Government schools demand a high degree of proficiency, enough to conduct diplomacy or avoid detection. This makes their rankings a little different, because many languages that appear simple can be maddeningly frustrating to master at that level.

For example, native Mandarin speakers are usually tolerant of (and highly amused by) non-native speakers' blunders. But this doesn't extend to the levels of international trade and diplomacy. At those levels, you have to be good or go home.

Foreign Service Institute: Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese and Korean are said to be the most difficult for native English speakers, with Japanese ranking as especially difficult.

Defense Language Institute: Arabic, Pashto, Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean. These are allotted 720 hours of instruction to achieve "high intermediate" proficiency and 1320 hours for "advanced" (the graduation requirement).

Fuzhou gets my vote. That is where most of the Chinese immigrants to the U.S. come from. It is more complicated that Cantonese, from what I can tell; more exceptions, more 'accents' (forget the term they use), more words defined solely by context (often without a strict associated written character).

EDIT:
Had the wrong wiki link.

If we're doing regional variations I always thought Gaga (not sure on the spelling honestly) French (St. Etienne and a bit in Lyons) was always maddening, they dropped too many whole syllables and talked nearly as fast as Parisians.

Nope, not Romanche, this is real French, just nearly not understandable. If you've ever spoken to Ghanans they are terribly hard to understand with no practice, even though they are speaking English. It's pretty much the same idea.

Gotcha. I usually stuck to northern France, Germany, Netherlands, Denmark, etc. when I went to Europe, so I don't have much experience with the southern dialects. I am rather sick of Paris though, so my next trip with probably be southern France. Especially since my next trip to Europe will most likely be to Siena, Italy for the Palio. Lyon is not too far from there.

Lyons is worth seeing, St. Et is a shithole. Try Grenoble and Marseilles, I'd say they're the two best cities in the south(ish) region.

I can attest that Lyons is quite nice. I found it very easy to get around, a very nice unified public transportation system, bike rentals, and just nice to walk in. They have huge, very picturesque public park.

On the other side (central west) the Loire Valley is absolutely beautiful. Great countryside, lots of castles. Warning though, there is a grand total of one youth hostel in Tours, the central city, and it is only mediocre. So if you travel by youth hostel there aren't that many in that area.

And I think I'll stop hijacking this thread :) ... The only languages I've tried to learn are French and Spanish and I took only French from middle school onwards (not that Je parle francais bien maintenant). So I don't feel qualified to place a vote.

lol Sad but true. Saint Etienne is dying. It was a really cool city decades ago.

Off topic, sorry.

The generally accepted answers to the question are Vietnamese, Arabic or English. Those three making pretty much any other manner of communication look jibber jabber simple by comparison.

I'm less familiar with the case for Vietnamese, but Arabic isn't just learning the words, there's a huge body of cultural knowledge which you absolutely must know in order to use it effectively.

English is, quite frankly, a bloody mess. We've got approximately a million words with no unifying phonetic system to guide the spelling. Pronunciation is even more random, and when it comes to grammar, forget about it, there's no way that even a native speaker has any hope of ever mastering more than an advanced level of grammar. I don't believe there to be a man or woman alive or that will live who is capable of mastering the grammatical rules.

My structures book which covers grammar for non-native speakers is well over 600 pages long, and only gives grammar a cursory examination, leaving out things like the subjunctive in order to maintain such a slender volume. A full feature grammar book would be large enough to crush a smallish child if not for copious editing and reduction.

That's applicable to many languages.

My top most difficult language to learn would be Mandarin Chinese. I spent a few months in China and Hong Kong and learnt to speak a few words (occasionally getting them wrong anyway with amusing results) and some table ettiquette but my goodness, dont ever ask me to try and read or write!


Close second would be English - Because the same word or sentance, can have so many meanings depending on how you say it, who you say it to and what context it is said in. There is a formal and informal way of speaking and writing it.

Not to mention the variations of it.. Abbrevations, l33t speak, pig english, american english and australian english for example.

It is also a language that will adopt words and names from other languages faster than the BORG assimilates StarTrek Ensigns. There are so many words that after reading, writing and speaking english for many many years, i still find words that i do not understand the meaning of and still sometimes get it wrong.

Mandarin Chinese has a very HARD pronounciation and hard to write down, but easy to learn GRAMMAR

what about POLISH language? :D

try to pronounce this!

KSIĘŻYCOWA
BRZĘCZYSZCZYKIEWICZ
SZCZEBRZESZYN

I challenge you! :D

Pretty much every native speaker masters the rules of grammar at a young age. As is the case with every language.

No it isn't. Every native speaker gets a pretty good understanding of the grammar early on, but not mastering it.

French is pretty notorious for having cases of grammar most natives don't understand.