There are more than 6,500 languages currently spoken in the world today. Akorbi works in more than 170 of them. Some languages are harder to learn than others. Today’s blog from the interpretation services team at Akorbi explains the hardest languages to learn.
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Mandarin Chinese
The English alphabet contains 26 letters. Imagine the world’s most popular language, Mandarin Chinese, with thousands of letters. Chinese letters are called logograms or ideograms, where each letter stands for an idea. Ideograms are often complex to draw and remember. Plus, Mandarin Chinese has different intonations that can change the meaning of words based on how someone speaks. Other languages similar to Chinese include Japanese and Korean. Akorbi’s interpretation services work in Mandarin Chinese if your company needs assistance.
English
English has complex grammar rules. Have you heard the phrase “i before e except after c”? Most elementary school students in America learn that phrase because transposing vowel orders changes the pronunciation of words in English. You also have to consider homophones like to, two, and too. Think about homonyms like air, which means both the physical air and airing your thoughts out loud. Confused yet?
Arabic
Arabic and other Middle Eastern languages are heavy on vowel sounds and not much on consonants. Many sounds don’t exist in other languages. Plus the flowing script of the Arabic alphabet is very different from the English alphabet. Arabic has dozens of dialects depending on where it’s spoken.
Polish
Polish represents a challenge for non-native speakers because the written language routinely features consonants together, such as “szcz” and “zwzgl” in the middle of words. English has uppercase and lowercase. Polish has seven cases. On the upside, Polish uses a Latin alphabet rather than Chinese characters or Arabic script.
Russian
Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet. Some of them look familiar to English speakers, but they’re pronounced differently. A B in Russian sounds like a V. Russian has six cases, plus Russian has no verb “to be” in its vocabulary. Instead of saying “I am a woman,” you would say “I woman” in Russian.
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Interpretation Services by Akorbi
Akorbi can work with your company to translate or interpret languages, even the most difficult ones to learn. Contact Akorbi or call 1-877-4AKORBI for more information about our interpretation services.