Impossibly hard languages to learn

If you are thinking of immersing yourself in a new foreign language, here are some languages that are typically the hardest and require the most hours of input for foreign language learners, whatever they're background may be.

Unlikely contenders

Turkish

You may think that the language of this country, stuck between two continents, would absorb elements from the Indo-European language family and the Arab/Asian language families. Sadly, 86% of words are of Turkish origin, and not related to any other language. The hardest part for most Turkish language learners is getting to grips with the grammar. The complexities of the verb tenses, the introduction of vowel harmonies and the agglutination (fusing of affixes to root words) give way to endless hours of study and practice needed to form even simple sentences. Korean, Japanese and Finnish are other examples of agglutinative languages.  For these reasons, getting to basics with the Turkish can take a very long time.

Georgian

Despite also being surrounded by countries who speak Indo-European languages, Georgian is not related to any other foreign language. To make matters more complicated, Georgian has is complete own alphabet called "Mkhedruli" that learners must memorize. The grammar is also considered difficult.

Persian

Persian has a substantial number of words borrowed from Arabic (40% of its lexicography), so it may not seem like an obviously hard language for students. It is within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. However, its grammar rules are completely different from Arabic or other Indo-European languages. Learners will need to comprehend prefixes and suffixes for the formation of new words and learn a new alphabet, modified from Arabic (in the case of Farsi and Dari dialects). 

The obvious contenders are Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Arabic. It is not just the complexity of the language that will determine the speed or quality of learning. Other factors are often viewed as equally important, such as the passion to learn, resources and materials, time dedicated to study and practice, interaction with native speakers, discipline; the list goes on and on. 

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