Ah, language learning. I’ve always enjoyed the challenge of learning a language; I collect them like a hobby. While I’m fluent in English, Spanish and German, not to mention my native language, Hungarian, I can casually speak quite a few because I enjoy dipping my toes into a language. I know a lot of people are not so happy about it; many folks struggle with languages. I know it’s irritating to people when I tell them how easy it is to learn a language.
So, let’s take a different tack this time around. What’s the hardest language in the world to learn for an English-speaker? While some might suggest Arabic or Cantonese, I would suggest that Hungarian (or Magyar, as the natives sometimes refer to it) is hands-down the most difficult language for an English-speaker to learn.
The Case of the Infinite Cases
The first piece of evidence for my suggestion is the fact that Hungarian has 35 distinct cases. English, by way of contrast, has largely abandoned the case system – the remnants are still there, but in general it’s possible to speak quite clearly and correctly without any understanding of case in English, and in fact many do.
Now, the number ‘35’ is misleading. You’ll often see 18 as a more reasonable number. The reason for this disparity is the fact that many of these ‘cases’ apply only to prepositions, which are then appended to the words themselves. So, yes, there is such a thing as the Accusative case in Hungarian, but that simply means that a single letter gets attached to the word to mark it as an object. Still, whether 18 or 35, the Case system in Hungarian is a nightmare.