää, silmä, käsi, mies, hevonen, aurinko, ruoho estonian: süda, puu, pea, silm, käsi, mees, hobune, päike, rohi Now here comes hungary: szív, fa, fej, szem, kéz, ember, ló, nap, fű :D:D:D
How is Estonian a distant neighbour to Finnish?
@@istinagy5835yes but at least in the grammar its sinilar
Please don't scare people with the terrible Polish spelling 😅 It's different than English, but it's got its rules and we learn them at school. Some sounds are expressed by two letters instead of one, but it's at least pretty accurate, unlike English, where you have to memorize every single word, lol Fun fact - we don't have spelling lessons at school and we hardly ever use spelling letter by letter to tell someone else how an English word is written. I worked at a big office where we used English a lot, and our British colleague was a sort of shocked hearing that the girls, instead of spelling a word, just read it carefully according to the Polish rules, and it perfectly worked 😁
Naaaa,it doesn't scare me....i'm romanian,so i bet if i would live in Poland for a couple of months,i would speak polish fluently. I say this because for every polis word it must be a close word in romanian,as it have a LOT of synonyms from latin ,dacian ,getic,tracian and proto slavic. For example in romanian air can be :aer,cer,vazduh,suflu,vant. Pick your polish or slavic word from the list😄
@@draculakickyourass vazduh sounds like Russian vozduh воздух, and I think we've got related words for breathing. Our "air" is "powietrze", coming from "wiatr" (wind). What are Romanian words for wind?
@@Piwonia67 vant😀
I'd say it's an overstatement, there are some words and sounds that are pretty similar, there are some words with uncommon sound groups and sometimes one might need to spell their surname out if it's uncommon. I definitely do! I also clearly recall learning to spell in kindergarten and having to go to a logopedist because I had problems saying voiceless and voiced consonants properly.
@@SirithPL But there is no such thing like "spelling bee". We have dyktanda but this is because "u" and "ó", "h" and "ch", "rz" and "ż" sound the same. All the rest is easy to spell and write.
I am Polish, live in Sweden, and teach English. I also speak Russian and Ukrainian. And You are probably right; my mother-tongue is one of the most difficult languages for an English speaker.
I spent a summer with an international group that also had some people from Hungary. What I found strange was that I couldn’t hear when a sentence ended because the voice doesn’t get down.
That is just because - as in every language - speakers tend to be careless. You just got the wrong groupof speakers. Intonation is regarded by many as something unimportant, but if spoken correctly, the end of a sentence should go down in Hungarian. What you heard is a kind of "brain thing", when the speaker can't make up their mind to end the sentence and start a new one. Sorry to say, in my opinion this has to do with intelligence and education.
I am from Poland, I was so surprised when I saw 'Impossible language nr 3'. But I confirm, it's extremely difficult to learn, grammar is extremely complex. I respect people who are trying to learn this language and I always wonder why people do that. It is only used in one country ( which is not attractive from tourism or business perspective). Very interesting video, thanks Olly :)
Polish is the second most commonly spoken language in England.
I think Poland is attractive from both a touristic and a business point of view, you have nice cities and the mountain part is great as well, also your economy is the largest in the eastern half of the EU and certainly the one with the modt potential for growth
I got a bit sad during COVID times, and decided to learn Polish. As it turned out, it was super easy for a Ukrainian to do it. So many commonalities and similar sounds! But you are right - I still don't know why exactly I decided to - just thought it should be cool. It was my language number 7 I tried to learn.
Polish? Easy peasy. Of course, if you know any other Slavic language.
After English and Spanish, Polish is the most common language in Illinois. Chicago has more Polish people than any other city in the world except Warsaw! That includes all the other cities and towns in Poland!
I come from Japan. As a persistent traveller (and language-learner) I think that the hardest language is Greek, but maybe the richest.
Because of conjugations?
And not only...
As teenagers my brother and I used to Hungarianize words by pronouncing them with an accent and agglutinating 'ba' to the ends. "Veer goink to see a movie-ba veet our friends-ock". Not sure how this developed, but it used to mildly annoy/amuse Grandma, which made it fun. We grew up with a set of _those_ parents; although fluent in Hungarian, they found it to be far more convenient as a child-proof eavesdropping tool than as a useful skill to pass along to the next generation. It's a typical mentality of many US-born children of immigrants. The grandparents had already learned English, so why go through the hassle of teaching a foreign language to your newborns. Turns out young children are highly adept at picking up languages and all it takes is for at least one parent to consistently speak the second language directly to the child for the child to become bilingual. My brother and I were almost never spoken to directly in Hungarian as children, but when Dad poked his head into the playroom and said "mit csinálsz", we knew exactly what he was asking and how to answer him (in English, of course).
As a native speaker I also think that Cantonese “Ng hai hou naan ze” (It's not that difficult). But one feature that was not mentioned is the abundant usage of modal particles. Just using different particles will determine your sentence is a statement, a question, a request... and the emotion you express.
Depends on the definition of "fluent" though. I've seen a lot of 北佬 like me speak what should be intelligible Cantonese but Canto speakers still won't stop laughing, and vice versa. If your standard is low, then it's not that hard, but if your standard is "native level" then Asian languages in general are difficult.
@@LibeliumDragonfly You mean 鬼佬？ If people are laughing, rest assured that they are not hostile (which could have been completely different if you look Chinese and speak with a Mandarin accent). It is never easy to speak like a native in any language, same for English to me.
@@elnovenohermano I'm from northern China, so no, 北佬 it is.
Danish is extremely difficult, in spite of its relatively easy grammar. Pronunciation is near impossible for foreign speakers.
I don't know, maybe putting a potato in my mouth would help...
How will you explain the fact that hundreds of thousands of immigrants have learned to speak it fluently? My 'hood' has e.g. lots of Africans who pick up the language in months. Danish is a rhytmic-metric language where stress and intonation mean everything, partly due to the absense of grammatical inclination.
I immediately thought of Danish, but it wasn't in the video. But then I guess many languages have something difficult to master. I'm Dutch and our ui- and sch-sounds are also challenging for non-native speakers.
As a migrant I learned Danish in 2 years. It is the easiest language I learned, 100 % more logical than english, but pronounciation is very problematic.
Danish sounds like a very drunk Norwegian.
Hey, Olly. Since the Tibetan diaspora of the 20th century, lots of Westerners have been attempting by to learn Tibetan-mostly while studying Tibetan Buddhism. Many people have talked about how it’s one of the worlds hardest (least phonetic) writing systems, but few KZheadrs have covered how hard it is to learn because of its verbs. They just work so differently than most European or East Asian languages. You should make a video about it!
Tibetan writing is not less phonetic than that of English.
I think that in medieval Tibetan the written language bears little resemblance to the spoken language.@@juandiegovalverde1982
I can read it ok but speak it haltingly. It is kind of inside out compared to English but not so different to Japanese.
It is easier to learn too read than thai,which is my second language. The palette of sounds is easier than thai. But the grammar is complicated.
Inside out? @@billking8843
The other thing about Hungarian that's easier than most other languages is pronunciation: a letter is always pronounced the same way. So the pronunciation of a word is the sum of the pronunciation of the letters it contains if that makes sense. No tricks, no exceptions, simple as that.
Can I address a certain attitude that you get among those interested in languages but rarely seen among those who actually do speak several languages? Why it is that of all the skills a person can master, languages are regarded as something really special but in an often patronising 'party trick' fashion? If we meet somebody who has in depth knowledge of a science do we gasp and say 'oh, you must be a genius' and then drop a hint that unless they recite some chemical formulas, perform a physics experiment or solve a maths problem in front of us we will actually doubt they really have these skills? I remember thinking this when I graduated in languages from university. "What did you do at university?'. "Arabic". "Ooh, say something in Arabic for me? Can you actually have a conversation with someone in Arabic then?" I used to wonder if I'd said "maths' would they have said "Ooh, do a big sum for me!!" Whilst I understood their admiration for something they curiously saw as more complex than maths or physics (which it most definitely is NOT) I always felt that they wouldn't believe me until I actually said something. How often is anybody mentioning online that they have a degree in astrophysics routinely accused of lying? So please stop seeing language skills as the domain of geniuses. It's a skill like any other. ALTHOUGH this is not helped by 'polyglots' pushing their skills on KZhead just for attention and fame. Secondly, native speakers of languages rarely spoken by foreigners I have bad news for you. The fact you rarely hear foreigners speak your language has little to do with the perceived complexity of the language. It has to do with usefulness and necessity. Latin is a complex language but people used to be obliged to learn it because it was the international language of education (Newton published his works in Latin). People learned it because they had to. Russian is a complex language but peoples right across the former USSR learned it and used it as a lingua franca because they had to. So if your language is one of those lesser studied languages maybe recognise it's not because it is somehow impossible. And if a foreigner does speak it, no matter how badly, recognise that it shows a high level of interest in your culture. One which is rarely reflected in learners of English who often just see it as a useful tool rather than due to a love of any anglophone countries. And one last thing, speakers of lesser studied languages are occasionally (no, actually frequently) prone to comment that any foreigner speaking their language doesn't sound like a native, has an accent, makes mistakes. Really? Surprise, surprise! Sorry to break it to you but YOU don't sound like a native speaker in English either. And no native speaker would expect you to!
As a native Cantonese speaker, I am grateful that it was included in the video, as many of my teachers and classmates believe that Mandarin was the hardest. Thank you!
I'm learning Polish at the moment, and yes, it is very hard. But I'm loving it, it's such a beautiful language. I'm not too worried about learning words, but the pronunciation and certainly the grammar will be a challenge. The goal is B1 within a year.
Życzę sukcesów.
Trzymam za Ciebie!
Powodzenia!
Powodzenia! 🇵🇱🤍❤️🦅
Limiting ourselves to languages with decent enough learning material available (no native American, no native Australian, no native Amazonian, no Borneo), the languages I'm seriously afraid of are Georgian, Thai, Javanese, Vietnamese, Cantonese (yep) and possibly Mongolian. I'm fairly sure there are more difficult ones, but as already said, I'm limiting myself to language for which learning material is readily available.
With Javanese I assume you’re concerned with the part where you need 3 entire dictionaries of politeness levels to “fully” learn it, but these days many Javanese (like me) can barely speak mid let alone high Javanese. If you were to learn just low Javanese, which is very simple in my opinion, you’d already be able to communicate and “impress locals” really well, honestly!
My native language is Russian, also I learned Polish. In my opinion Russian is harder than Polish due to stress (Polish has fixed, Russian has variable) and Cyrillic script.
i;m polish and i can tell you that cyrillic script is easy to learn... i don't speak much russian but i can read everything outloud in russian without knowing what i've just read... well some words are similar to polish. same story with bulgarian and serbian
@@amilew1011some words are similar? 😅Pull the other one! Most words are similar between rus n Pol..
@@adammilewski70 anyhow, I draw comparisons between different Slavic languages at the moment by exploring all of them, incl slovene n Bosnian and I can tell u that Polish is surprisingly similar to Russian, I could understand virtually everything without learning it, now I m struggling to comprehend this language when spoken, it s difficult becaz polish has many hissing sounds that just set obstacles in understanding.. Czech is the most isolated of all,a very unique language.. Takes time to learn it. Czech is like icelandic in the Scandinavian world, too ancient to be called easy to master
If one knows russian it is not hard to understand something of any other language from the slavic language group
Reading Russian is much easier than English or French, because you can know how to pronounce words from the Russian writing. But not really from English and French writing. The Russian language is hard, but not the writing system.
I'm doing battle with Cantonese right now, but I feel Vietnamese deserves a mention ... I've been speaking/studying for 15 years and still feel like I'm at pre-school level, it sounds like it comes from another planet (and is quite closely related to Cantonese)
Only superficially - Cantonese is Sino-Tibetan, whereas Vietnamese is Austro-Asiatic. Vietnamese acquired tone from surrounding Sinitic languages quite early during its development, but in terms of its basic vocabulary, it's still Austro-Asiatic, so it's related to Khmer (even though the two groups have historically been, ahem, less than cordial to each other).
In your experience, does Cantonese seems easier to learn compared to Vietnamese (I am a Vietnamese learner, hoping to study Cantonese in the future - yeah I like to suffer lol)
@@SiKedekI did not realize this fact about Viet language being Austro Asiatic. I heard my first really good rock music in Viet just a few hours ago, the band UnlimiteD. Viet is one of the very few major languages I know Nothing about... Just today I learned that the Dong is the world's smallest currency too!
@@SiKedek I'd say it's more than superficial at this stage in the development. Certainly they originate from two different language families, but belonging to the sinosphere for so long meant Vietnamese developed very strong Chinese traits (i.e. acquiring the tones about 2000 years ago), and quite a lot of common vocab - just to throw out a couple of terms - the words for university and student are almost exactly the same. But perhaps that's why Viet is so tricky, it's picked up the Chinese tones, and some pronunciations, but retained a grammar that I've never seen anything like anywhere.
@@davidl.2243 Hi David, for me Cantonese is a little easier ... but I have studied/spoken Mandarin for more than 20 years, so that is probably part of it. But I do recommend studying Cantonese, it's a lovely language, very sonorous, and of course, Hong Kong, where everyone speaks it, is a fantastic city.
I lived in central Australia and tried to learn Luritja-Pintubi. What I learnt helped get peoples attention but damn was it hard to get anywhere . I did know a non indigenous dude that was fluent and it was so impressive to witness him interact with the community.he really helped bridge the cultural gap out there
As a Finn I feel very honoured that you included Finnish! We’re almost never included in anything lol
What about standing up to Russian aggression?You are brilliant here and I'm afraid you'll need all your courage in the near future.
@@peterpearson1675 excuse me?
Suomi mainittu! Torille! 😁
@@helmi9003 Not to mention one of the 3 greatest composers of all time: Jean Sibelius,and wht about Akselli Kallen-Kallela,or General Mannerheim,or Vainno Linnaa (sorry about the spelling,) ,or Elias Lønnrot?I could keep on,and then there's my first girlfriend:Anneli Vuorinen.No,Finland has much to be proud of.
@@frozenmadness please translate- en puhu suomelaiska.
We appreciate how well you've articulated your insights. Keep working hard.
I appreciate that!
I had to learn Xhosa in school. After a while the clicks weren't too hard, it was just the usual things that made it hard to learn, like grammar and syntax and all that.
For me it's impossible
I am a native Hungarian speaker who learned Finnish and had a go at Polish too, so I really enjoyed this video.
Miks?!!!?!!!?!?
@@cribu_ koska asun Suomessa
I have to learn Hungarian, Polish and Russian for my career lol. Thankfully I love all 3 of the languages and have high hopes for myself. (Also my favorite languages are Hungarian and Finnish!) so this video was quite a treat for me to watch haha.
The Hungarian language is interesting. Not Impassible , but difficult. There is no gender problem in it. 25 years ago, I read a short story (25 pages) featuring two people, Gabi and Viki (nicknames). According to the story, it shows their 3 months of living together. You couldn't guess whether Viki is Viktoria or Viktor. Also, does Gabi use the name Gábor (Gabriel) or Gabriella? There is no She or He, only Ő . (Of course, there is no Her/His either)
I remember that some learners (and grammarians) called it perfect.
Yay, Finnish!! (I'm going to ask again for a full video on it, please!) I've been learning it for eight years, and it is such a rich, beautiful language. The grammar is definitely a big challenge, but once you start to understand the rules and see the patterns, it becomes much easier to anticipate when or how to change a certain word / to use a particular case. (Also, one other point is that the adjectives take the case of the noun they're referring to.)
Finnish grammar is easy. It's the vocabulary that causes trouble.
@@GrumpyPumpy Nope. It's the opposite.
I am an American and I live in Finland. I've studied eight languages and Finnish is definitely the toughest to master. It's not just the cases - those are pretty consistent, but the vocabulary and constructs are intense. Then add to it all of the dialects. No one actually uses the standard Finnish in every day life. Each region has their own dialect, so it makes it incredibly difficult for a foreigner to assimilate.
Czech and Slovak languages are very similar to Polish. 7 cases, 3 genders, 3 tenses. Diacritical marks instead of combos. (cz - č, sz - š, rz - ř).
Serbian, Croatian also have 7 cases, 3 genders and 3 tenses. Serbo-Croatian is actually 1 language, the story of 2 different languages is a political construct, there are literally 2-3 dialects of the Dinaric type, closer to the Adriatic Sea in "both so-called special languages", and 2-3 dialects further north, towards Hungary, more of a Central European type . A Serb from Herzegovina (part of Bosnia and Herzegovina) and a Croat from Dalmatia understand each other better, and they have the same or similar customs, they live in mountainous, karst Balkan regions, they have similar national costumes, etc. Similar to a Croat from Slavonia and a Serb from Vojvodina.. Both live in Pannonian villages, or in Central European cities/towns that were once part of Austria-Hungary and have similar customs, folk costumes and expressions..P.S The only thing is that the Croats use only the Latin alphabet, while the Serbs use both Cyrillic and Latin.
Cantonese speaker here - a learning hack I grew up with when learning Cantonese as an overseas born kiddo - Cantopop (or nursery rhymes if it tickles your fancy), and TVB dramas and variety shows. 80's-90's Hong Kong cinema like Stephen Chow and the Young and Dangerous series usually comes with written Cantonese and English subtitles. Aforementioned kiddo now teaches Cantonese on weekends to the next generation of overseas born Cantonese kiddos.
Thanks for keeping Cantonese alive! Cantonese forever! 🇭🇰 💪
@@letsgowalk it is a matter of cultural pride, which in the context of the diaspora is linked to fluency and usually a lightbulb moment. My lightbulb moment was when I realised countless people automatically assumed "knee how" was a socially appropriate way to respond to "well technically, I'm ethnic Chinese, but-". I don't want our kids to grow up thinking "what I speak is just a dialect" like I did for so long. No. We absolutely have the words to write Cantonese as spoken. Our vocabulary is found in 唐詩宋詞. Cantonese is dying in its native 廣州 and not too good in Hong Kong and Macau, we are our last chance. So I persist.
Most of the things people say are hard about Polish you pick up in like a week, like the weird alphabet, etc. What truly makes it so hard for me is just the pure speed, I can understand everything in writing but when it comes to listening to Poles speak it’s impossible to catch up. English-speaking folk speak fast sometimes, sure, but we have more vowels and they’re of different lengths. Polish grammar, for me, is also pretty easy after a couple months. It’s just that damn speed.
True and unfortunately - the laziness of people that blur the letters together although they shouldn't. Bad pronunciation is also not so uncommon and it even frustrates me, the native. :/ Also, speed is something every learner struggles with. I remember when I couldn't understand a single English sentence, because for me it was so fast. Now, with every language, I just listen, a lot, not being bothered whether I understand or not. The brain will slow it down naturally with time. You can listen to audiobooks, as they are usually read much slower than our normal speech. And thank you for admitting, that Polish grammar and reading is doable. Polish people tend to boast off how difficult Polish language is. I'd say it's not even close to some other languages. Not the easiest, but not the hardest.
Think about a thick Glaswegian accent. Even many English have problems understanding it. An American understands almost nothing, and I guess people not fluent in English would not understand a word.
I am a Finnish translator, living in Poland. Even though Finnish has more cases than Polish, Polish has been harder for me to learn. Finnish cases are way more logical and consistent. In Polish knowing that adjectives and substantives won't have the same endings for declinations was mindblowing for me. Video said Finnish is a "free word order", but this is not true. Yes, the word order is more free compared to English, but you cannot start playing and messing words around.
I guess what he means by free word order is that you change the tone of the sentence by mixing around the words. Mikko pesi koiran, koiran Mikko pesi, and pesi Mikko koiran all mean Mikko washed the dog, but the first sentence is a general statement, the second emphasises that it was a dog that he washed, while the third one emphasises that Mikko did indeed wash the dog (even though someone is claiming he didn’t).
@@Silveirias Hungarian has free word order.
@@elizabethcsicsery-ronay1633 Cool! Finnish doesn't if the definition of free word order is that the meaning and nuance of the sentence does not change no matter what order the words are in.
@@Silveirias It does change in Hungarian too. The emphasis changes but not the meaning.But it's freer than English. Az ember a kutyát nézte. The man watched the dog. A kutyát nézte az ember. The emphasis is on the dog but you can't say the dog the man watched. The dog watched the man is a totally different meaning bc of the change in word order.
@@elizabethcsicsery-ronay1633 Ah, I see. Similar to Finnish then. :) No wonder though since our languages are related.
Although Czech has all the complications of Polish, we fortunately have far less consonant clusters, so it's a lot easier to read. I can understand spoken Polish quite well, but trying to read it gives me a headache.
I am on a mission to learn czech, which is very similar to polish in its structure and vocabulary. Every time I learn something new I get all sweaty from how complicated it is, but its very rewarding once you learn. I feel that I have conquered a new level of language mastery, which makes other languages seem quite simple. It also shows that nothing is impossible, you just need to give it time and patience.
That's great! But yeah, the slogan for Czech could be: "Learn Czech. Every other language will seem easy by comparison!" :D
@@frufruJ hahah yes! Or as an old retired substitute teacher we had in my czech class when I lived in Prague 10 years ago. He came into the classroom and the first thing he said was: "It is better to commit suicide than trying to learn Czech"
As a native hungarian, i am a fluent czech speaker but i have to say its a hard language to master. For me, its easy to understand but hard to pronounce correctly. Its a long journey to master any language, but as i speak english quite well, for me, learning spanish is definitely easyer than learning czech. But as i became fluent in czech (albeit far from perfect), i realized that i understand slovak, and some of polish, serbian, croatian, even russian languages.
@@zsoltpapp3363 I know, I find it the same. But the big switch for me was shifting focus from acheiving mastery to enjoying the learning process. Every time I learn someting new I know that I get a little more proficient, even though I'm far from mastery. The famous 80/20 rule says that 20% of the words make up 80% of the content, so you don't need to know everything for it to be useful.
@hugoingelhammar6163: Hi, I'm Czech born in Prague. For me is Czech the easiest language on the world. I learned it to fluent level between 1st and 3rd year of my life. 😀 😀 I learned German, English, Norwegian and Finnish too. And like was writen: If you learn one language of the same group, you begin understand others too. So I found, that Finnish is so different from other european languages, that I can better understand the bilingual signs in southern Finland in Swedish (only from my Norwegian and German). I mean, Finnish grammar is not so difficult for me, because czech grammar is sooooo complicated, that almost nothing surprises me anymore, but Finnish vocabulary is like anything from the other universe, not from Earth. If you want gratis to chat with a native Czech, just write. 🙂
I’m stunned that Euskara (Basque) isn’t in this list.
Same! I’m Basque by decent. We’ve been in the US for nearly 150 years, so no one in my family speaks it. I would like to learn tho, after finishing my fluency in Spanish. Not surprising, there are words in Spanish that come from Euskara.
University of Nevada-Reno has a course. UNR Press published a pretty comprehensive English-Euskara dictionary.
Agreed Magyar ie Hungarian is one of the three languages ie plus Finnish and Basque (Euskara) which are not part of the Indo-European family of languages
😊 16:33
As a Hungarian it was nice to be mentioned in a video like this. And yes our language is an interesting one. Don't worry about messing things up (word ending, grammar rules and such), sometimes even us native speakers get tangled up in the different rules and such.😂
I've been learning Finnish from my Finnish-born friend. We started during Covid, speaking online. I've learned several languages in my day, just for fun, but I have to say that after a few years of part-time study, I'm still flummoxed by the grammar. So I bought a book on Finnish grammar. We'll see how that works. Kiitos.
I’d include Siksikaitsipowahsin (Blackfoot) in the sequel to this. It’s one of the Indigenous languages where I live and it seems outrageously difficult! Or Anishnaabemowin (Ojibwe) or Neheyawewin (Cree).
Almost any Native American language would probably be difficult to learn for an English speaker but I have heard Navajo (Diné) is exceptionally so.
@@isaacbruner65 I live with several Polynesian languages. They're not exactly a walk in the park either
a great course to use for Anishinaabemowin is Pimsleur! the dialect is ever so slightly different than what we speak in my area, but it's pretty spot on and most of the dialects ARE able to be understood by each other, with a few exceptions of course
My thoughts exactly!
Agreed! here in Mexico we have 64 indigenous languages with Nahuatl and Mayan influencing heavily on Spanish in Central and South Mexico, even people form Northern Mexico have trouble with common names and places let alone English people
Wow, Olly! This video is an incredible journey into the world of languages considered impossible. His ability to detail the unique characteristics of each language, from clicks and tones to cases and vowels, is not only educational, but also highlights his linguistic expertise. Keep up the great work, I can't wait to see your future language adventures! 👏🌐✨
He IS stealing videos from other people without permission.
Hi from Hong Kong, I’ve been watching your channel for a while. As most of your content is about Central European languages, I was quite surprised you picked Cantonese to learn out of that many languages (and how fluent you got at the end)! Good job!
I am a Finn, who over the years in Poland learned to master that language at the C2 level, so feeling doubly honoured.Anyways and most importantly thank You very much for the great video :) :)
While not impossible, in my travels to countries like Tanzania and Southern Mexico, I have ventured to learn some of the tribal languages. What I have found is that for many tribal languages, there has been no standardization and in going from one tribal village to another, I discovered they often speak their languages a little differently from one tribal group to another. Learning Maasai in one part of Tanzania, will not guarantee you will communicate with the Maasai in another province.
I am currently learning Finnish. I started when I was studying for a year in Finland. For me spelling was easy. The pronunciation not too hard once I got the ä/a, the r, and the h in coda (like in "nähdä" or "hiihto"). (Some Finns even told me that I didn't sound foreign, and I can't say the same for my English) For the grammar, once you understand that you replace for example "in" with "-ssa/-ssä" or "from" with "-sta/-stä", it's not that hard except for some irregular words. The lexicon however, is really different. For that I really feel how it has nothing to do with French (my native language) or English. The hardest is probably to not speak English with the Finns. Because, when they feel that you are uncertain, some of them immediately switch to English😅 Also, I wonder why Estonian didn't figure in this list with the õ vowel or the fact that it distinguish between short, long and overlong vowels. And it also has a case system similar to the one in Finnish, and that lexicon too. However it doesn't have the vowel harmony (but that can make some words harder to pronounce). I didn't start to learn Estonian (yet). But for me, Estonian looks harder than Finnish.
I think what makes Estonian technically easier than Finnish is that there is a vast amount of Germanic loanwords, so if you are a native indo-european language speaker, there is going to be much more familiar vocabulary. Also, Estonian is much less of a conservative language- so it lost a lot of archaic and complicated features that Finnish has kept. But, considering that there's even less resources, materials, and native speakers of Estonian, it may well be harder to learn if we are looking at practical purposes.
Fellow Finnish learner here. 😊 I have an Estonian friend who speaks and teaches both, and she thinks Estonian is harder because the grammar isn't as logical as Finnish grammar, but to me, it seems like a lot of it is the same as/ similar to Finnish puhekieli. I haven't looked much into it Estonian, yet, though. I'm waiting until I feel very comfortable with my Finnish before I tackle it.
@@corinna007 Yeah, Estonian will come easy if you already know Finnish, or the other way around.
It's so lovely that you decided to sing Cantonese. My heart melted from the song 🎵💓
Yeah, Polish is bit of a conundrum. I'm Finnish and I've been studying Polish for a few years now and it for sure takes a longer time than other languages. Pretty early on I realized that I shouldn't concentrate on the grammar but on the vocabulary and that has definitely been the better route to understanding :)
Jako Polak, widzę że gdy ktoś używa samych słów, ale ich nie odmienia, spokojnie go rozumiem.
Powodzenia w nauce!
Cantonese is super hard even for us native Mandarin speakers.I can understand a little when listening but I can never write or speak.
A basque speaker here... I think that learning basque language/euskara would be a challenge too
You mentioned that in Finnish the stress is always on the first syllable of the word. This is true also for the Hungarian languamge.
From what I understand, this is true to most if not all Uralic languages.
One good thing about Finnish, it's is almost completely phonetic; every letter is pronounced, and pronounced the exact same way regardless of surrounding letters (bar a few rare exceptions). There's no such thing as a Finnish spelling bee; as soon as you hear a word, you know how it's spelled, exactly as it sounds.
In Croatian the word is spelt exactly as it sounds as well.
Great video, looking forward to a part two featuring some of the crazy tough indigenous American languages such as Nahuatl. The only one of those I'd ever tackle is Chiricahua, because it's the single most beautiful language I've ever heard; sadly it's severely endangered.
Finnish is far and beyond the hardest living language I know of. I am a Swedish teacher's assistant for an online classroom. We mostly help other Scandinavians learn Swedish so they can go to work in Sweden or work with Swedish corporations. When meeting a Finn, I establish if they are a Finn by asking Suoman? They nod or say yes in some form. Then you place your right on your heart, bow very slightly and say "Suomalainen Ylpeys" (suo-mah-line-en ool-pay-oos) which means "Finnish Pride". It shows deep respect for their nation and culture. Then....I ask "Talar du Svenska" (do you speak Swedish?) Because I am NOT speaking Finnish for all the money in the world. HA HA.
Suoman means “granted by”. Suomi means Finland, suomalainen mean Finnish, Suomesta means from Finland, Suomen means Finland’s. I’m not sure which one you’re trying to say.
@@SilveiriasI would be "trying to say" I'm not going to be speaking Finnish, so I hope you speak Swedish. Ha ha.
@@prague5419 Most Finns speak English. It's kinda entitled to expect Finns to speak Swedish if you can't speak Finnish.
@@SilveiriasYou seem to have missed the joke part of this story. It's a Swedish class. Anyhow, I'll not be perpetuating this any further. Merry Christmas, God Jul.
Hi, I am French and I learn finnish. It's hard because it's very different (vocabulary, noun cases...) but not impossible. I really like that it is written as it sounds, for example.
Wonderful video, Olly. Thanks!
I practiced for about 3 hours once the Xhosa clicks so I could sing along to a Die Antwoord song :) Years later, I mentioned Xhosa to a man from Uganda and he said I was the only American he had ever heard correctly pronounce the name of the language... so now I have a big head.
Xhosa was the first language that came to mind but also, for me anyway, any language that requires rolling 'r' s is also impossible! I just can't make that sound!
Sorry, I'm late to the conversation but I just discovered the video and can't resist joining in. The topic brings back wonderful memories of my time being stationed at the Defense Language Institute or DLI for short. This is the military's immersive language school which expects you to be fluent to graduate. Now as a brand-new soldier fresh out of basic training I had no choice as to which language I would learn. We did not know until we arrived at DLI what that language would be. A handful of my fellow soldiers were separated from the man group but most of us were asked what KP is. To which we of course we replied kitchen patrol. Only to be corrected that this was DLI's shorthand for Korean. And thus, I was entered into one of the three languages with the highest failure rate at the school. Russian was another but that was dismissed as the Russian did things purposefully to make your life difficult. Chinese and Korean were the other two. I can safely say that Korean was worse than Chinese due to the fact that not only did we have to learn Korean but also Chinese since so much of the Korean language is Chinese. Korean has all the tonal issues you mentioned. You also had to understand the honor system since you talked completely differently depending on how your status compared to who you were talking to. Most languages you either read left to right (English) or right to Left (Japanese as Manga fans will know) but with Korean you alternate directions (each line you switch the direction you're reading. There is no punctuation or capitals and the words all run together. Yes, Korean has an alphabet, but the Chinese non-alphabet kept popping up. At our orientation we had a class size of about a hundred students (we would be broken into smaller groups of ten for actual learning). We were told to look left and right. Of the three of us only one would graduate. I was not one of the three. I could read, write and comprehend with no difficulty. The listening did me in. Still, I lasted for close to 5 months which amounted to 2 Years of intense college Korean. over thirty years later I can still impress those who don't speak the language and embarrass myself around those who do. It has been handy for telephone scammers as the last thing they are prepared for is their target to be speaking nothing but Korean.
I like how I'm already learning three of those languages XD My whole language learning journey (outside of school) started with Finnish. Wonderful singing btw! And great content as always, thank you very much!!
Most magyarul tanulok. I'm learning Hungarian. Probably the most complex grammar language.
It's nice to see, good luck! What's your mother tongue? 😊
@@missaleisha I’m from Hong Kong, so my mother tongue is Cantonese. (yes, it’s on the list of most difficult language already) I learn it for couple of reasons. One of them is the more I know about Hungarian culture, the more I like it. I have been to Hungary couple of times and have made some Hungarian Friend in London. Brilliant people and culture which I think is seriously under appreciated.
Thanks for the praise 😏🇭🇺😂 That's cool, you can speak mandarin too? I heard that it's hard for some cantonese speaker to learn mandarin. Btw I am learning mandarin now(about 3 months).
@@missaleisha I can speak Mandarin, fluent but far from perfect. it is challenging indeed for non Chinese speaker. I wish I could help you with your mandarin.
2/5 for me. Finnish and Polish are already languages I want to learn, but right now I am focused on Romance and Germanic languages.
When I was I child I considered Polish the most special language on Earth - the only one you know without learning it!
Currently learning Hungarian as my 5th language. Most days I just focus on a couple of things. If I think about how complex it truly is, I want to cry. What it truly is, is a blast! So much fun!
English is a simple language but not easy. Spanish is a complex language but not hard. For people that speaks Portuguese. 👍
El inglés y l español son difíciles y tan complejo, pero hablas Portugues un idioma similar así es porque piensas el español es mas complejo porque entiendes más gramática
@@chiefpanda7040 Portuguese and Spanish have a similar Grammer, but in general taking out the fact that I know Portuguese. Spanish is a complex language than English.
that's not true they are both equally complex in different aspects. you can not have a unbiased point of view because you are a Portuguese speaker who does not know all the nuance and terminology of the English language to make a definitive decision. this can be seen in your writing which indicates you are not a fluent speaker. @@aprendainglesemcasabr4668
I grew up watching Finnish tv shows for kids and I picked up less in the ~8 years of watching that every weekend than I did watching a single Chinese drama on Netflix. Finnish is hella hard.
Hungarian here! May I say, I find language 5 pretty simple? 😂I'm joinging the other Hungarians who expressed this before me. If we could learn English, English speakers should be able to learn Hungarian too. It might take some time, but believe me, we know the struggle. It was the same for us, when we started learning English. Thank you for putting my native language on the list. Also, if anyone watching decides to take up the challenge of learning Hungarian, I'm happy to be a language partner for speaking/messaging practice. 😄
At the age of 70 I am trying to learn a dialect, Manuhiki/ Rakahanga, from the Cook Islands in the South Pacific. it is an Eastern Polynesian languages, related to New Zealand Te Reo Maori. For the resource material I am using the Cook Island Bible which uses other dialects of the Cook Island Group and the family chants and genealogy written by my grandfather 100 years ago. Life is a long journey of discovery and learning. I am still learning Spanish as I have become addicted to Argentine Tango. More physical contact with the learning!
Cantonese is hands down the hardest language amongst these 5. As a native Cantonese speaker i will not to explain how this language works. In addition to the elements mentioned in the video, there is actually tonal harmony, so we change the tone of some particular words in particular cases to make it sound better, as well as very special adjectives to describe nouns, like 黃 gum gum, 青BB, thats Cantonese BTW. But it's one of the most interesting language and it has so many insights. Proud to speak such language with rich history which is directly related to Old Chinese (Mandarin is originated from Northern China and Ancient Chinese is more related to Cantonese nowadays)
Polish is not that difficult. I have acquired it as an adult to a level well beyond merely being able to get an A on a C2 exam. After about 10 years of work as a translator, my customers started asking me to work into Polish as a target language :) I've never really tried to learn Cantonese, only Mandarin. I did not find Mandarin tones difficult, but Cantonese tones are challenging even for a trained musician with absolute pitch such as myself :) And I definitely approve of their using traditional characters. The simplified characters sometimes leave out really important elements, such as the heart radical from the character for love :O I've never tried to learn Finnish, but Hungarian - yes. I learned it for fun, taking private lessons 4 h per week for about a year in 2011-2012. I still don't speak it well, but I can write it fairly decently, so that I can chat in it with a suitably patient chat partner. I'm surprised you haven't mentioned Turkish. OK, it has only 6 cases, but... it is so agglutinative that it puts even Finnish and Hungarian to shame. It is entirely possible to build words that are the length of an entire paragraph :)
Perhaps polish, it's easy for you, but for the majority of English speakers and not only, it's a complex language. Even I as a pole have some difficulties. Also, polish is the 10th most difficult language in the world.
@@nikolidzikowska What can I say? It's easier than Hungarian or Turkish :)
What is your native language? :)
@@mirae9163 My native language is English.
@@caraboska Is Turkish the most difficult language for you so far? Even harder than Finnish or Hungarian?
I'm from Hong Kong and I appreciate your affort to learn and to promote Cantonese. I am Cantonese native and I speak 5 languages including Mandarin, Japanese, English and French, so I know why Cantonese is exceptionally difficult, especially the pronunciations.