What's the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the World? (Arabic, Mandarin or Japanese?) 

as a native arabic speaker, i must say your pronunciation is incredible for real. also i never noticed "صباح الخير" would be so hard to pronounce lol. it's like a piece of cake for us :)

I learn Japanese and Arabic and I find Japanese easier!

Although alluded to, one of the biggest difficulties with Arabic is that most people don’t actually speak MSA in conversation so when you really want to learn, you have to study both MSA and the regional dialect (eg Egyptian), so you’re basically learning two languages in one. This probably should’ve weighed it higher in difficulty

That was a fun video! I am starting to learn Egyptian Arabic and came across your videos recently. Very helpful. You helped me memorize the alphabet with mnemonics that I was initially having trouble with!

The way you compare the difficulty of languages is very logical, well done

Thanks for motivation to keep learning English, It seems so easy after watching your video

この3つ中じゃアラビア語が難しい様に思えます。いつか学んでみたいですね。 漢字がある中国語は日本人にとっては学びやすい言語に入ります。発音が難しいですが文法はかなり単純明快。日本語よりも簡単だと思います。個人的には英語よりも学習し易いと思いました。 因みに日本語では単語や文脈で一つの漢字に読み方が複数ある事も補足して下さい。地名や当て字など日本人ですら正しく読めない漢字もありますからね😂

What an amazing video, Thank you bro!

I absoulotly love this video! Thanks for your effort.❤ From an Arabic native speaker.

Amazing prononciation in arabic amd chinese !!and amazing video!! Good luck

Thanks Brian for your time and effort. We really appreciate it

您好老师As a student of mandarin with a Chinese wife from Hubei Province， I endorse every point made about mandarin. 太好了！

شكرا على القيديو براين❤ تحية لك من المغرب

Dear Mr Wiles! Thanks for your wonderful video comparing 3 really heavy languages each challenging its learner with lots of difficulties and, besides, confronting him or her with a long history and a huge literature. What makes this triple challenge even more formidable is that the learner has also to master 3 different writing systems, just the most difficult on planet Earth. Your are not only a great language learner, but also a skilful, tricky teacher, who is entertaining and enjoyable to listen to as well. I consider your almost perfect pronunciation of these 3 languages, which are so different in this respect, a big achievement proving you a real talent for languages, that is a pretty gifted linguist.#

I thought this was going to be very uniformed and surface level like many videos on this topic. Glad I clicked it because i was wrong! Solid video all around! Thanks😊

Impressive explanation. Gut gemacht 👌👍

Thank you, Mr. Brian. I follow your lessons constantly, and I hope that you will provide us with many English language lessons and will not be absent from us.🎉

اللغة العربية الفصحى حتى العرب الحاليون لا يتحدثون بها جيدا لذا من الطبيعي أن تكون في هذا المركز لكن علمك بذلك وقدرتك على فهم هذه القواعد هو الأكثر إذهالا، أرجو زيارتك مجددا لمصر😊🤍

Good video, by the way I am also learning French as a second language not counting my mother language Arabic, and I know English. and you may find the counting system hard which it is hard ngl, but when you learn it and reach the numbers from 100-1000 you will find it very logical and actually Arabic grammar is like a connecting system you find each rule has a connection and supports the other one

I'm Japanese. He showed 10:07 how opposite are the sentence constructions between Japanese and English. That's also why we Japanese are quite bad at mastering English. Japanese grammar is actually similar to Turkey's (a.k.a agglutinative languages). These sentence constructions are not so strict but very flexible because of the marker-particles that define the word's function in the sentence, so we can shuffle the order or drop the subject/object/verb. However, this grammar concept is quite alien to the English. The only strict thing in English is sentence construction, the function of the word is defined by its positions, not by conjugations or particles. So, sometimes we can't understand an English sentence even though we know every single word in it.

What a beautiful comparison among these languages, as Arabic is my mother tongue, I can say your Arabic pronunciation is really Excellent. I always think of the difficulty of learning the Asian languages as they seem to me, are very complicated languages, especially in writing! Thanks from my ❤️ for this amazing video!

Excellent video. Would love to know your opinion on which languages would constitute the next tier of difficulty below these three. Korean, Hungarian, Finnish, Polish, Russian, Navajo?

He didn't mention that Japanese kanji have a minumum of two ways to read each kanji, and sometimes many more, depending on what other kanji or hiragana that are in front or behind them. . For example: その他。sonota. 他の。 hokano. . 銀行。　 ginkou 行きます。ikimasu.

As an English speaker Arabic is the hardest for me out of the 3. The language itself is very different and they have about a million dialects that change in every other city. At least with Mandarin and Japanese, the dialects are usually not quite as extremely different. Plus I've actually studied Japanese for a while so I know it's not too bad.

شكرا لك بريان Thanks Brian, that was a nice one 😅😊

I love Arabic, English, Chinese and Japanese 🧡 アラビア語、英語、中国語、日本語が大好きです 💜 我喜欢阿拉伯语、中文、日语和英语 💛 انا احب اللغة الصينية و اليابانية و العربية و الانجليزية 🖤

Great video! Fun fact: Amharic and Japanese have the same syntax. My definition of syntax: "How we put words together in a sentence to make sense."

As an Arabic guy i learnt Chinese and i think Arabic is the hardest language ever! Many dialects and fusha To be professional you have to study all of them not only fusha or one dialect. It's really a big challenge to be like a native man !

I learned Japanese to fluency and Mandarin to broken-degree. First I was pleased as the grammar was easier than anything I've ever seen. But the tones got to me and I find the language extremely "brittle". Meaning if you mess up a few things, they quickly don't understand what you try to say. In now hundreds of hours of speaking Japanese with natives, I really can't remember a single instance where they asked me what I meant or clearly didn't understand what I said. Somehow Japanese seems more "robust" with respect to mistakes and on top of that, due to the culture of dropping subjects, objects and even verbs all the time, as you said, they have developed extremely good skills at guessing what you want to say. I found speaking with Japanese natives a really joyful and effortless experience from the start, even when I was still very bad at it. While with Chinese I often felt like we were truly sitting in different worlds. I have this hypothesis of "Inverse Relationship between linguistic robustness and grammatical complexity". It could be total BS and I am an engineer and know nothing about linguistics, but it seems to me that the harder the grammar, the more you can make mistakes without too many consequences. My native tongue is German, which is fairly difficult grammatically, for example it has these dreaded 4 "cases" that learners always fear. But in practical terms, I often speak with foreigners that make like 8 mistakes per sentence, wrong conjugations, and mess up like 85% of these cases etc, and still, communication is totally no issue, at times even totally fluent. Sure you don't sound native but we understand 99% of what you say perfectly. Chinese has easy grammar and I realized often if you mess up one little thing, the meaning is lost. I once forgot a "个" (which is pronounced "ge" more or less for those who don't know mandarin, so very very short) and the person didn't understand what I wanted to say. I quit Chinese, for a few reasons. I was frustrated with the tones, and also the horrible slurring and bumbling when they speak fast. Japanese often speak faster but apart from the odd 100 year old grand pa, you always hear everything they say clearly. Also I have no connection to China, I never go there, while I visit Japan often...

Such a great video!

Id actually say japanese is pretty easy lol. Im styding for GCSE and its pretty simple to understand. Especially thegrammar. Theres nothing complicated! Also the particles mainly usdd are just wa for subject, wo for object, to for person/ listing, de for place/ "means of", ni for time and also places, and no for posession. There's more but these are the straightforward ones ive learnt. Oh and the grammar is super simple. The sentence just states simple facts and the particles help divide these little snippets of information 私は水曜日に学校で練習をしました I, did, practice, at school, last Tuesday

Mandarin, Arabic, and Japanese are the most systematic and sophisticated languages and language writing systems in the world, and at the same time, all three languages are very similar to each other.

6:37 - the syllabaries are easy. I learned them inside of a semester through textbook that had the first five chapters with romanji written on top of them. After that, with the training wheels off, it was easy. Practice is the key.

Awesome explanation, as an English/French/Arabic speaker trying to learn Mandarin this definitely gives context and insight! I also tried Pimsleur in the past to try out Turkish and the fact that it's conversational focus I did notice significant leap in short amount of time. I might look into it again. I did notice how much easier it is to memorize Chinese characters once you break down the characters a little. For example the word Good has 2 characters (mother and child) in it. Which kind of suggests a mother with her children is a good thing. I also really appreciate that there is no headache whatsoever when it comes to grammar. Your Arabic pronunciation is pretty spot on considering you're able to speak other very different languages. Quiet the tongue twisting adventure!

Nice video! After mentioning the difference in counters in Arabic, I thought you'd mention the plethora of Japanese counters.

As a korean, japanese and chinese are easier than english to understand. I can understand some words without knowing how to pronounce. But arabic is very hard to me. I can't find learning source for beginners and I can't find how to start to learn. And japanese and chinese are more demanded than arabic. Maybe they are spoken neighbor country. Your video is impressive - 最高!

I’m an English speaker and I must say that your score is 💯 right about all 3 of them. Believe it or not, Arabic is the hardest, then Japanese and than Chinese.

I agree with you about Arabic, even for native speakers is hard to learn, I'm a native speaker of Arabic and I can make sure that I don't have enough knowledge about Arabic grammar. btw: I'm a postgraduate student Thank you Brian and keep going 🎉

والله بتوحشني يا صديقي وبتوحشني فديوهاتك. ماشاء الله عليك، انت ظاهرة تستحق الدراسة، عندك قدرة ملفتة للنظر ومبهرة على تعلّم اللغات، ورحابة صدر واتساع أفُق. ربنا يحفظك من كل سوء ❤😊🙏🌷

Reading Japanese is harder than Mandarin IMHO because Japanese has so many different readings for a given kanji character when Mandarin generally only has one or two.

Thanks Brian for the huge effort and yeah the standard Arabic is even hard for the native speakers

Sehr toll 😻

10:00 10 out of 10 for standard Arabic I totally agree with you here 🤞😅 Love you from Syria ❤️

I can't believe you didn't touch on onyomi and kunyomi regarding reading japanese.

good explain thnx brian

Your Egyptian accent is on point lol . You sound like the actors from the Egyptian movies who often add a bit of thickness on their accent.

bro ur videos is so fun i love it

جزاك الله خيرا يا اخي ❤

Hello, I am from Algeria. I am Arab. I am really surprised because the Arabic language is the most difficult compared to Japanese and... because I thought it was easy, but the truth is only because I am good at it.

Makes me realize just how far I had to go in becoming fluent in spoken and standard Arabic, as well as dialect (Syrian dialect btw). And now I'm learning Japanese. Sentence structure is easy once you catch on to it, and context and dropped words or particles likewise. It just takes a lot of listening, and it's not quite as hard once you get used to it. At this point the only thing that still remains challenging is kanji. I learn using the acquisition learning method, so naturally that would mean I only learn the kanji that I need, when I need them, hence I only know about 15-20 kanji so far.

Oh my God, I thought you spoke Arabic, but this is amazing, even if you just try🎉🎉

Your Mandarin has a VERY STRONG Bejing accent! That's genuinely fun to hear a foreigner to talk like that. Btw, have you ever lived there

The video is great. Keep it up. The Korean language is also beautiful and easy ✨🥀

I'm a Japanese native speaker. I think Japanese is EXTREMELY difficult for English speaker. Japanese and English is too different to learn each other. Even though this fact, I have to learn English in school... :( P.S. 日本語学習者の皆さん、日本語の勉強頑張ってくださいね！陰ながら応援しています。

Knowledgeable and pretty decent pronunciation too 👌

For your information bro Arabic pronunciation is very very delicate and there can be thousands of mistakes that are not noticed by English speakers 🎉

I'd say pronunciations aren't part of how hard a language is. It can be hard at the start, but after a few months, pronunciation isn't a blocker for learning. Instead, I'd replace it with "available language content". Native indigenous languages are some of the hardest because there's no available learning content. Similar to chinese. Compared to Japanese, it has a huge amount of content. They make so many interesting shows that it makes it easy. Also, why so many people can learn English. There's so much English content out there it makes it easy.

I was only learning English and Mandarin, English because this is an international language and Mandarin because many people say it's hard(I felt challenged haha) but now I'm focusing on learning English and Modern Standard Arabic first because I want to get a job in Dubai.😙

Something crucial is ignored in this video; in Japanese, every kanji has different pronunciations and meanings, at least two and up to over 100 for each, which I believe makes reading Japanese 50 out of 10. eg. a kanji “生” has 158 ways to read and you have to figure out based on context.

I know arabic will win I'm arabic speaker and the grammar in our language is on another level but it is still an amazing language and have one of the most amazing and beautiful poetry in the world i encourage you to learn it to understand it's beauty

I want to know how you learn all of these languages you are phenomenon ❤

The main issue with Japanese and Chinese (i learned both) is that you cannot get any input from normal texts at all in the beginning, because it all looks like gibberish. You essentially learn 1-2 years of characters in intensive study without any way to actually use them, because the moment you take a look at a normal text, you will not comprehend anything. This will significantly slow down your vocabulary accumulation. On top of that, all the grammar issues. Btw, Chinese is relatively straightforward to read. The point which you made about Chinese is actually normal in Japanese (and even worse), but not so common in Chinese. Therefore imho quite some issues in this video. I found Chinese significantly easier to read than Japanese.

8:19 Something that needs to be factored in is that Japanese kanji have at least two or more pronunciations depending on the context and the kanji, whether it acts as a prefix or a suffix, etc. This makes Japanese kanji much harder to pronounce, and every Japanese word has a pitch accent to memorize too.

معلومات عظيمة وقيمة الف شكر ♥️

On the point of Kanji: You don't need to learn individual Kanji (even if you did, you can't read words), you just need to learn the words straight up

My best teacher for you ❤❤❤

Im struggeling more with japanese reading than chinese reading. Because japanese kanji can be pronounced in MANY different ways.

1:40 - another example is bat; a wooden stick used in baseball or a winged animal.

Hello dear i watch your video i start learning enlish 6 months ago and i need two other months to end this jerny . i found that english exsactly so so so easy .. i'm native arabic i love your video❤❤❤🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸

I am studying mandarim and in mu opinion read is easier than the other things you mentioned. Fortunately I have a good memory and with a little practice is possible to read several texts, but speaking isn't so easy. As a portuguese speaker, the strict sentence order is mandarin is a big problem. Everything has to be in specific order.

A masterpiece video! Btw, I think Mandarin would be very easy to learn if the aim is only the basic communications (around B1 level).

0:29As a Chinese ,I’m shocked that you spoke the sentence so fluently and correctly!😮😳

The real hardest language to learn is for sure one that's spoken by almost nobody and the planet. In a more general way I think a lot of niche African countries that are spoken only in very poor countries might be even harder than Mandarin, Japanese or Arabic because they're almost nonexistent in the internet and living. It's sort of a "side answer" to the actual debate so I don't think I'm absolutely right. However it's still good to keep in mind that the lack of resources might be actually an important criteria to consider.

You can talk about the base and the algorithm in every one of them because that’s what makes it a language.

بما إنك من نيويورك، أيه رأيك تعمل فيديو عن أحداث 11 من سبتمبر؟

3:00 لما اتعلمت الحروف العربيه هل كان حرف ال ض صعب بما انه مش موجود في اي لغه تانيه؟ + ايه اللغات اللي بتتكلمها+ امتى بدات تتعلم لغه كان عندك كم سنه

As a native English speaker (who also speaks Urdu and Hindu fluently), I have been a student of Arabic for 20 years. I am now an Arabic teacher at high school. Arabic is difficult because the level of difficulty keeps increasing if you want to get into the incredibly rich cultural and religious Arabic literature. I think it will take my entire lifetime to reach a good level. I have met many students who have learned much faster than me, they seem to have be especially gifted.

Très bonne vidéo

You should do cantonese Cantonese is much harder It has 9 tones The characters are more complex And reading and speaking are very different than each other

i like how u easily switch between them.

انا بتعلم ياباني من كام شهر ولاحظت تقدم كبير في بعض الأجزاء زي الكتابه والقراءة والنطق وبسبب وفرة مصادر التعلم باللغه الانجليزيه ده بيقدم مساعده في تطوير اللغه الانجليزيه اتمنى تعمل فيديو عن ازاي نتعلم اللغه اليابانيه خاصة الكانجى ‏والقواعد

in terms of speaking, Taa language from Bostwana and Namibia is probably the hardest. Japanese would probably rank among the easiest. in terms of handwriting, it's probably Chinese because of the sheer number of characters (which is why many people only learn pinyin instead) in terms of actually learning it, a toss up between indigenous languages, hungarian and arabic. hungarian is particularly difficult because of its complex and extensive grammar rules.

as a native arabic speaker i agree with u about grammer actually it`s hard to us too to learn it in schools

you the best.. im from egypt.. hope u enjoyed here

bro you said good morning fantastically hahah. you sound natural..

اعمل فيديوهات قصيره بالغة العربية Brian make a short videos by Arabic please 🥺

11:51 i like how you said bye in all 3

Thanks to the beautiful video. Arabic native was here 🇵🇸

Did not expect that... There's hope for me then to learn Mandarin and Japanese 😂

The Arabic language has many dialects. In fact, in Saudi Arabia, the population there is from ancient Arab tribes. Therefore, each tribe has a dialect, but it is not completely different, but rather in some words.

You are very good I'm from Egypt and I can speak English but don't very well

Most of Japanese kanji have multiple readings (on’yomi and kun’yomi), and the correct one depends on the context. So I think it’s harder to learn Japanese kanji than Chinese hanzi. But pronunciation is definitely easier in Japanese

وحشنا فيديوهاتك العريي يا براين

براين لاحظت هذا الشيء في أكثر من فديو لك ، عندك مشكلة في نطق حرف الحاء للتنبيه لا أكثر

The Egyptian accent is kinda easy to learn But the Formal real Arabic is so hard and has more than 12 million words

Grat job

Arabic is my mother language and I remember at school it's the most difficult and challening subject and getting C grade is pretty common. Arabic grammar is what makes it very hard, only Syrian teachers have perfect understanding of it for some reason.

I think when you add the diacritics, Arabic becomes easy to read and extremely straightforward.

The sentence at 10:09 would also be in a different order in Mandarin. You could say something like: 我想試穿我在飯店對面看到的西裝 I want to try on I at hotel across from saw suit. Or: 我在飯店對面看到的西裝，我想去試穿 I at hotel across saw suit, I want to go try on.

الله، كان في نية لتعلم اللغة الصينية، هلئ اعتقد انو شبه مستحيل 😢 فيديو ممتع وملهم انو نبحث ونتعلم لغات اكثر شكرا لك صديقي،💗💗💗