Is Chinese Really the Most Challenging Language in the World?

Exploring the Myths and Realities of Learning Chinese

Chinese is often referred to as one of the world’s hardest languages to learn. According to the US Foreign Service Institute (FSI) language rankings, Chinese is classified as a Category 5 language—the category reserved for the most difficult languages to learn. Other languages in this category include Japanese, Korean, and Arabic.

In French or Spanish, when something is confusing or extremely difficult, people say, "That’s Chinese to me." However, in English, the equivalent expression is, "That’s Greek to me." Even in this context, there seems to be no consensus on which language is the hardest to understand.

Let’s explore what makes Chinese challenging—and also what makes it surprisingly accessible!

汉语真的最难学吗

我们经常会听到有人说，外国人学汉语有多么多么不容易，说好汉语写好汉语是多么多么难的一件事情，那么事情的真相果真如此么？！

汉语难学的印象似乎根深蒂固。可能令很多人意外的是，汉语的发音和语法对外国人来说远没有中国人想象的那么难……

• 深蒂固 (shēn dì gù): Deep-rooted

Is Chinese Really the Hardest Language to Learn?

We often hear people say how difficult it is for foreigners to learn Chinese, and how challenging it is to speak and write Chinese fluently. But is this truly the case?

The impression that Chinese is difficult to learn seems deeply ingrained. However, it might surprise many that Chinese pronunciation and grammar are far less challenging for foreigners than many Chinese people assume.

先来说发音，汉语主要难在四声。“歪果仁”常因四声不准而被认为“中文不好”。事实上，每门语言都有自己的发音难点。俄语、西班牙语的大舌音，德语、法语的小舌音，语言系学生大多要含水、吐痰练习小半年，甚至有人要靠做手术才能发出这些音素。

语音、语调是否准确跟学习者的听觉识别能力有关，能准确发出四声的外国人大有人在。如果碰上母语本就带有声调的外国人，四声就更非难事。比如曼谷泰语有五个声调，泰国北部的泰语更是有六个声调，且调型基本涵盖了普通话的四个声调。因此泰国人说普通话时，声调根本不成问题，顶多稍异于中国人。

• 歪果仁 (wāi guǒ rén): Foreigner (playful internet slang for 外国人)

• 大舌音 (dà shé yīn): Thick accent; rolled "r" sound

• 小舌音 (xiǎo shé yīn): Uvular sound

• 含水 (hán shuǐ): To contain water; water content

• 吐痰 (tǔ tán): To spit; to expectorate

• 听觉识别 (tīng jué shí bié): Auditory recognition

• 涵盖 (hán gài): To cover; to include

• 顶多稍异 (dǐng duō shāo yì): At most slightly different

Let’s start with pronunciation. The primary difficulty in Chinese lies in its tones. "Foreigners" are often thought to have "poor Chinese" due to incorrect tones. In reality, every language has its own pronunciation challenges. For example, Russian and Spanish have rolled "r" sounds, while German and French feature uvular sounds. Language students often spend months practicing these by holding water in their mouths or spitting, and some even require surgery to produce these sounds.

The accuracy of pronunciation and intonation depends on the learner’s auditory recognition ability, and many foreigners can master the four tones with practice. If the learner’s native language is tonal, the four tones are even less of a challenge. For instance, Bangkok Thai has five tones, while Northern Thai has six, with patterns that mostly overlap with Mandarin’s four tones. Thus, for Thai speakers, Mandarin tones pose little difficulty—they might only sound slightly different from native speakers.

语法方面，中文的难度在各语言中只算中等。譬如中文的名词、形容词完全不具词形变化，动词本身不具人称、时态、语态及语气。只有助词、量词比较复杂，即便如此，中国三、四岁的孩子讲中文，语法上多半没什么问题。但说英语的小孩在这岁数一般还尚难分清过去分词和简单过去时，会管 did 叫 done，管 saw 叫 seen。

比英语更难的是法语——《最后一课》中，法国小学生因害怕被老师提问分词，宁可逃学。这并不奇怪，法语中过去分词性数用法规则极其复杂，法国成年人犯错都司空见惯，甚至最近的法语正字法改革都试图将其更加规律化。在俄语中，房子是阳性，别墅是阴性，窗户是中性，这意味着用来形容它们的词全部要相应变形。

• 譬如 (pì rú): For example; such as

• 词形变化 (cí xíng biàn huà): Word formation; inflection (morphological changes of a word)

• 助词 (zhù cí): Particle (a functional word used in grammar)

• 量词 (liàng cí): Measure word; classifier

• 即便如此 (jí biàn rú cǐ): Even so; even if it’s like this

• 逃学 (táo xué): To skip school; to play truant

• 司空见惯 (sī kōng jiàn guàn): Commonplace; a common occurrence (idiom)

• 规律化 (guī lǜ huà): Regularization; to make regular or systematic

In terms of grammar, Chinese ranks only moderately difficult compared to other languages. For example, Chinese nouns and adjectives do not inflect, and verbs lack conjugation for person, tense, voice, or mood. While auxiliary words and measure words can be complex, most three- or four-year-old Chinese children can speak grammatically correct Chinese. In contrast, English-speaking children at that age often struggle with distinctions like the past participle versus simple past, calling “did” as “done” and “saw” as “seen.”

French is even more challenging than English. In The Last Lesson, French schoolchildren preferred skipping school to avoid being questioned on participles by their teacher. This is understandable, as the rules for gender and number agreement with past participles in French are extremely complex, and even French adults frequently make mistakes. The recent French spelling reforms aim to make these rules more systematic. In Russian, words like “house” are masculine, “villa” is feminine, and “window” is neuter, meaning that every adjective describing them must agree in form.

当然，汉语也不是各方面都容易学。什么才是汉语真正的难点呢？

答案很简单——汉字。中文的书写系统不太与其发音对应，在记音之外，还要记形。而所谓形声字一般诞生于几千年前的上古汉语阶段，而上古时期能起指示作用的声符在现代汉语中大多已经失效。此外，汉字构件太多，不像西方文字只有二三十个字母，导致记忆量庞大，且无法取巧地使用同根词帮助记忆。用字典查字不仅让外国人抓耳挠腮，事实上，也只有在中国，使用字典成为一项要学习掌握的技能。

• 形声字 (xíng shēng zì): Pictophonetic character (Chinese character that combines a meaning component and a sound component)

• 构件 (gòu jiàn): Component; part (in a structure or system)

• 取巧 (qǔ qiǎo): To take a shortcut; to use tricks

• 同根词 (tóng gēn cí): Cognates; words derived from the same root

• 抓耳挠腮 (zhuā ěr náo sāi): To be in a state of agitation or confusion; scratching one's ears and cheeks (idiom, describing someone who is anxious or uncertain)

Of course, Chinese is not easy in every respect. What is the real difficulty of Chinese?

The answer is simple: Chinese characters. The Chinese writing system doesn’t correspond closely to its pronunciation. In addition to memorizing sounds, learners must also memorize the shapes of characters. Many so-called phonetic characters were created thousands of years ago during the Old Chinese period, but their phonetic components are now mostly obsolete in Modern Chinese. Moreover, Chinese characters have numerous components, unlike the 20-30 letters of Western alphabets, leading to an enormous memory load. There are no shortcuts like using word roots to aid memory. Looking up characters in a dictionary leaves foreigners scratching their heads. In fact, only in China is using a dictionary considered a skill that must be learned.

What’s your take? Do you also think Chinese is difficult to learn?

Antoine & Dorota