If you think picking up a little French or Spanish in your spare time is difficult, then you should know the kind of work you're getting into learning some other languages from around the world. Most experts believe that to become truly fluent in Russian that is thinking and speaking in Russian requires 7-10 years of study. Where its most commonly spoken: Hungary, Romania, Slovakia. In 2019, Kyiv adopted a law to guarantee Ukrainian as a state language, which required Ukrainian to be used in most aspects of public life. The Japanese writing system actually has three different scripts to learn (two are syllabaries and one is a logographic script, similar to Chinese characters). Afrikaans is a beautiful language that is surprisingly easy to learn for native English speakers. For more trivia and language facts sent right to your inbox, sign up for our daily newsletter. For one, Russian has six grammatical cases whereas German only has four. You know that friend you have that speaks three languages fluentlyeffortlessly even? Russian is rated a two of three in difficulty by the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), which ranks languages based on how long it would take the average native English speaker to learn it, so it's not as difficult as some of the other languages on this list. 1. Whats the logic there? Russian is one of the most famous European languages with over 150 million speakers across the world. Where its most commonly spoken: Arabian Peninsula, the Middle East, North Africa. As an English speaker, youll encounter three types of writing systems: Languages that fall in the first category are often the easiest languages to learn. It's highly similar to Slovak - Czech and Slovak are mutually intelligible - and slightly similar to Polish. As with learning Russian, becoming fluent will depend highly on the learner. Take a look at the word suka. If you emphasize the first syllable ("SU-ka"), then youre saying "vomit." And for words you should cut out of your vocabulary right this second, check out Stop Using These Phrases to Sound Instantly Smarter. Over time, the Proto-Slavic language separated into three branches: East Slavic, West Slavic, and South Slavic. Turkish is filled with extremely long verbs. It isn't the grammar that will bog you down when you're trying to learn Thai, it's the writing and the pronunciation, which has five different tones and long and short vowel sounds. Serious about learning Hungarian? In Spanish, its la flor, and in Italian, its il fiore. Coincidence? It has 7 declension cases for nouns, adjectives, and pronouns.