Top 10 hardest languages to learn

世界上最难学的十种语言

Many languages have been claimed to be the toughest one to learn. Here follow ten candidates for the title of "hardest language to learn," as released by the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization. This list of 10 candidates includes an explanation as of why they made this list. Read it and find out whether these languages are worth their "tough as nails" reputation.

数种语言自称为世上最难学的语言之一。下面就是竞争“最难学语言”的十门候选语，该名单由联合国教科文组织发放。其中包括了入选排序的理由。阅读该资料，看看这些语言是否真的像其名声那样让人却步。

Top 10: French

第十名：法语

As an official language in 29 countries, French is a challenging language. However, it can be seen as both easy and hard, depending on the learner's native language. French is a Roman language. If the learner's grasp of other Roman languages such as Italian, Portuguese and Spanish is strong, French will be a very quick and enjoyable new language to acquire.Otherwise, for those coming from a completely different language family, learning French would be considerably more difficult. Its pronunciation follows very strict rules based on the spelling, which is often based more on history than phonology.

作为29个国家的官方语言，法语具有足够的挑战性。然而，根据学习者不同的母语，它却可简单也可困难。如果学习者良好地掌握了罗马语系的其他语言，如意大利语、葡萄牙语或西班牙语，那么法语就会成为一门快速入门又能轻松掌握的语言。然而，对那些来自完全不搭边的语言家庭的人，学法语就非常艰难了。法语的发音严格遵循其拼写规则，相较于音韵学，它更多的是基于历史。

Top 9: Danish

第九名：丹麦语

Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by some 6 million people.The sound system of Danish is in many ways unusual among the world's languages, which makes it one of the hardest languages in the world to learn, as the spoken language usually does not sound anything like its written version.

丹麦语出自北日耳曼语系，使用者约600万人。丹麦语的发音系统广泛，不同于世界上的其他语言，因为它拼读的方式完全有别于书写方式，这就使其成为了全球最难学的语言之一。

Top 8: Norwegian

第八名：挪威语

Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway,where it is the official language. It is among the world's languages that's the most difficult to learn how to speak well. No officially sanctioned standard of spoken Norwegian is in place and most Norwegians speak their own dialect at any given time.

出自被日耳曼语系的挪威语在挪威使用较广，也是其官方语言。挪威语的口语是世界上最难学好的。它没有官方认证的标准口语，在任何特定的时间挪威人都会说他们的方言。

Top 7: German

第七名：德语

As one of the world's major languages, German holds the largest number of native speakers within the European Union. It is a language which contains several standard dialects, both in its spoken and written forms. As an inflected language with three grammatical genders, it has a large number of words deriving from the same root.

作为世界上的主要语言之一，德语是欧盟使用者人数最庞大的语言。这门语言涵盖了多种标准方言，无论是口语还是书面上。作为拥有三种语法范畴的有影响力的语言，德语大量的词汇都出自于同一根源。

Top 6: Finnish

第六名：芬兰语

As a language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland,Finnish is hard to learn for its extremely complicated grammar and"endless derivative suffixes." Finnish employ sex tensive modifiers to verbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives and numerals, depending on their roles in the sentence.

作为芬兰使用人数最多的语言，芬兰语因其极复杂的语法和“无止境的衍生后缀”而成了难学语言。

Top 5: Japanese

第五名：日语

Japanese is an East Asian language spoken primarily in Japan. According to documents,Chinese had a considerable influence on the vocabulary and phonology of Old Japanese.Since 1945, it has borrowed a large number of words from English, especially vocabulary relating to technology. One major reason which makes the language so hard to learn is that the written code is different from the spoken code. In addition, Japanese has an extensive grammatical system to express politeness and formalities

日语是东亚语之一，主要使用地为日本。根据记录，中文对旧式日语的词汇和音韵有极其重要的影响。自从1945年起，日语就从英语中引入了大量词汇，特别是科技领域。使日语难学的主要原因就是其书写顺序和拼读顺序不一致。此外，因其礼貌性和正式性，日语还具有相当广泛的语法系统。

Top 4: Icelandic

第四名：冰岛语

Icelandic, a North Germanic language, is the main language of Iceland.Icelandic is hard to learn because of its archaic vocabulary and complex grammar. Icelandic retains many grammatical features of other ancient Germanic languages, and modern Icelandic is still a heavily inflected language.

冰岛语，北日耳曼语族语言，也是冰岛主要语言。冰岛语因其古老的词汇和复杂的语法而难学。它具有古德语的多种语法特征，现代的冰岛语仍然是门有影响力的语言。

Top 3: Arabic

第三名：阿拉伯语

Arabic, belonging to the Afro-Asiatic language family, includes both the literary language and varieties of Arabic spoken across the Middle East, North Africa, and the Horn of Africa.The language has a complex and unusual method in constructing words from a basic root.For instance, nouns in Literary Arabic have three grammatical cases, three numbers, two genders and three "states."

阿拉伯语，属于亚非语系语言家族，它包括中东、北非和非洲之角的文学语言和阿拉伯口语类。该语言根据词根，通过复杂且特别的方式构词。比如，在阿拉伯文学用语中，有三种语法格，三种数字，两种性别和三种“时态。”

Top 2: Greek

第二名：希腊语

As an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, the Greek language features the longest and most documented history. It is spoken mainly across Greece and Cyprus. Along its history, its syllabic structure has remained constant. It has a mixed syllable structure,allowing for relatively complex combinations of sounds. In addition,Greek possesses an extensive set of productive derivational affixes and a rich inflectional system.

混合的音节结构，也让发音组合变得相对复杂。此外，希腊语拥有一体化的生产派生词缀和丰富的曲折词缀系统。

Top 1: Chinese

第一名：中文

Chinese forms one of the branches of the Sino-Tibetan language family and over one billion people can name it as their native language. The relationship between the spoken and written Chinese language is rather complex. Its written form has no clues as to how it is actually pronounced. The tone system also is a pain because there are many homo phones in Chinese only distinguishable by the four tones. Even this is often not enough unless the actual context and exact phrase are identified.

中文是汉藏语系的一个分支，乃10多亿人的母语。中文拼读和书写间的关联甚是复杂。仅看字体根本无法知道如何发其音。语音系统也是一大障碍，因为中文有太多的同音字，又仅靠四个声调来区分。然这远远是不够的，除非实际的上下文和相应的短语已经足够明确。