Welsh is one of the toughest Western European languages to master and is even harder than Swahili, it has been claimed in a new study.

The East African tongue which comes from the Great Lakes region and is spoken by 98 million people worldwide is said to be quicker for an average English-speaker to pick up.

And at 1,040 hours, learning Welsh takes nearly double the time than it does to become fluent in French, which at 550 hours is one of the easiest of languages examined.

However it is much quicker to make progress than learning Mandarin, Arabic or Korean - all of which each take a whopping 2,200 hours to learn. Chinese is most expensive language to learn at £66,035.

LanguageLine, which offers translation services, estimated that learning Welsh - outside of Wales - would cost around £28,000 based on £27 per hour tuition.

But learning Cymraeg within the country is considerably cheaper. Beginners’ courses can cost on average around £92 for people in work.

Some though were highly sceptical of LanguageLine's figures, saying that those who live in Wales have a big advantage and can become fluent far faster with daily practice with every day interactions.

Julie Brake, senior lecturer in Welsh at Wrexham Glyndwr University, said: “I don’t think you can categorise a language as being either ‘difficult’ or ‘easy’ to learn but it is certainly easier to become fluent in a language which has similarities with your mother tongue.

“It is also easier to acquire a language if you are surrounded by fluent speakers of that language, in a community where all media, official communication etcetera is in the language you wish to learn.

“Many people succeed in becoming fluent in Welsh both as children and adults, but there are fewer similarities between English and Welsh than there are between English and other European languages like French, Spanish and German which can make the language appear difficult at first.

“French and English have a high percentage of words of Latin origin and many French words and speech patterns have been adopted into English since the Norman Conquest, such as the pattern ‘the son of the prince’ [following the pattern ‘le fils du prince’] as an alternative way of expressing the more Germanic English ‘the prince’s son’.

“In contrast Welsh has some fundamental differences from English which can make the language seem very strange at first to an English speaker. English sentences generally follow the pattern – Subject, Verb, Object, [“I saw it”], whereas Welsh sentences generally follow the pattern Verb Subject Object [“Gwelais i fo” - literally Saw I it]. Similarities or lack of seem not to hinder children however who generally pick up Welsh with little difficulty.

“Language learning, like any skill, needs to be practised in order to ensure proficiency and direct and regular contact with the language is essential. Welsh learners, particularly those in predominantly English speaking areas of Wales often lack the direct contact with fluent speakers which can facilitate the learning process.”

It is estimated that around 310,600 speak Welsh fluently within Wales. It is also spoken by people living in England, Australia and the United States and, most famously by a small colony in Patagonia in the Chubut province of Argentina.

After French, Portuguese is the next easiest to learn at 575 hours, followed by Italian at 590 hours just ahead of Spanish at 600. German, spoken by 210 million worldwide, takes 750 hours and is estimated to cost £24,375.

Malay comes in at 900 hours, making it easier to learn than Welsh by 17 1/2 days of intensive full time study. The difficulty rating and time to learn for the most popular 20 languages were based on the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) of the US Department of State.

Hindi, Russian, Bengali, Urdu, Punjabi, Farsi, Tamil, Javanese and Telugu are all harder than Welsh but only just. They take an average of 1,100 hours to become fluent.