What is the easiest language in the world?
Across multiple sources, Mandarin Chinese is the number one language listed as the most challenging to learn. The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center puts Mandarin in Category IV, which is the list of the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers.
- English. It's the most widely spoken language in the world, making practice possible. ...
- French. French has over 100 million native speakers and is – as the official language in 28 countries – spoken on almost every continent. ...
- Spanish. ...
- Italian. ...
- Swahili.
Across multiple sources, Mandarin Chinese is the number one language listed as the most challenging to learn. The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center puts Mandarin in Category IV, which is the list of the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers.
Easiest (about 600 hours of study)
Of these, Spanish and Italian are the easiest for native English speakers to learn, followed by Portuguese and finally French.
Ranking | Language | Ease of Pronunciation |
---|---|---|
1 | Italian | 90/100 |
2 | Spanish | 90/100 |
3 | Dutch | 84/100 |
4 | Norwegian (bokmål) | 83/100 |
- English. It's the most widely spoken language in the world, making practice possible. ...
- French. French has over 100 million native speakers and is – as the official language in 28 countries – spoken on almost every continent. ...
- Spanish. ...
- Italian. ...
- Swahili.
Except for Frisian, Dutch is linguistically the closest language to English, with both languages being part of the West Germanic linguistic family. This means many Dutch words are cognates with English (meaning they share the same linguistic roots), giving them similar spelling and pronunciation.
- Mandarin Chinese. Interestingly, the hardest language to learn is also the most widely spoken native language in the world. ...
- Arabic. ...
- Polish. ...
- Russian. ...
- Turkish. ...
- Danish.
Arabic is the queen of poetic languages, the 6th official language of the UN and second on our list of toughest languages to learn.
- 1 – Chinese (Mandarin)
- 2 – Arabic.
- 3 – Japanese.
- 4 – Korean.
- 5 – Hungarian.
- 6 – Finnish.
- 7 – Xhosa.
What's the best language to learn?
- Spanish. Spanish is the second most commonly spoken language after Mandarin, and not a surprise at the top of languages to learn. ...
- German. ...
- Arabic. ...
- Mandarin. ...
- Portuguese. ...
- Russian. ...
- French.
If you start out as a beginner and manage to spend an average of 1 hour per day working on your Spanish, you should be able to reach conversational fluency within 8 – 12 months. That translates to about 250 – 350 hours spent.
Does it make it harder to learn them well? Answer: Thankfully, your brain can definitely handle learning two (or more!) languages at once!
Taushiro. Taushiro, which is also called Pinchi or Pinche is a language isolate that is spoken primarily in the Loreto region and around the Tigre River, and the Ahuaruna River tributary, the Aucayacu River in Peru. Former speakers of the language count only up to 10 while using their fingers.
Also known as Tetawo, the Tanema language is again only spoken by one person, Lainol Nalo, on the island of Vanikoro, in the easternmost province of the Solomon Islands.
Language is the key to communication! French is one of the best sounding languages with the words being too melodic and soft for the ears. The musical tone of the French language is too soothing and French is widely spoken in various parts of the world like France, Switzerland, Canada, Congo, Belgium, etc.
The easiest languages for English speakers to learn are: Danish, Dutch, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Swedish, and French. The US State Department lists these languages as Category I languages.
According to a UNESCO survey, Bengali has been classified as the sweetest language in the world. As a language, Bengali is widely spoken all over India, including Assam and the Andaman & Nicobar Islands. The sweetest language in the world is also recognized in the Constitution of India.
- Mandarin. Mandarin is spoken by 70% of the Chinese population, and is the most spoken language in the world. ...
- Arabic. ...
- Japanese. ...
- Hungarian. ...
- Korean. ...
- Finnish. ...
- Basque. ...
- Navajo.
Aramaic is best known as the language Jesus spoke. It is a Semitic language originating in the middle Euphrates. In 800-600 BC it spread from there to Syria and Mesopotamia. The oldest preserved inscriptions are from this period and written in Old Aramaic.
Is German or Spanish harder to learn?
Overall, Spanish might be easier than German at the beginning stages, but the two tend to even out in difficulty once learners get to the more advanced stages. German has more complicated grammar rules that need to be mastered early on, but once learners get familiar with them, they find that they're pretty consistent.
As an English speaker, you will find that Spanish is actually one of the easier languages to learn. It shares a common alphabet with English, sentence structure is very similar, and the languages share a lot of common words. Where the two languages diverge the most is when it comes to grammar.
Kawishana is the rarest language in the world.
The language features grammatical rules that are often broken, an alphabet that can confuse people who are used to a character-based system, and spelling and pronunciation irregularities that perplex even native speakers.
It's widely accepted that English is hard to learn - if not the most difficult language to learn. Let's take a look at some of the most common reasons why people find it so challenging.
- Mandarin. Number of native speakers: 1.2 billion. ...
- Icelandic. Number of native speakers: 330,000. ...
- 3. Japanese. Number of native speakers: 122 million. ...
- Hungarian. Number of native speakers: 13 million. ...
- Korean. ...
- Arabic. ...
- Finnish. ...
- Polish.
- Mandarin Chinese. There are over 900 million speakers of Mandarin, making it one of the most widely spoken native languages around the world. ...
- Arabic. ...
- Korean. ...
- Navajo. ...
- Icelandic. ...
- Turkish. ...
- 7. Japanese. ...
- Persian.
A new study suggests some language learning can take place during sleep. Researchers from Switzerland's University of Bern say they discovered people were able to learn new language words during deep levels of sleep. Results of the study recently appeared in the publication Current Biology.
Japanese is slightly easier to learn. But, Chinese is much more widely spoken. Both languages have their pros and cons. Ultimately whichever language pulls on your heartstrings the most is the winner.
Russian is allegedly one of the most complex languages to learn; its Cyrillic alphabet is enough to scare you away. In fact, the Foreign Service Institute classifies it as a category-four language. But don't let that intimidate you. Learning the Russian language is far from impossible.
Why is Mandarin so hard?
It's all about the tones!
Mandarin operates with four different tones, meaning that the way that you say a word can give it four different meanings! It is this tonality – this pronunciation – that causes most trouble for nearly all new speakers and makes Chinese a difficult language to master.
1. English (1,452 million speakers) According to Ethnologue, English is the most-spoken language in the world including native and non-native speakers. Like Latin or Greek at the time, English has become the world's common language.
According to the Engco Forecasting Model explained above, the 5 most spoken languages in 2050 will be Mandarin, Spanish, English, Hindi and Arabic. The key drivers behind the continued rise in popularity of these languages include population growth, economic predictions and national language policy.
Some people talk about dormant or passive bilingualism, but there is nothing passive in understanding a language. Your brain works at full speed to process foreign sounds and give them meaning. So, when you can understand and read Spanish but cannot speak it, you're receptively bilingual.
If you start out as a beginner and spend an average of 1 hour per day working on your Spanish, you should able to reach conversational fluency within 8 – 12 months. That translates to roughly 250 – 350 hours of time spent.
The short answer is as much as possible.
Realistically, however, at least 20 minutes per day should be dedicated to learning a new language. The ideal amount of time to spend on daily study, if you can find the time, is an hour, but you don't need to cram it all in at once.
Duolingo generally does a good job of balancing the four essential skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing. It doesn't remedy the fact that we might not be pronouncing the words correctly, but the ability to make and speak our own sentences is a great step toward really learning to use the language.
The 10th-century Muslim polymath Al-Farabi was reputed to know 70 languages. The German Hans Conon von der Gabelentz, born in 1807, researched and published grammars of 80 languages.
Yes, it is possible to learn many languages at once!
I've been doing it for many years, and this year, I'm tackling 12 languages. There are many methods you can use to learn more than one language at once.
- Latin language. Latin is by far the most well-known dead language. ...
- Coptic. Coptic is what remained of the ancient Egyptian languages. ...
- Biblical Hebrew. Biblical Hebrew is not to be confused with Modern Hebrew, a language that is still very much alive. ...
- Sumerian. ...
- Akkadian. ...
- Sanskrit Language.
What is the oldest language?
Sumerian can be considered the first language in the world, according to Mondly. The oldest proof of written Sumerian was found on the Kish tablet in today's Iraq, dating back to approximately 3500 BC.
A few languages don't use an alphabet altogether – including Chinese, Korean and Japanese. Traditional Chinese – or Mandarin – uses thousands of variations of glyphs instead. Chinese is spoken by over 845 million people in the world, and is one of the most important business languages in the modern day.
There are five countries in the world that do not have an official language. These countries are the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Costa Rica, and Eritrea. English is the primary language spoken in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia.
- English. While only about 360 million people are native English speakers, 1.5 billion people worldwide can speak English. ...
- Mandarin Chinese. Over 1.1 billion people speak Mandarin, but Chinese is not a single language. ...
- Hindustani. ...
- Spanish.
The answer is Odia, also known as Oriya.
So what exactly makes a language “harsh”? There is no singular defining element, but the languages that English natives tend to view as harsh, including German, Dutch, and Russian, incorporate many noises made at the back of the throat –– these are called uvular fricatives.
Spoken by over a billion people, Mandarin Chinese is unanimously considered to be the most difficult language in the world to master, especially for those whose native languages use the Latin writing system, like English, Spanish, French, German, and all other European languages.
Unlike other East-Asian languages, Korean isn't a tonal language. This means, that the meaning of the word doesn't change, regardless of what your accent is like. This makes learning Korean much easier than Japanese.
English is an easy and globally used language; it can easily be learned, that's why it is used by other non-native speakers to communicate. The guidelines are easy to understand; thus — as you've in all possibility practiced — we can commonly understand any individual talking in not-so-good English.
Maybe you just want to challenge yourself and learn at least one or one more foreign language. Whatever your case is, I'll tell you: you should consider Spanish. Yes, it's true—Spanish is the easiest language to learn for English speakers.
How long will it take to learn Korean?
The FSI puts Korean as a Category V language. Which means, it's one of the hardest languages to master. They estimate 2200 hours of study before you can reach fluency in Korean. Or 88 weeks of extremely intense study.
Generally, English is easy enough to start learning, but it can be difficult to fully master. This is because many of the basic building blocks of English are fairly simple, but as you move towards fluency, the intricacies become more evident.
Generally speaking, we might assert that Korean is easier for an English speaker to learn than Mandarin Chinese. But this is very relative. In fact, the US Foreign Service Institute assigns Mandarin Chinese and Korean the same level of difficulty. Both languages are in “Category Four”.
1. English (1,452 million speakers) According to Ethnologue, English is the most-spoken language in the world including native and non-native speakers. Like Latin or Greek at the time, English has become the world's common language.
Spanish is in second place with around 8-9 syllables spoken per second, whereas, English is in eight place with around 6-7 syllables spoken per second. In other words, Spanish native speakers speak 25% more quickly than English native speakers.
The most recent major study on language learning and age was conducted by researchers at Harvard and MIT. It concluded that starting to learn a new language before age 10 will give a learner the best chance of achieving proficiency similar to that of a native speaker.
Duolingo generally does a good job of balancing the four essential skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing. It doesn't remedy the fact that we might not be pronouncing the words correctly, but the ability to make and speak our own sentences is a great step toward really learning to use the language.
True language fluency requires consistent effort and time, and while 500 – 1,000 hours may seem like a lot, a typical person could probably invest that level of time over 12 – 18 months, with the right study schedule.