5 Impossible Languages for English Speakers

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Published 2023-11-20
🤯 What makes a language impossible to learn? Do you think you could master one?

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⏱ TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 - Intro
0:20 - Impossible Language 1
4:10 - Impossible Language 2
08:46 - Impossible Language 3
11:46 - Impossible Language 4
17:29 - Impossible Language 5

📜 SOURCES & ATTRIBUTIONS:

🎬 Video Clips:
Star Wars - briefing scene HD
   • Star Wars - briefing scene HD  

LOTR The Fellowship of the Ring - Extended Edition - Lothlórien
   • LOTR The Fellowship of the Ring - Ext...  

People Afraid Of Roller-Coasters Ride One For The First Time (360° Video)
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   • Steve cannot pronounce "CLICK" in Xho...  
   • Learn The Click Language now ! #xhosa...  
   • How to Q Click in Xhosa  
   • White People Speaking isiXhosa (Afric...  
   • Learn IsiXhosa | Campus Edition | UCT...  
   • Learn IsiXhosa | Quick Xhosa Lessons ...  
   • Learn Xhosa: The Clicks | Lesson 1 | ...  
   • How to pronounce the X Click in Xhosa...  
   • Judy Brummer Speaks Xhosa, the Clicki...  
   • Pronouncing tones for Uze uze uze wit...  
www.tiktok.com/@brucee_the_entertainer_/video/7223…
   • Speaking Fluent Finnish?!  
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   • FOREIGNERS TRYING TO SPEAK FINNISH | ...  
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   • HARDEST Words to Pronounce in Finnish...  
   • Speaking Finnish With Lauri Markkanen...  
   • Differences between spoken and writte...  
   • Why is the Finnish language so hard? ...  
   • Why is the Finnish language so hard? ...  
   • Learn Finnish with Stefano on Italki!  
   • How To Survive In Poland | Easy Polis...  
   • 11 Foreigners Trying to Pronounce Pol...  
   • British Boy Speaks Polish  
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   • Is Polish Really the Most Difficult L...  
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   • Polish alphabet. Pronunciation  
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   • 超爆笑廣東話PK!美國人挑戰講廣東話,香港和大馬人聽得懂嗎?!@soyap...  
   • AMA with Chinese Canadian YouTuber......  
   • When Cantonese 粵語 Beats Mandarin 普通話 ...  
   • Sound of Cantonese : Introduction of ...  
   • 廣東話教學(粵語教學)——九聲六調口訣(下集)(點講廣東話)  
   • Cantonese 2-month progress video!  
   • Wayne's World (2/10) Movie CLIP - Way...  
   • How I taught my husband Cantonese 📚  
   • White guy speaking Cantonese after 1 ...  
   • White guy sings in Cantonese - 海闊天空 B...  
   • Australians (try to) speak HUNGARIAN! #2  
   • Magyarország egyik legnépszerűbb férf...  
   • Australians (try to) speak HUNGARIAN! #1  
   • Hungarian Lessons - How to pronounce ...  
   • Hungarian explained - such long words...  
   • Blooper reel: Learning Hungarian vide...  
   • Trying to speak Hungarian - how I lea...  
   • How and why I learn Hungarian! 8 Mont...  

🖼 Images:
“Tolkien in the 1920s” by Unknown is licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien#/media/File…

“Cantonese tones” by Saurmandal is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantonese_phonology#/media/F…

All Comments (21)
  • @unhaklover
    As a Pole, I feel honored that my language is included in this film. And I wish good luck to people who are trying to learn Polish!
  • @thombaz
    As a Hungarian the most impossible language for me is any other language.
  • @kryzerk9203
    Hungarian is actually Polish spoken backwards ;) Cheers to all our Hungarian brothers ;)
  • Once in Portugal me and my wife were talking in a café (we are Hungarians). Then a gentleman from a distant table approached us and asked if we were Finnish. He was fluent in it and said from a fair distance our talking sounded like Finnish.
  • @michakubiak9922
    For the record about the Finnish language, Tolkien was indeed influenced by it in creating Quenya, but in this particular fragment of The Fellowship of the Ring, Haldir spoke to Legolas in Sindarin, which in turn was influenced by Welsh, not Finnish.
  • @Sarah_Eva
    I survived being a high school exchange student to Miskolc, Hungary. 🇭🇺 I'm not fluent, but it will forever have a special place in my heart.
  • @mirae9163
    I am a native Cantonese speaker(so proud lol) who is learning Finnish 😊 I don't know Polish but i know Russian. For me Georgian is the hardest language so far. Nice video as always 👍 Kiitos paljon ! 😺
  • @Davood95
    I learned Finnish. I lived in Finland for eight years. It definitely required effort as there were no classes. But I had the advantage of coworkers (other language teachers) who had permission to correct my Finnish with explanations for 7+ years. 40 years later my wife and I still use it as a secret language in public.
  • @mashiah1
    I guess the hardest language is some obscure Native American, Caucasian or East Asian language. For an official language, with quiet large number of speakers my guess that the hardest is Georgian
  • @gabriella8623
    As a native Hungarian, English was hard for me for the beginning. The Hungarians language and thinking is complicated sometimes overcomplicated and had a lot of synonym just for the word "walk" we use minimum 5 different words in the daily life (or more). If you interesting I left here some meaning of walk in hungarian: jár, megy, járkál, mászkál, slattyog, kullog, ballag, mendegél, bandukol, lépeget, lépdegél, lépdel, cammog, sétál, kutyagol, tipeg, baktat, battyog, poroszkál, gyalogol, totyog, kolbászol, andalog, cselleng, kódorog, lépked, caplat, kóvályog, gyüszmékel, sétálgat, csoszog, lépdes, cirkál, kóricál, talpal, császkál, korzózik, botorkál, jár-kel, lézeng, kószál, lődörög, bóklászik, flangál, kóborog, csatangol, lófrál, ténfereg, csavarog, tekereg, tébolyog, tévelyeg, bolyong, őgyeleg, kujtorog, barangol, kóborol, tántorog, csámborog, sétafikál, vándorol, szédeleg, téblábol, csalinkázik, kóringyál, lébecol, karistol, bódorog, ődöng :)
  • @zsoltberces3378
    There is the legend of Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz, Chrząszczyżewoszyce, powiat Łękołody. Greetings from Hungary!
  • I learned Hungarian from zero when I was 28. I'm 60 now and haven't used it since I was about 33. I really haven't had much opportunity since leaving Budapest after Art Studies. I'm now reviewing it and it isn't totally gone. I guess I loved it and I still do. I think that was the key for me learning it and remembering it. It lives in my soul. But it is damned hard. No question about it.
  • @barrysteven5964
    I'm English and learn languages as my job but also as a hobby. I have learned, to varying levels, three of these 'impossible' languages: Finnish, Polish and Hungarian. Finnish took the longest to learn but once you have got beyond the beginner phase it goes quite quickly because more advanced vocabulary is easy to work out. Polish was OK because I'd already studied Russian and Czech at university so the hard parts of Polish grammar were not new to me. Hungarian is very different but it is regular compared to for example Russian so it's a case of getting used to the sentence structures and vocabulary but it's not too bad really. No language is impossible to learn. It takes determination, motivation and time. You don't have to be a genius either. Just hard working. P.S. The hardest Slavonic language I ever tried a bit of was Slovene. I only got up to about A2 level but the grammar is hard.
  • I lived in Hong Kong for 12 years, Cantonese is a really expressive language which has a lot of sounds that aren't actually words on their own but which are used for various forms of emphasis. My experience was however that the locals show no mercy when yo I get your tones wrong.😅
  • I’m from Hong Kong and I gotta say you did amazing in your cover for 海闊天空 — I literally won’t be able to tell that you’re not a native from just your voice! It feels nice too when people learn about our culture and language and I hope you have fun doing so as well.
  • @Danny30011980
    I have been learning Hungarian for the pastvren years now. Not an easy language, but often very logic by meanings or hiw they can expess a whoke sentence in one single word. That's what i call efficiency Nagyon szeretem ezt a nyelvet!
  • @Gubbe51
    Don't complain about Hungarian vowels. They are clearly defined and consistently spelled. Everybody pronounces them the same way, unlike the English vowels which are crowded together in the middle of the vowel quadrangle and are practically undistiguishable from each other. Additionally every English dialects uses a different set of vowels, which makes English speech one of the most difficult languages to understand. And if this weren't enough, many speakers eliminate half of the vowels or replace them with a schwa.
  • @mikrokupu
    My foreign friends are amazed by how Finns can produce words while inhaling. My mom often uses sigh-like phrases "joo-o" or "vai niin" (oh well/is that so), inhaling kind of underlines it :)
  • @shesaknitter
    My South African friend, who speaks Sesotho, told me that one of the coolest things in the world is to stand near a group of people speaking Xhosa....all of that clicking is just fantastic! I was once talking with a woman of Polish descent who lived in Chicago and she told me that she loved living in that city because, among other things, everyone there could pronounce her Polish surname! My grandma's first name was a palindrome: Reber!