Depends on what language(s) you already know, as having a very distant language to your target language means that you'll have to spend a lot more time learning basic building blocks. Japanese, Korean, and Chinese are notorious for being complete mindfucks for English speakers because the writing system, grammar, and method of speech are very disconnected from the way that English developed as a language.
If you're an English-only speaker and want to put numbers to it, a common reference for language difficulty, the Foreign Service Institute, puts both Polish and Vietnamese in Class III - "Hard Languages". The FSI quantifies that as languages that should take about 1,100 hours (~44 weeks) of class to get to a "Professional Working Proficiency".
Is Vietnamese harder than, say, Polish?
there really isnt an absolute ranking for language difficulty
a russian speaker or something will obviously find polish easier
I would say the hardest languages to speak would be ones that have difficult phonemes or rare traits that few other languages have. e.g. Pirahã has a lot of rare features that make it extremely difficult for non-native speakers to learn.
Depends on what language(s) you already know, as having a very distant language to your target language means that you'll have to spend a lot more time learning basic building blocks. Japanese, Korean, and Chinese are notorious for being complete mindfucks for English speakers because the writing system, grammar, and method of speech are very disconnected from the way that English developed as a language.
If you're an English-only speaker and want to put numbers to it, a common reference for language difficulty, the Foreign Service Institute, puts both Polish and Vietnamese in Class III - "Hard Languages". The FSI quantifies that as languages that should take about 1,100 hours (~44 weeks) of class to get to a "Professional Working Proficiency".
happy cake day, fellow hexbearer :so-true: