Cantonese vs Finnish - Which One is the Hardest to Learn?

Content

• Why is Finnish Hard?

• What is Easy About Finnish?

• Why is Cantonese Hard?

• What is Easy About Cantonese?

• One Difficult Aspect in Common

• And the Hardest Language is…
  
  
  

I’ve been learning both Cantonese and Finnish for quite some time now.

Both are considered two of the world’s hardest languages.

A common question I get from people is: “which one is harder to learn?”

Both of them have very challenging aspects but one of them is for sure more difficult to learn than the other.

I will say though that personally I don’t like to use the words “difficult” or “hard” as I think it can hinder us in our learning.

We tend to not want to do things that we view as difficult.

One of my mottos since starting to learn languages (or anything else for that matter) has always been “nothing is difficult, some things just take time”.

So when we’re talking about “which one is more difficult?” what I’m really referring to here is which one of these two languages take longer to learn.

You can learn either of these or any other “hard” languages if you’re just willing to put in the time.

Cantonese and Finnish are also opposites in many ways.

This has made them not only interesting to learn at the same time, but they are also interesting to compare to each other.

The things that are difficult in Finnish are actually easy in Cantonese. And by the same token, the things that are difficult in Cantonese are easy in Finnish.

So what are these things? Let’s dive into it.

Why is Finnish Hard?

For me it mainly comes down to 2 main things that make Finnish a very challenging language. And they are basically two sides of the same coin.

There are other aspects that are challenging as well but for me these are the main ones.

1.) The Grammar

For most people the biggest obstacle to blast through when learning Finnish is gonna be the grammar.

The Finnish Language has one of the most complex grammar systems in the world with 15 cases and the words are changing into seemingly infinite variations depending on what you’re wanting to say.

I don’t believe in studying grammar in the way we’re taught in schools, but rather to just absorb it naturally through lots of input (you can read more about how exactly I did this in the blog post: How I learned Finnish (Without Studying Grammar) - Part 1

Yet the fact remain that there are a lot more to absorb and digest in how the language behaves.

It’s more to get used to in order to be able to express yourself correctly (and understanding to an extent) because of the many different shapes the words will take.

Not only that but the words will sometimes change in a way that you might not realize it’s actually the same word.

This is because some consonants will change based on certain rules (called “consonant gradation”).

For example “tapasin” and “tavata” are the same word - just different forms of the word “to meet”. And “joki” and “joen” are two forms of the same word for “river”.

Learning when to use what and where is just something that takes longer compared to other languages.

2.) Speaking

This one goes hand in hand with the previous difficulty. Speaking in Finnish is difficult.

Not because it’s hard to pronounce because I find the pronunciation quite straightforward (the exception would be some of the deep vowels and the very pronounced rolling “r” sound if you’re not used to that from your own language).

But what makes it difficult is to express yourself correctly since there are so many changes to navigate. You often have to change the majority of the words in a sentence to different forms even if you’re just saying something slightly different.

Let’s just just take a simple example:
“Minulla on tulevaisuus” is “I have a future” in Finnish. But when saying “I don’t have a future”, which in Finnish is: “Minulla ei ole tulevaisuutta” - so you change even the noun future from tulevaisuus to tulevaisuutta.

In English the word future doesn’t change, but in Finnish it does. And it’s all based on a bunch of complex rules.

It gets even more complicated than that the longer a sentence is.

And that’s just one of hundreds of examples I could give.

What is Easy About Finnish?

Even though Finnish is challenging the good news is that there are some things that are very easy when learning Finnish.

1). It’s Super Consistent

Finnish is a very logical and super consistent language. It is complex yes, but there is a rule for everything.

If a word ends with this or that letter it’s gonna be conjugated a certain way when said in plural for example.

And there are hardly any exceptions whatsoever.

This is definitely not the case with most languages as most languages have a lot of inconsistencies and things that are completely illogical.

Pronouncing is also very straightforward as the stress is also always on the first syllable.

Compare that to the words “realize” or “understand” in English where “realize” has the emphasis on the first syllable whereas “understand” on the second.

2.) If You Can Read it - You Can Write it

Unlike English or my native Swedish you don’t necessarily know how a word is pronounced based on how it’s written (Worcestershire sauce anyone?)

However, in Finnish you do.

If you can say a word then you know how to write it and vice versa because words are written exactly the way they are pronounced.

For this reason reading is very convenient in Finnish because you can read the words in your head and know how they are pronounced.

Why is Cantonese Difficult?

Like I mentioned at the start of this post - what makes Finnish easy is what makes Cantonese difficult.

There have been two main challenges that I’ve had when learning Cantonese.

1.) Learning the Characters

Instead of the roman alphabet that Finnish uses Cantonese uses Chinese characters.

This is a very rewarding yet incredibly time-consuming task.

There are even plenty of people who have learned to speak Cantonese without being able to read or write it just because of how much time they would have to devote to it.

Initially I even decided I wasn’t gonna learn it because it just seemed like a mountain too high to climb.

My curiosity and interest got the best of me only a few months into learning (you can read more about my journey of learning Chinese characters in this post: The Smartest Way to Learn to Read & Write Chinese)

This is time consuming because for every word there is a new character to learn.

And even though you know the meaning it doesn’t tell you how it’s pronounced. So you’re learning both the meaning and the sound of each character at the same time.

It does, however, get easier and easier the more of them you learn. Many times learning a new word is just combining two characters with each other that you might already know from before.

But it of course takes more time to learn the thousands of characters you need to be able to read than say the Korean alphabet which has 24 letters.

2.) Listening Comprehension

This was something I had to really work on and still am to this day.

Getting into speaking Cantonese is quite quick. Even to this day I’m better at speaking Cantonese than Finnish.

But even if you can speak and be understood by native speakers I find it’s still very much a challenge to understand them.

Chinese speak very fast and use a lot of idioms and especially Cantonese use a lot of slang that is constantly evolving. There is all the time new slang phrases coming out of Hong Kong.

So the speed coupled with the fact that the words are very short makes this one a challenge.

A single syllable contains a lot of meaning. You can say a lot with less in Cantonese.

The challenge comes from that if you miss a single syllable in the rapid-fire delivery of Chinese - you might miss the entire meaning of a sentence.

What is Easy About Cantonese?

Unlike Finnish - Cantonese grammar is the easiest aspect of the language.

You never conjugate anything in Cantonese (or any Chinese language dialect for that matter).

In English we would say: “I’m going to a restaurant tomorrow” but in Cantonese it will literally be: “Tomorrow I go restaurant”.

There is no distinction between plural either so instead of saying “I have two cars” you say: “I have two car” in Cantonese.

You don’t even need to worry about tenses as you can just state the time you’re doing something and then say it as if you’re talking about right now.

You can express the past tense though and you do this simply by adding the word 左 (zo2) after the verb or 過 (gwo3) for the perfect past tense (I went to Japan vs I have been to Japan).

So instead of having to conjugate every verb like go / went / gone and know the different versions for each verb - in Cantonese you just add the same particle for every single word. Easy right?

This makes Cantonese easier to speak than Finnish since you only need to know the words and the order and boom - you’re good to go.

The word order is also very similar to English.

Many, especially native speakers themselves, seem to believe the “tones” is what makes Chinese difficult, but I didn’t find them particularly difficult to learn.

It could be because of my background in music that I was able to pick it up without much trouble, but I also know people who speak very good Cantonese that don’t have any musical background.

I does take a little bit of time to get used to in the beginning, but I personally feel the tones make it easier to remember new words and phrases.

They tend to stick more due to their melodic nature. Just like a melody you heard on the radio might get stuck on your mind.

One Difficult Aspect in Common

Cantonese and Finnish are opposites in many ways. But there is one challenging aspect that they have in common.

They are both very different in their spoken vs their written form.

I have a friend who had learned Finnish to quite a good level from books and then when he visited Finland he realized that he couldn’t understand what people were saying.

In Finnish “Puhukieli” (spoken language) things are even conjugated differently than in “Kirjakieli” (written language) and words are shortened and changed.

You will often learn a new word from reading only to find out that people never use that when speaking.

Many languages are different in their spoken and written form, but with Finnish the difference are just a lot bigger than normally.

Cantonese has this too as it’s actually a spoken language and not so much a written one.

There are some books and some magazines in Cantonese. And people might use it when texting etc.

But mainly when reading or writing Chinese they are gonna use “Standard Written Chinese” which is the same as written Mandarin.

Learning Chinese characters is pretty much like learning another language on the side.

And then learning to read it’s like learning a language within a language on top of that (since you’re essentially learning written Mandarin - which on the other hand is a huge plus if you ever decide to learn Mandarin).

So with both Finnish and Cantonese you’re essentially navigating and getting used to two versions of the language at the same time.

And the Hardest Language is….

When you add everything together the more challenging out of the two languages is for me definitely gonna be - Cantonese.

The time it takes to understand what people are saying coupled couple with how long it takes to learn the characters makes it the clear winner.

Important to note though is that it’s not as impossible as it might seem to learn the Chinese characters. It actually wasn’t as difficult as I thought it was.

It just takes time.

The same goes for listening.

Despite their challenges both of these languages are very much possible to learn.

If you’re willing to put in the time you will be able to learn them because our brains are wired to learn languages

Find out more about that in my free guide “Intuitive Language Secrets”. Click on the button below to get it.

Finnish and Cantonese are both wonderful languages that I recommend anyone to learn who has the passion and desire to do so.

What’s the most challenging language you have ever learned? What made it challenging? Let me know in the comments below!