Non-tonal language with the most difficult phonology

[lichtrausch]

I tried to pick a variety of languages that learners complain about in this regard. Feel free to elaborate on your choice.

*And no, I don't think it's all relative, since for example children take a longer time to master some sounds than others.

[leosmith]

I don't know, because I've only tried two of these. I guess I could read about the phonology of others and give an answer, but I'm not sure that's fair.

I don't think it's all relative, since for example children take a longer time to master some sounds than others.

Do you mean, for example, that a Japanese person will not find Korean pronunciation easier than French because of Korean's similarity with Japanese? If that's what you mean, then no offense, but I strongly disagree with you.

edit - without showing it your list, chatgpt suggested Polish.

[vonPeterhof]

Since pretty much all living languages with click consonants are excluded due to all of them being at least marginally tonal (which would incidentally also arguably disqualify Korean), I'd give my vote to a language of the Northern Caucasus. While the consonant clusters of Georgian are admittedly formidable, I believe some of its northern neighbors have it beat in the sheer variety of consonants. While I've only dabbled in Abkhaz, Avar and Chechen, my personal vote goes to Kabardian, which might not have as much variety as the others but has some highly unusual challenges, like three different ejective fricatives or the need to distinguish between velar and uvular fricatives, both voiced and voiceless. Chechen would definitely get my vote if the question was about both phonological and orthographic complexity.

[lichtrausch]

Do you mean, for example, that a Japanese person will not find Korean pronunciation easier than French because of Korean's similarity with Japanese? If that's what you mean, then no offense, but I strongly disagree with you.

I mean an objective answer to the question is theoretically possible, beyond just "it depends on the phonologies of the languages you already know". A scientific way of going about it would be to do a cross-language comparison of how long it takes an average child to learn the sound system of their native language. But I don't imagine the data exists for such a comparison.

edit - without showing it your list, chatgpt suggested Polish.

I tried it with Bing (GPT-4) and got this response:

Based on these factors, some examples of non-tonal languages that could have difficult phonologies are:

!Xóõ, a Khoisan language spoken in Botswana and Namibia, which has 112 phonemes, including 87 consonants (many of which are clicks) and 31 vowels (some of which are pharyngealized).
Ubykh, a Northwest Caucasian language that is now extinct, which had 84 phonemes, including 81 consonants (many of which were uvulars or pharyngealized) and only 3 vowels. It also had complex consonant clusters that could span an entire word.
Caucasian Albanian, an extinct Northeast Caucasian language, which had 52 phonemes, including 49 consonants (some of which were ejectives or implosives) and only 3 vowels. It also had a complex system of vowel harmony and consonant mutation.
Georgian, a South Caucasian language spoken in Georgia, which has 28 phonemes, including 5 vowels and 23 consonants (some of which are ejectives). It also has complex consonant clusters that can span up to six consonants in a row.
Icelandic, a North Germanic language spoken in Iceland, which has 38 phonemes, including 9 vowels and 29 consonants. It also has a complex system of vowel length, stress, and pitch accent that can change the meaning of words.

Not bad, except !Xóõ is a tonal language.

[leosmith]

I tried it with Bing (GPT-4) and got this response:

I left out one important piece of information - looking at the languages on your list, I decided to restrict it to languages with over 20 million native speakers. I dropped that restriction and got Pirahã.

[Axon]

Most difficult that I've studied would have to be Tamil, slightly edging out Arabic. I learned to make all the hard Arabic sounds much faster than the hard Tamil sounds, and I still can only sometimes do a retroflex trill.

But I'll come clean and say that I find Russian phonology very difficult to master. I can make all the sounds, but native speakers have an ear for soft and hard that I've never been able to replicate even after several hundred hours of careful listening. They can actually hear where the hard and soft signs are in rapid speech, and to me those distinctions only become noticeable in slow speech. I find Polish phonology much more straightforward, particularly in that high central vowel and the regular stress.

If Russian gives me such trouble, I'm sure Irish would be even worse.

[vonPeterhof]

I tried it with Bing (GPT-4) and got this response:

I left out one important piece of information - looking at the languages on your list, I decided to restrict it to languages with over 20 million native speakers. I dropped that restriction and got Pirahã.

...which is also tonal. In fact, aside from its high degree of tonality and a few unusual consonant allophones, there really isn't anything complex about Pirahã phonology.

[Lisa]

You know you're really a language nerd's language nerd when you can have a knowledgeable opinion in this survey.

[tractor]

Impossible for me to answer since I’ve only tried to learn one of the languages on the list.