The most difficult language to learn for English speakers

Author:

Russ
The most difficult language to learn for English speakers
What is the most difficult language in the world to learn, out of over 2650 languages and over 7000 dialects? The most important deciding factor is one\'s mother tongue.
 According to research by the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation), the 5 most difficult languages to learn for English speakers are:

• ·         Cantonese
• ·         Mandarin
• ·         Arabic
• ·         Japanese
• ·         Korean

As part of Indo-European languages family, English is formed by 24 Latin letters. However, Chinese—as part of a completely different language family: Sino-Tibetian, uses HanZi (Chinese Characters). This made Chinese extremely difficult for English speakers to learn.
Generally, the following 4 reasons make it even more difficult for English speakers to learn Chinese:

1. 1.       You cannot always find the equivalent words in the other language
2. 2.       In the two languages, those words which seemingly mean the same thing are actually referring to different concept.
3. 3.       In one language, you have only one or very few terms to describe some certain item/concept while in the other language, you may find many more different expressions.
4. 4.       Some words/phrases have the same principle meaning in both languages; however they may give people different impressions based on different cultures and traditions.

1. I.                    No equivalent words

There are many things that only exist in one culture. This makes it impossible to translate such items/concepts/products into the other language, or make people understand what exactly they are. For example, when the word ‘Coffee\' first spread to China, people could not give it an accurate translation, as this drink did not exist in China. As a result, instead of trying to find the best match, Chinese people simply recorded the pronunciation of this foreign word and created a new phrase ‘Ka Fei\'.  It is also very difficult to explain to Chinese people what is Hippy, Bingo Party, motel, revival meeting or time clock, because they simply do not exist in Chinese Culture.
On the other hands, there are just as many Chinese words which are difficult to transfer into English. The most obvious examples will be the two words ‘Yin\' and ‘Yang\'. According to Longman Modern English Dictionary, yin is described as the feminine or negative principle in nature; and yang –the masculine or positive principle in nature. However these are far from sufficient to really review the true and full meaning of these two words.
Many different aspects are responsible for these differences: different natural environment and tradition; different level of the development of technology or different social and political atmosphere.

1. II.                  Some concepts exist in both Chinese and English, but their meanings are not completely the same.

Following are some examples:

1. 1.       ‘High\' in Chinese is ‘高\' (gao), and ‘School\' in Chinese is ‘校\' (xiao), however ‘Gaoxiao\' does not mean ‘high school\', but\' University\'.
2. 2.       The words ‘rest\' and ‘room\' are both very easily understood in Chinese and English, however the combination of these two words are complete different, as ‘restroom\' or ‘Xiuxi Shi\' in Chinese is more likely to refer to ‘lounge\' or ‘lobby\'.
3. 3.       A word for word translation for the Chinese phrase ‘ShiYan\' (食言) should be ‘to eat one\'s own words\'. However the Chinese phrase actually means ‘to break one\'s promises\' as oppose to ‘take one\'s words back\'.

1. III.                In one language, you have only one or very few terms to describe some certain item/concept while in the other language, you may find many more different expressions.

For example, in China people use ‘LuoTuo\' to describe all camels, however in English, there are also ‘dromedary\' and ‘Bactrian camel\'. It is said that in Arabic, there are over 400 words for ‘camels\', many of them are used to differentiate the camel\'s age, gender, breed, size, strength and even whether they are pregnant.
Chinese language has a lot more words for family members than English. The simple sentence ‘Mary\'s sister married Tom\'s Brother\' can be very difficult to be translated into Chinese, because ‘brother\' or ‘sister\' is just not detailed enough, we need to know whether they are Younger or older to be able to find them a Chinese equivalent, below are a simple layout of family members in Chinese:
祖父
Grandfather (Father\'s father)
祖母
Grandmother (Father\'s Mother)
外祖父
Grandfather (Mother\'s Father)
外祖母
Grandmother (Mother\'s mother)
父亲
Father
母亲
Mother
兄
brother (Elder brother)
姐
Sister (Elder sister)
弟
Brother (younger brother)
妹
Sister (younger sister)
伯父
Father\'s elder brother
叔父
Father\'s younger brother
姑父
Husband of father\'s sister
舅父
Mother\'s brother
姨父
Husband of mother\'s sister
姐夫
husband of elder sister
妹夫
husband of younger sister

The above are only part of the relatives; other members like cousins (male and female), brother\'s sister, husbands\' younger brother, father\'s brother\'s son etc are even more confusing for English speakers.

1. IV.                Words or phrases give people different impressions because of the culture and tradition

For example, the words ‘politician\' and ‘statesman\' are representing the same profession, however we must be very careful when choosing their Chinese equivalents, as ‘Zhengke\' (政客) is considered derogatory, while ‘zheng zhi jia\' (政治家) is a more positive phrase.
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/international-studies-articles/the-most-difficult-language-to-learn-for-english-speakers-5042880.html
About the Author
Hello I was born and raised in Somerset UK, my parents are both native British, I have studied the art of translation for many years and am fluent in the Chinese dialects of Cantonese and Mandarin, also the written in a romanized system chinese of Pinyin.