Buzz
Anyone who's ever attempted to learn a new language knows how difficult it can be. Even languages like Spanish require you to memorize complex verb endings, and it may take months before you’re even close to fluency. And that’s considered one of the easier languages. When you explore beyond Latin-based languages, you’ll encounter even more wild and unexpected grammar rules.
10. Tuyuca Demands Full Explanations for Everything
When native English speakers teach their children to speak, they keep things simple. That’s why early childhood books are filled with straightforward sentences like “the boy played with the ball.” If children can understand these basic statements, we can gradually introduce more complex ideas. This is not the case for speakers of Tuyuca. From the very beginning, even the most basic sentences require you to explain everything in detail.
Tuyuca, spoken by fewer than 1,000 people in Brazil, doesn’t allow for simply stating something. Instead, it requires you to explain how you know it. So, instead of saying “the boy played with the ball,” you would need to say something like “the boy played with the ball, and I know this because I saw him.” As noted by The Economist, the closest phrase they have for hypothetical situations is “the boy played with the ball, I assume,” which carries a different nuance compared to its English counterpart.
But it’s not just the need for explanations that makes Tuyuca tough to learn—some reports claim it has as many as 140 genders, including one specifically for objects that resemble tree bark peeling off.
9. Chalcatongo Mixtec Turns Questions into a Challenge
Have you ever considered how easy it is to ask a question in English? Now you are. Most of you probably added an upward intonation at the end of that sentence in your head, and many likely noticed where the auxiliary verb is placed. But if we were speaking Chalcatongo Mixtec, you'd probably be confused. Chalcatongo Mixtec doesn’t offer any indication of whether we're asking a question or making a statement.
Spoken by a few thousand people in the Oaxaca region of Mexico, Chalcatongo Mixtec has been studied enough to result in the publication of at least one grammar book. Despite all this research, no one has found any evidence of yes/no questions in the language. While questions do exist, it’s up to you to identify them because the person asking won’t give you any clues. There are no changes in intonation, no sentence particles, and no tonal shifts to signal a question. The only thing to rely on is context.
8. Australia’s Aboriginal Languages Are Like Jazz Gone Wild
Australia’s Aboriginal languages stand out due to their near-total isolation for thousands of years. While they may not be as outlandish as some click-based languages, they certainly sound unusual to English speakers. These languages also feature a unique linguistic trait that is completely foreign to our Germanic and Latin roots. As stated by the Encyclopaedia Britannica, most Aboriginal languages have no fixed word order.
This means conversations in Aboriginal languages can shift, flow, and change direction much like a fiery jazz solo, with words popping up as they’re needed. So instead of saying “this freewheeling language is pretty awesome,” you might say “language freewheeling is awesome pretty this,” or “pretty language freewheeling is this awesome,” or any number of other combinations. And listeners will still understand exactly what you mean.
To stick with our jazz analogy, it’s important to note that there are rules. Just like jazz needs a foundation of structure to build upon, Aboriginal languages require you to add suffixes that help others understand how to interpret your message. Once you’ve mastered those, though, you’re free to arrange your words in any order you wish.
7. Thai Has A Special Form Reserved Only for the King
It’s difficult to assess objectively how much Thailand’s king is truly beloved. On one hand, many speak of him with deep affection, yet on the other, he’s survived 10 coup attempts, and the law makes it a crime to speak poorly of him. However, there’s no confusion about his standing when it comes to language, as Thai has a distinct form that is reserved specifically for addressing or talking to the king.
Called rachasap, the “royal vocabulary,” this form has existed for over 700 years, barely changing during that time. It blends ancient Khmer words with regular Thai prefixes, making it both similar to and noticeably different from the standard language. While many Thais can understand rachasap, speaking it perfectly is notoriously difficult, partly due to the lack of practice opportunities (how often does one get to converse with a king?). Still, it remains in use during news broadcasts and announcements regarding the king’s activities. We’ve even found a resource to help you learn the basics, if you want to practice.
6. Berik Is Obsessed With Time
One of the intriguing features of English is its inherent vagueness. For instance, if someone asks where we’ve been, we can casually reply, “I was at Joe’s,” without needing to explain further, like adding “until closing time, when I was sick in the street.” But not all languages allow such openness. In Berik, spoken in New Guinea, it’s often necessary to state exactly when an event occurred.
In Berik, time expressions are embedded in the verb endings, making it nearly impossible to convey an action without providing this crucial information. For example, while in English, we can simply say, “I went for a drink,” a Berik speaker would need to say, “I went for a drink in the middle of the day.” This requirement extends beyond just time. When talking about objects, Berik verbs are modified to reflect their size, so a single short phrase can convey something like, “I gave six objects to a girl by moonlight.”
To add another layer of complexity, some verbs also demand a reference to the location of the action. As a result, the person you’re speaking to will instantly know not just when and where the event took place, but also the size of any objects involved. With such detailed language structure, ambiguity is practically non-existent.
5. ABSL Breaks All the Rules of Language
Although English boasts over one million words, the sounds we use are actually quite limited. The phonetic inventory of English consists of just 44 sounds that make up everything we say. Think of it as a collection of Lego pieces: arrange them one way and you get a word like “pass,” arrange them another and you get “asp.” This method of constructing words with a fixed set of sounds is how all languages operate… except for Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language (ABSL).
ABSL, a language used by a small community in Israel’s Negev Desert, where many children are born deaf, is a fascinating anomaly. It contains no repeating signs at all. To understand the significance of this, consider that every word in this article would have its own distinct sound. There would be no repeated sounds, and even the ubiquitous schwa would be absent. In English, we rely on the schwa in words like “the,” “for,” and “weather.” In ABSL, every word—noun, verb, and adjective—has a completely unique sign, with no overlap.
What makes this even more remarkable is that other sign languages typically use a Lego-block approach to form complex words and phrases. Some have suggested that ABSL, being a relatively young language, may eventually evolve to adopt this standard pattern as its speakers run out of available signs. However, for now, it stands as a unique linguistic marvel.
4. Time Doesn’t Exist in Piraha
Spoken exclusively by a single tribe in Brazil, Piraha is remarkable in countless ways. We’ve previously shared how it lacks words for colors and numbers, but perhaps the most striking feature is the Piraha language's complete absence of any concept of time.
This means that speakers can never form a sentence about the past or the future. While we might say something like, “I promise I’ll work after finishing this article,” the Piraha would simply say, “I finish article, I do work.” There’s no way to express whether an action has already occurred, is occurring, or will occur—everything is rooted in the present.
As a result, the Piraha culture has almost no concept of its own past or future. Linguist Daniel Everett, who spent several years living with the tribe, explained that “all experience is anchored in the present.” Piraha mothers don’t share fairy tales, men don’t boast of past feats, and children often forget their grandparents as soon as they pass away. While recent educational initiatives by the Brazilian government are introducing change, the long-term impact on the Piraha language remains uncertain.
3. Klingon Is Absolutely Bonkers
Perhaps the most well-known fictional language, Klingon boasts three dictionaries, a full translation of Hamlet, and even its own opera. Created by linguist Marc Okrand for Star Trek III in the mid-1980s, it draws from a mix of real languages like Japanese, Turkish, Mohawk, Hindi, Arabic, and Yiddish. But it’s also one of the most difficult languages to learn, with a grammar that is downright bizarre.
In many modern Romance languages, the endings of verbs change to reflect number. For example, in Spanish, the verb will alter depending on whether you say “I” did something or “we” did something. Most languages that use this approach have only six or seven different ways to conjugate verbs. Klingon has 29.
Since Klingon verbs require you to specify the identity and number of both the subject and the object, constructing a coherent sentence becomes a complex linguistic challenge. To add to the difficulty, there are an additional 36 verb suffixes to express nuances like causation, possession, and the speaker’s assessment of the statement’s accuracy.
Due to its extreme complexity, it’s estimated that only about 20–30 people on Earth can speak Klingon with any level of fluency, regardless of how frequently it appears in Star Trek discussions online.
2. Burushaski Is Highly Sensitive to Sound
Burushaski, a language spoken by roughly 90,000 people in northern Pakistan, stands apart for its uniqueness. Linguists have yet to identify any other language genetically related to it, which is especially remarkable when you consider that even some of the other languages on this list belong to broader language families. Among its many distinctive traits, perhaps the most striking is its heightened sensitivity to sound, which is completely foreign to English.
In English, we usually express volume by using words that intensify or describe the action. You might say, “the door opened softly” or “the door creaked open,” or simply “he heard the door open.” However, in Burushaski, this isn’t possible. Instead, the verb itself changes based on how loudly or quietly an action occurs.
To illustrate with the door example, Burushaski has three distinct words for a door opening: one for when it opens very softly, one for when it opens gently (but not extremely softly), and one for when it opens noisily. This allows for a more nuanced and precise description, particularly when describing events that involve varying levels of sound.
1. German Sentences Are Like Running A Marathon
Despite being closely related to English, German presents many challenges to learners. One of the difficulties lies in its use of compound words. In German, it’s completely possible to encounter phrases like:
Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz
This 63-letter word translates to “the law concerning the delegation of duties for the supervision of cattle marking and the labeling of beef.” But even these tongue-twisting compound terms are nothing compared to German sentences, which can stretch endlessly and leave you hanging with suspense until the very end.
Due to a peculiar feature of sentence structure, German verbs are placed at the end of sentences. So instead of saying “I played soccer at my dad’s house on Tuesday,” a German speaker would say something like “at my dad’s house on Tuesday, soccer I played.” While this may be manageable in short sentences, it becomes quite a challenge in longer ones, where some German sentences seem to stretch on indefinitely. As a result, you have to endure the detailed journey of when, where, how, why, and to whom something occurred before finally learning what the “something” actually was.
Adding to the confusion, the negation in German also comes at the very end of the sentence. This means you could sit through a lengthy and intricate story, only to realize at the end that none of it actually took place. It’s like listening to a long and complex narrative, only for the storyteller to suddenly shout “not!” right after they finish their tale.
