Most difficult language/s that you've learned, or have tried to learn.

[Amarantine]

I really don't think any languages are hard to learn, it is just a matter of motivation.

This is a true!

[Treffie]

Easy: Chinese

The grammar is simple enough and the complete lack of verb conjugations is very nice, but even after five years working as a linguist I'm still shaky with the orthography. It's the single most difficult and retarded writing system on the planet.

What about intonation? I understand that if you say something using the incorrect intonation, the word/sentence means something completely different?

[Tabiti]

Hey why? It is almost the same as our?! Is Bulgarian grammar simplier?

Bulgarian grammar is different from other Slavic grammars. Some consider it even more difficult and it's true after I don't know it well myself.

[Psychonaut]

What about intonation? I understand that if you say something using the incorrect intonation, the word/sentence means something completely different?

This is true, for example the syllable "ma" can have quite a few meaning depending on the tone:

妈 mā (high tone) means "mother"
马 mǎ (dipping tone) means "horse"
骂 mà (falling tone) meanse "to curse"
麻 má (rising tone) means "hemp"
吗 ma (neutral tone) is a particle that indicates a question

So, you could say:

妈骂马吗?

Which would sound like:

Mā mà mǎ ma?

Meaning, "did mom curse the horse?" To a speaker of a non-tonal language it would probably just sound like "ma ma ma ma," and the tonal variations would be lost. But in Chinese, you're right, they're absolutely essential to the meaning of each and every syllable.

[Tabiti]

Heard that Mandarin Chinese is one of the hardest languages in the world.

[Loyalist]

That would be Gaelic; the pronunciation totally escapes me, so picking up the grammar when I can't even read and recite it properly isn't going to happen. I still want to learn, but it's on indefinite hiatus.

I selected Latin as an elective at school this coming year, and I have no prior exposure to it, so we'll see how that goes in a few weeks.

[Treffie]

This is true, for example the syllable "ma" can have quite a few meaning depending on the tone:

妈 mā (high tone) means "mother"
马 mǎ (dipping tone) means "horse"
骂 mà (falling tone) meanse "to curse"
麻 má (rising tone) means "hemp"
吗 ma (neutral tone) is a particle that indicates a question

So, you could say:

妈骂马吗?

Which would sound like:

Mā mà mǎ ma?

Meaning, "did mom curse the horse?" To a speaker of a non-tonal language it would probably just sound like "ma ma ma ma," and the tonal variations would be lost. But in Chinese, you're right, they're absolutely essential to the meaning of each and every syllable.

Oh dear, I don't think I'll be learning Chinese in this lifetime anyway. I can't get my throat to practice all those rises and falls, especially in a single sentence.

[Treffie]

That would be Gaelic; the pronunciation totally escapes me, so picking up the grammar when I can't even read and recite it properly isn't going to happen. I still want to learn, but it's on indefinite hiatus.

The most difficult thing about Gaelic and the other Celtic languages is the VSO word order and some other grammatical differences. I think the secret is to try to`think` in another language.

[Liffrea]

I have never really been any good at learning languages and I tend to view them on the basis of point rather that knowledge acquired for the sake of it.

I have been learning Old English on and off, but I'm not consistant with it to make much progress, I would like to read sources in the original as translation invariably alters it to some extent.

Other than that I like to hear Gaelic, especially sung.

[Poltergeist]

Finnish!

It may come as surprise to some, because all books dealing with linguistics say Finnish and Hungarian are related as members of the Finno-Ugric family of languages, so that learning Finnish for a Hungarian (or vice versa) should be easy. But that is not so. There are absolutely no lexical similarities that could help in the process of learning (some supposed common lexical heritage of Finnish and Hungarian amounts to maximum 200 words which sound "alike" in a way, which doesn't mean they are immediately recognizable). There is some typological affinity (agglutinative langauges), but that hardly helps in the process of learning. Finnish grammar is vastly more complicated than the Hungarian one, with many more exceptions.

Once I attended a course of Finnish for four months, but forgot everything in the meantime.