What is the hardest language to learn?   This is a good question, but of course the hardest language depends on your first language.   For English speakers it’s Japanese.   The Foreign Service Institute has a language difficulty ranking based on five categories. It shows what most difficult language to learn for native English speakers is, as well as of course, the easiest language to learn. They then indicate languages WITHIN the categories that are more difficult than the other languages in that category.   With me so far?   In the top 5 category we have:   Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, *Japanese, Korean   These would be considered the most difficult languages to learn. Of course, if any of these are you first language, that will explain why English is hard to learn.   You’ll notice that only Japanese is indicated as more difficult.   Making it the hardest language to learn for English speakers.   But how hard is it to learn Japanese, really? Is japanese hard to learn?   Well… yes and no.   We discuss this in this week’s Doing English Podcast episode.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4-ab-aLSuk    Subscribe on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/the-doing-english-podcast/id1054863578?mt=2 Subscribe on Stitcher: http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/julian/the-doing-english-weekly-rant