), In more opaque languages, the relationship between how a word is written and spoken is more complicated. The nearly-obsessive love of In just 5 minutes a day, you can learn several thousand words in the easiest (or the hardest) language.Â. Indonesian is among the most widely spoken languages in the world, with more than 200 million speakers. Another is through contact, or vocabulary borrowing.”. Another is through contact, or vocabulary borrowing.” English is a Germanic language, so its syntax (sentence structure) and morphology (how words are formed and relate to each other) will be similar to other languages from the same family, which includes many Scandinavian languages. Interested in learning Dutch? Learn 2,500+ words in the Dutch language here. It is easy to imitate and direct in its approach. The Philippines is not only one of the fastest-growing destinations for young expats—it’s also a country where Spanish-speakers can learn the local tongue with ease. Have you ever overheard a foreign language like Arabic or Cantonese and wondered how all those sounds even make up a real language? The easiest language for a native Spanish speaker to learn will be totally different than the easiest language for a native Vietnamese speaker, and it can even differ vastly between two native English speakers from the same region but who have different learning styles. But in general, English doesn’t have a lot of inflections, so there’s no messy grammar and most, though not all, of its sounds will be familiar to speakers of other languages. First, Hindi uses an SOV (subject object verb) word order and has new sounds for English speakers, including dhaand hka. AFAR participates in affiliate marketing programs, which means we may earn a commission if you purchase an item featured on our site. That’s because their shared Germanic roots with English make them fairly easy for English speakers to learn. (Hint: See the list of Germanic and Romance languages above.). so much in German) The word order (which is one of the things I Welcome to the world of the North Germanic languages, or else referred to as the Scandinavian languages Combined, there are 21 million native audio speakers of these languages in Northern Europe. I'll definitely be checking You may have noticed there are quite a few Scandinavian languages on this list. It has no strange phonemes except for the somehow funny letter’ ñ.’ Most of the words that make up Spanish are written as pronounced. 1. This is what it’s like when you start learning a language related to your own. “There are two ways that languages can be related to each other,” McElgunn explains.

I can't wait until the day when I can just pop In our increasingly global and high speed world, there is more information at our fingertips than ever before, and we're also more impatient to attain it. Some tongues, however, are easier to learn than others. Of the Scandinavian languages on this list, Danish has the most challenging pronunciation, but it still makes it onto the list as an easy language to learn from English. 8 Ways to Get Daily Language Practice on Your Coffee Break, How to Learn a Language by Yourself: 5 Rockstar Tips for Success, Level Up Your Language Learning with Spaced Repetition (SRS), 37 Amazing Polyglots Who Are Happy to Show You How They Do It. Similarity to English: 7/10 Practicing opportunities: 9/10 Usefulness: 9/10 Overall easiness: 9/10. ), “French has a lot of vowels and that can be very confusing,” McElgunn explains.

It’s spoken in Scotland and is a minority language. Here, the easiest languages mean, you can learn in 2-3 years with limited challenges and not 4-5 years by burning the midnight oil for East-Asian Japanese, Korean, or Mandarin, or West-Asian Arabic, Persian, or Turkish. Plus, there are fewer prepositions in Portuguese than in English.

W hether you’re gearing up for a big trip or looking to stimulate your brain, attempting to learn a new language is always a noble endeavor. Norwegian speakers around the world: 5.32 million native speakers. We hate SPAM and promise to keep your email address safe. Try Drops, our beautifully illustrated, visual language learning app. If you’re learning French, you will find that pronunciation is the hardest part. First, there are enormous varieties of different accents in Norway. Thanks, Spanish.

speakers, although some of the time the literal translations match It makes learning Italian a no-brainer. One reason Swedish is one of the easiest languages for English speakers to learn is the large number of cognates the two languages share (cognates are words in different languages that stem from the same ancestral language and look and/or sound very similar to one another). The Italian phonemes, like –ghi and –ace, are regular and quite comfortable for English speakers to comprehend.