The most difficult language
I often hear it’s Chinese, or sometimes German, but I really don’t think so. I think it all depends on the person. Since I live in the US surrounded with mostly native English or Romance language speakers, it makes sense for them to think so because Chinese is neither a Romance or Germanic language, it is in a completely different language family. However, when I was a kid in China, I never heard anyone say that Chinese is the most difficult language. Through my own experience learning and discussing about language, I have three observations
1) It is equally hard for Chinese to learn English as American to learn Chinese. Both need to adapt to a new language system and start from scratch.
2) It is easier for an English speaker to learn Spanish as a second language than for a Chinese person. Spanish is much similar to English than to Chinese.
3) It is easier for a Chinese speaker who has learned English as a second language to learn Spanish than for a English speaker. Why? Because the Chinese person has learned the new system through English, so Spanish or French will be easier because it is in the same system. The English person didn’t acquire English through learning a new system, it’s a native language for him so he hasn’t gone through the “learning a new system” experience yet.
All in all, don’t ever be discouraged from learning the most difficult language, whichever language it is. The steps are quite easy
1) Listening: you listen a lot until you can hear all the different sounds, some of which may be new to you. This is like a musician training her ears.
2) Speaking: once you hear the new sounds or the differences in the sounds, you practice a lot of speaking until your muscle can produce those sounds effortlessly. This is like an athlete training a set of muscles for a particular movement.
3) Writing: you memorize the fundamental building blocks of the written language. Practice writing them a lot until your muscles can produce the words effortlessly. Note that it’s a different set of muscles for typing from actually writing with a pen.
4)Logic: you learn, understand and internalize the grammar and vocabulary. This is like a student learning math. This is exercise for the brain, different from the three above which are just muscle training.
I truly believe if one person puts 30 minutes a day for 2 years, he or she can reach a high degree of fluency in any language.