whats' it easier to learn?

Question

french? german? japanese? italian? and why?
i want to learn another lenguage :)

Answer 1

do you know spanish?? that's pretty easy to learn...

Answer 2

For an English speaker it's probably... I'm not sure it's German! English has borrowed an awful lot of vocabulary from Latin and French; I, who fled from the primary school French course after two lessons, could understand a surprising amount of written text I encountered during my short holiday visits to France; I think I'm much worse at German.

My advice, though, is don't just go for the easy ones when you learn another language. Learn what you like, and learn what's different. Knowing Italian, for example, will help you understand much Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, probably even Romanian (written, at least...). It's always useful to have knowledge you can apply to many situations. And anyway, learning a language is never really easy. You'll have to put years' work into it, no matter which one you choose. I've been learning English for some fifteen years now, and I'm VERY far from perfect...

Answer 3

The difficulty with many languages is that words change their form or ending dependent on the gender of the word (masculine/feminine or masculine/feminine/neuter). The difficulty arises with, how do you know the gender of a word without memorising the gender of every word in the language?

Italian is fairly easy. The word-ending indicates the gender in most cases. Words ending in 'o', such as 'bambino' (a boy baby), are masculine and most words ending in 'a', such as 'la pizza', are feminine.

In French and German, the word ending doesn't often indicate the gender. You have to memorise it.

French pronunciation is difficult, especially the vowels.

German pronunciation is easy and absolutely consistent. If a letter or pair of letters is pronounced a particular way in one word, then its the same in every other word.

German grammar is very difficult. Verbs (actions) change their form for about 4 reasons (gender, number (singular/plural), role in the sentence (subject, object, indirect object) and one other that I can't remember.

I read somewhere that Japanese isn't too difficult, other than the fact that you will need to learn the writing systems.

If you're not dead-set on the list you've given, I would go for Spanish. It has all the same advantages as Italian (consistant spelling, word-ending indicating gender, etc) but it is spoken in far more countries and by Spanish-speaking people in the US. You can learn from all the nice Latin-American music, both moder and traditional. Also, you will have access to far more speakers of the language to practice with, teachers, online resources, books, etc. Try the 'Berlitz Latin American Spanish CD Pack' (CD and Phrase Book) to see if you like it. Libraries often have it.

Answer 4

This depends on what your stronger area is in other academic areas. For the English/Art strengths, a romance language is usually easier. These are French, Italian, Spanish, etc. If your strength lies in Science/Math, you would find it easier to learn a more technically precise language like German.

Answer 5

Best foundation language to learn is Latin. Once you got that under your belt, all the other languages are easy-peasy! I myself speak 6 (including Latin, Flemish, German and Dutch -and no, Dutch and German is nothing alike! And although Flemish and Dutch are very similar, I promise you they are two totally different languages!) and I can read and understand French, Spanish and Italian sufficiently.

The most difficult language to learn for a born English speaker though, is probably my mother tongue: Afrikaans. Our language has been influenced over the years by Dutch, French, Latin, English, native languages -like isiZulu, isiXhosa and isiTswana- as well as German. Also, Afrikaans is the youngest language in the world! (It only gained status as a language late in 1925...)

Anyway, whichever language you choose, good luck!

Answer 6

Hey good lookin, i think french cos I've done both french and german, what ever you do though don't do Japanese unless you want something hard cos if you pronounce one syllable wrong you could be calling their mum names. Oh and by the way can you send me a pic of yourself so i can paste it as my wallpaper at [e-mail] ??? nice one

Answer 7

German for the pronunciation and similarity to English. All the others have difficult accents or characters to learn (Japanese).

Answer 8

french

Answer 9

french and japenese r too hard do german