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Even though I haven't studied it at all, I'd say Japanese, since it's the only Asian language on Duolingo whose alphabet uses a complete different system made up of symbols! There's also Hebrew, Greek, and Russian, which all use different alphabets, Hebrew's alphabet being the most different from the Latin alphabet of the three, but Japanese is a whole different, much harder story. :)
But then again, each person is different. :D
Alphabets aren't really what make Hebrew or Russian difficult. With Russian in particular, the alphabet is the easy bit!
Yes, you're right! Personally, it took me a bit less time to learn the Russian alphabet compared to the Greek one, but they're both pretty straight forward. Hebrew took a long time for me, and I still don't remember half the alphabet. :( XD
In fact, I've shortened my language bucket list, including Hebrew in it, to make life simpler and focus on the main languages I truly want to learn now and that have or could have an impact on me one day! :D
Oh, and then there's also Vietnamese, which I consider hard by just taking a look at it. Though every single word in its language is only one syllable, there are many, oh plenty, of different tonal accents and accent marks you must learn to conquer. And you have to master distinguishing between two words that might sound almost identical but mean two totally different things. So maybe having all words one syllable doesn't really help at all. But to each their own! We're all unique, different, and special! :)
With Hebrew, it's kind of strange, because typically you learn a new alphabet and then you can read the new language even if you don't understand what you're reading, whereas with Hebrew you really need to get familiar with the language and have some understanding before you can reliably read the unvowelled script. It is really hard to learn the abjad in isolation, because you don't have anything to hang it on. Learning whole words and sentences helps a lot more.
If I can help anytime, let me know :D (I love Hebrew, and I gotta tell ya, being able to actually read and write even the simplest sentences feels like a massive achievement.)
I think most of the difficulty of Hebrew is how different it is if one is used to Indo-European languages. The way it works is logical and helpful, and for some things there's decidedly less complexity than English, it's just very different, and there's relatively little familiar/borrowed vocab, even compared to English-Russian. So the learning curve is steep to start with, BUT it is possible. Keep on plugging away!
I completely agree. It takes time for one to learn to read exactly what each word says without the vowels, which is how modern Hebrew is written today.
Thank you so, so much! :D I'm taking a long break from Hebrew, who knows if I'll ever even get back to it later on, but now I know who to go to for advice and help if I ever decide to continue learning it! X)
Yes, the way it works is logical and since it's one of the oldest languages, I doubt it borrows any words from any other languages. And I know! I remember once I wrote a complete sentence in Hebrew without any help and I felt like the King of the world in that moment.. XD I think it was "I love my mom and dad", but now I forgot how to write it. XD All I remember is how to say "mom and dad" and that's "ima ve-abba" Haha! But yeah, thank you! :D
Hungarian, Hebrew and Vietnamese. Hungarian is probably the hardest.
I've only really studied a few languages on Duolingo past the basic lessons and those are: Portuguese, English, Spanish, French, Italian and Swedish. I've tried doing a few lessons for almost any other tree except for Swahili and Welsh or something like that and I will base my opinion on my initial perception of all the languages.
The hardest languages on Duolingo for me are: Hungarian, Hebrew and Vietnamese. These trees must be extremely difficult to complete. Only doing the basic lessons seemed like a nightmare and something I would never be able to do. There are a few factors fo this and I think the main one is a lack of motivation. Neither of these is an Indo-European language, Hungarian has an extensive case system and "weird" word order, Vietnamese has a lot of tones and I couldn't get a grasp of Hebrew whatsoever. Hebrew seems to be the easier to learn because it was designed to be easy to learn, I just lack motivation for now.
Yes, I too lack motivation for Hebrew now. That's why I've deleted it. And a few other languages, but it's fine because sometimes simplifying now is way better so that way you can leave room for more things, or languages, later on in life, when and if you're truly ready for more! :)
I compleated the Vietnamese tree and at first I thought it is the crazy language. But practice hard made me .... compleated the tree . Try to learn it. ( My pronoun of Vietnamese is weird )
The Hebrew course, between the script and a high level of unfamiliarity (relatively little borrowing or vocabulary sharing with European languages), plus the lack of TTS so you don't get words in isolation, makes the initial learning curve for Hebrew really, really tough. It's easy to get discouraged in those early stages. Once you're over that hump, it gets much easier. A lot of the difficulty of Hebrew is that it's different, not that it's inherently complex.
Thank you! Now it makes sense. The Hebrew course is indeed different from the others.
Right now, I'd say Japanese because the writing is quite different. There are three scripts to learn. Plus grammar with the usage of particles is also different.
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I think Japanese displaced Hungarian for now, but Hungarian will reclaim the crown when Japanese gets nearer to exiting the beta phase. For now, as a beginner in Japanese, there are just lots of problems with the hints that I hope will get sorted out. But then there are the uber-long Hungarian sentences will remain, this on top of an already hard enough language. Apart from the beta issues the content of the Japanese tree is just pretty simple. Interestingly, studying either will help you somewhat with the other, since they have the same basic word order and, at the end of the day, Japanese particles look quite a bit like case declensions.
However, the above is composed without familiarity with the Vietnamese tree and only the briefest of dalliances with Hebrew.
