Is Polish one of the hardest languages to learn?
As a Slavic language, Polish is one of the most difficult languages for native English speakers to learn.
That's why the US Foreign Service Institute (FSI) first ranked the languages based on difficulty and then assigned a number for how long it usually takes. For those of you who wonder how long it takes to learn Polish, the FSI offers these numbers: Polish is a Category 4 language.
The Polish language is known for having lots of consonants together, which makes it very hard for native English speakers to pronounce some words. If you take the word Szczęście (happiness), the sounds “sh” and “ch” are pronounced one after the other. You'll need to practice a lot if you want to master this!
If we ignore vocabulary, Arabic (27) is one point easier than German (28); Chinese (14) is one point easier than Spanish (15), Japanese and Spanish are the same (15), and Korean (30) is only two points more difficult than German (28) and fourteen points easier than Polish (44).
Polish uses Latin letters, just like English. So, when you're learning the Polish alphabet, all you have to pay attention to are the special accents and the pronunciation. This makes Polish a much much easier language to learn than Russian. Russian on the other hand uses the Cyrillic alphabet.
Rank | Language Name | Primary Country |
---|---|---|
24 | POLISH [PQL] | Poland |
25 | ARABIC, EGYPTIAN SPOKEN [ARZ] | Egypt |
26 | UKRAINIAN [UKR] | Ukraine |
27 | ITALIAN [ITN] | Italy |
Polish is amongst the hardest languages to pick up in the world. Polish words are confusing and can be hard to pronounce for English speakers. Though the language uses the Latin script, it has some additional letters, a complex grammar freestyle system and relies heavily on consonants.
Polish (język polski) belongs to the west Slavic group of the Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family. Its closest living relatives are Czech, Slovak, and Sorbian. It is spoken by 36.6 million people in Poland.
According to the FSI (Foreign Service Institute) of the US government, a native English speaker would need about 1100 class hours or 44 weeks of practice to become fluent in Polish. Thus, Polish is not actually one of the hardest languages to learn because it does not compete directly with Japanese, Chinese or Korean.
Polish got the number three spot on our list. Spelling and grammar are a couple of areas in which Polish can give English speakers a hard time. Words are loaded with consonants, which makes them difficult to spell and pronounce.
What is the longest word in Polish?
4. The longest Polish word contains 54 letters. Dziewięćsetdziewięćdziesięciodziewięcionarodowościowego is the longest Polish word. It roughly stands for “of nine-hundred and ninety-nine nationalities”.
According to the FSI (Foreign Service Institute) of the US government, a native English speaker would need about 1100 class hours or 44 weeks of practice to become fluent in Polish. Thus, Polish is not actually one of the hardest languages to learn because it does not compete directly with Japanese, Chinese or Korean.

If you are specifically planning to move to Russia/Poland or work with people who are Russian/Polish then the answer is clear. If you want to move to Poland, you are interested in Polish culture and history, take Polish.
If you can speak Russian fluently, you will be able to understand 77% of Polish words, while Czech, Slovak, Bulgarian, and Slovene have a 74% similarity to Russian in terms of vocabulary, which decreases to 71% for Serbian.
The best way to learn Polish is by doing a little bit every day. You don't have to spend hours on studying Polish daily. But, even 20 minutes of Polish exercises can have amazing benefits. Feel free to combine your Polish lesson with an everyday activity.
Poland is also the country with the most German language learners in Europe – over 2 million people in Poland take lessons in German. Polish, however, is not as popular in Germany. Still, many German schools offer lessons in Polish as a second foreign language.
Polish might be a bit easier to learn than some of the previously mentioned languages, like Mandarin or Thai, but it still poses some difficulty for English speakers. Spelling and grammar are a couple of areas where Polish can be quite challenging for English speakers.
It depends on what other language(s) you speak. If you speak a West-Slavonik language like Czech or Slovak, Polish should be easier for you. If you speak other Romance languages like French or Italian, Spanish should be much easier for you. It depends on what other language(s) you speak.
It's an extremely rich and beautiful language, spoken not only in Poland but also throughout the world, officially ranked number 21 in the world as regards the number of speakers.
One: jeden (ye-den) Two: dwa (dva) Three: trzy (tshih) Four: cztery (chte-rih)
What is the 3 hardest language?
Generally, if you're an English speaker with no exposure to other languages, here are some of the most challenging and difficult languages to learn: Mandarin Chinese. Arabic. Vietnamese.
- Mandarin. Mandarin is spoken by 70% of the Chinese population, and is the most spoken language in the world. ...
- Arabic. ...
- Japanese. ...
- Hungarian. ...
- Korean. ...
- Finnish. ...
- Basque. ...
- Navajo.
surname | number of citizens | |
---|---|---|
1. | NOWAK | 203,980 |
2. | KOWALSKA / KOWALSKI | 137,981 |
3. | WIŚNIEWSKA / WIŚNIEWSKI | 109,896 |
4. | WÓJCIK | 99,098 |
Polish culture forms an important part of western civilization and the western world, with significant contributions to art, music, philosophy, mathematics, science, politics and literature. Its unique character developed as a result of its geography at the confluence of various European regions.
The Polish education system is ranked fifth in Europe and 10th in the world, and the last decade has seen rising grades across the board, including literacy, numeracy , science, and foreign languages. Textbooks are now free, in line with 2017 reforms.
Learning Polish can give you insight into thousands of years worth of history in Poland and other Eastern European countries. From wars, peace treaties, inventions, and religions, the clash of history that happened is a fascinating study. You can really understand Polish history if you speak the language.
Difficult spelling.
English has many homophones (e.g., meat/meet/mete), words of foreign origin, silent letters, and arbitrary exceptions, which makes spelling perhaps the language's most difficult feature. Polish isn't plagued by that many problems, but it is still not easy to spell a word given its pronunciation.
Across multiple sources, Mandarin Chinese is the number one language listed as the most challenging to learn. The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center puts Mandarin in Category IV, which is the list of the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers.
As a percentage of the total population, the largest share of around 98 percent is in Poland. A total of about 38.7 million people worldwide speak Polish as their mother tongue.
Polish and Russian are often considered very similar. They are both Slavic languages and they both belong to the Indo-European languages family. Without a doubt, these languages have a lot in common and they may sound very similar to someone who doesn't speak either.
What is the most Polish name?
Boy names in Poland | Girl names in Poland |
---|---|
1. ANTONI (Anthony) | 1. JULIA |
2. JAKUB (Jacob) | 2. ZUZANNA (Susan) |
3. JAN (John) | 3. ZOFIA (Sophie) |
4. SZYMON (Simon) | 4. LENA |
'Jak masz na imię? ' (yak-mash-na-im-yea) Meaning: What's your name?
...
Good luck!
- 'Żółć' ...
- 'Szczęście' ...
- 'Pszczyna' ...
- 'Następstw' ...
- 'Źdźbło' ...
- 'Bezwzględny' ...
- Szymankowszczyzna. ...
- Szczebrzeszyn.
Raised Voices: Poles tend to speak in loud voices and raise them when talking about something they are passionate about.
Polish guys are a lot of things. They love football (the European kind), they're not players, they're serious meat-eaters, they're down-to-earth, they can hold their liquor, they aren't afraid of commitment, and they aren't particularly open about their feelings.
1. Where is Polish spoken? Polish is the official language of Poland, which has a population of 39 million people. There are big Polish-speaking communities in Argentina, Australia, Belarus, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Lithuania, the UK, the Ukraine, the US and Russia (among many other countries).
Polish. From this point forward, the hardest languages to learn get less difficult but are still quite challenging. Polish got the number three spot on our list.
Across multiple sources, Mandarin Chinese is the number one language listed as the most challenging to learn. The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center puts Mandarin in Category IV, which is the list of the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers.
Generally, if you're an English speaker with no exposure to other languages, here are some of the most challenging and difficult languages to learn: Mandarin Chinese. Arabic. Vietnamese.
4. The longest Polish word contains 54 letters. Dziewięćsetdziewięćdziesięciodziewięcionarodowościowego is the longest Polish word. It roughly stands for “of nine-hundred and ninety-nine nationalities”.
What language is Polish closest to?
Polish (język polski) belongs to the west Slavic group of the Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family. Its closest living relatives are Czech, Slovak, and Sorbian. It is spoken by 36.6 million people in Poland.
1. Norwegian. This may come as a surprise, but we have ranked Norwegian as the easiest language to learn for English speakers. Norwegian is a member of the Germanic family of languages — just like English!
Easiest (about 600 hours of study)
Of these, Spanish and Italian are the easiest for native English speakers to learn, followed by Portuguese and finally French.
- Mandarin. Mandarin is spoken by 70% of the Chinese population, and is the most spoken language in the world. ...
- Arabic. ...
- Japanese. ...
- Hungarian. ...
- Korean. ...
- Finnish. ...
- Basque. ...
- Navajo.
- 1 – Chinese (Mandarin)
- 2 – Arabic.
- 3 – Japanese.
- 4 – Korean.
- 5 – Hungarian.
- 6 – Finnish.
- 7 – Xhosa.
- Mandarin.
- Japanese.
- Arabic.
- Xhosa.
- Russian.
According to a UNESCO survey, Bengali has been classified as the sweetest language in the world. As a language, Bengali is widely spoken all over India, including Assam and the Andaman & Nicobar Islands. The sweetest language in the world is also recognized in the Constitution of India.