Language /
Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]
What is the hardest language to learn?
Extremely Hard: The hardest language to learn is: Polish
-Seven Cases, Seven Genders and very difficult pronunciation.
Average English speaker is fluent at about the age 12;
the average Polish speaker is fluent in their language not until age 16. .
I know a Chinese language teacher that says people pick up Chinese very easy, but he speaks several languages and could not learn Polish.
hubpages.com/hub/Most_Difficult_Languages_-_Polish
I did have the opportunity to learn one of the hardest, and supposedly the most grammatically-complex Slavic language, Polish. It is certainly harder than Croatian, which I already knew when I started to learn Polish.
Here's one (somewhat trivial, but illustrative) example of the relative complexity of languages: the number 2.
English, Spanish, Dutch: 1 form (two, dos, twee)
Portuguese: 2 forms (dois/duas) - depending on gender (2 - masculine & feminine)
Croatian: 7 forms (dva, dvije, dvoje, dvojica, dvojice, dvojici, dvojicu) - depending on gender (3 - masculine, feminine, and neuter) and case in one specific form. There were other variants historically but they're not used anymore.
Polish: 17 forms. Depends on gender (3), case for all forms. Pretty much all these forms occur in regular speech (6-11 less often than the others)
17 grammatical forms for the number 2
1. dwa
2. dwie
3. dwoje
4. dwóch (or dwu)
5. dwaj
6. dwiema
7. dwom (or dwóm)
8. dwoma
9. dwojga
10. dwojgu
11. dwojgiem
12. dwójka
13. dwójki
14. dwójkę
15. dwójką
16. dwójce
17. dwójko