What are the easiest languages to learn?

Question

So I want to go back to college and I strictly want to learn new languages. Nothing else. I'm focusing on studying Spanish -- but I want to learn about two to three more languages. I know that Latin- based languages [such as French and Italian] would be easy to pick up because of the influences on English and Spanish, but what about Norweigen? Or Japanese? Or Chinese? I just need some help deciding which langages I should learn, and which languages are the easiest to learn. Help me out! Thanks so much!

Answer 1

I've read in Internet articles that it's easy for English speakers to learn Dutch and German because of many similarities with English.

Answer 2

If English is your native language then Dutch and German should both be fairly easy for you. All come from the same language family [Germanic]. Languages like Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish also wouldn't be too much of a stretch either. The great thing about those three languages is that they are all so similar that if you learn one you'd likely be able to carry out a decent conversation with speakers of the other two. Pretty cool. As for the Romance languages based on personal experience the two easiest to learn would be either Spanish or Italian. These two languages are highly phonetic, so once you learn the pronunciation it never changes. Other Romance languages like Portuguese and French aren't quite as phonetic in this sense. As for Japanese and Chinese, well neither is easy. You'd have to be willing to put it several years each to learn them and you don't even have the advantage of knowing the alphabet right away. All of the other languages I've mentioned use to Latin alphabet just like English. If you say that you will be learning Spanish and at least 2/3 other languages why not try in addition Swedish, German, and Italian. Out of Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish Swedish has the most speakers and is the most understood and German and Italian are both official languages spoken in more than one country and have total speakers at well over 50 million each. Ultimately the decision is your. Learning languages is a lot of fun so enjoy.
Hope that helps.

Answer 3

Which language is easiest depends on what language you already know. If you are a native english speaker, the easiest language outside of the romance latin language group would be Bulgarian. The reason is, because although it is a slavic language, it has only one declension, and that is only in the masculine gender. There are three genders and the feminine and neuter genders have no declensions. This is unusual because all t he other slavic languages have either 6 or 7 declensions of all nouns and adjectives in all three genders.

German is not as easy because in German, you cant usually tell by looking at a noun if it is masculine, feminine or neuter.For instance, the word for a young woman is "FRAULEIN" but instead of being a feminine noun, it is a neuter noun. Furthermore, German has 4 declensions. Declensions for english speakers are somewhat tricky because English (with ONE rare exception) has no declensions of nouns or adjectives, and english is the only indo european language with no genders. Thats a little hard on us yanks, because we get tripped up a lot with foreign languages of the indo european group that all have at least 2 genders and most have 3 genders.

The asian languages, however, have no genders. But Japanese has a real headache.They classify nouns based on the shape of the object the noun depicts, so that instead of gender, you have to figure out what shape the object is. And if you use the wrong class, the hearer will be confused and not understand you, might even think you are off the wall. For instance, all long and thin objects, such as pens, pencils, sticks, etc. go with one class identification numbers. So if someone wants to buy a ring and uses the long, thin object classification number in referring to the ring, the hearer will not understand what the speaker is talking about.

Furthermore, in asian languages the meaning of the word often depends on what tone the speaker uses in saying the word. The tone can be rising to a peak, or starting at a peak and going down as the word is being spoken or going straight across without rising or falling. Musicians pick up asian languages much more readily than others because of that. However, if you want to understand the spoken language you have to have the ability to sort out tones. The same word with the same letters and vowels can have multiple different meanings depending on the tone the speaker uses in saying the word.

Norwegian, is the only european language that has tone varieties in speaking as if it were an asian language. It thus may be difficult to learn correctly. Its a real wierdo language.

The easist asian languages to learn although with tones, are Vietnamese and Hmong, easiest because they are written in roman letters, not with the picture writing systems of other asian languages.

Good luck. In today's world its not the easiest language you should learn, its the one that will lead you into good employment, good earnings and good contacts. Japanese and Arabic head that list.

Answer 4

I moved to the US when I was about 12 with just a little bit of English that I learned in my country while going to a private school. I could hold very basic conversations for 2 minutes at most. In addition to that I was really extremely shy because I thought right when I start to speak English people would make fun of me because I might be mispronouncing words or my sentences do not make complete sense. I was placed in an ESL class obviously, but I was the only person in my class from my country, which meant I just had to speak English because I had no other choice. Turned out in a matter of about 3 months I started speaking English without thinking in my own language, and my speed was pretty reasonable. 3 months later I was put in all regular English classes. I think easiness or difficulty of learning a new language has a lot to do with the person's age. When you are younger, it's so much easier for you to adapt and you're just naturally more capable to quickly learn new things. I also believe that it is closely related with the person's will. When you're just obligated to do something and you know you don't have a choice, you just sort of do it. I was in that situation and I have to say I am very happy with the results. Today I speak English like a native. In my first few years in the US, people frequently asked me where I am from, nowadays nobody seems to notice. It's also important to want to learn a new language. I think you have to have some kind of passion for it. Right now I am learning Spanish and I found out learning the 3rd language is a lot easier than learning to 2nd one because you have already been through the process once, so you know what to expect. I have pretty much given you my life story here, sorry, but I thought these are some things you can consider while writing your paper. Good luck!

Answer 5

I don't suggest chinese. I have been learning that one for several years and it is quite hard due to the fact that they do not use a normal alphabet, only lines. I am also learning Swahili and it is quite difficult due to the fact that they take one english word and use it many times with every new idea for the word so each word is actually different depending on what you do with it in the sentence. Russian is pretty easy. My brother learned that and he said it was simple. Latan is called a 'dead language' and isn't spoken anymore. The only way it is used is in a catholic latin mass or to identify all the plants and animals on the earth. They speak Italian now in Italy, including Rome. You can learn any language if you can break their language code. The language code of English is called phonics. Find the language code of whatever language you wish to know and once you learn why and how they speak it, you can learn to speak it a whole lot easier.

Answer 6

If you want something easy, it's best to avoid any east asian languages, arabic or russian. I would stick to latin or germanic based laguages (i.e. dutch, swedish, etc.) . German would be a good choice for an English speaker. But don't be fooled by french. It's quite a bit harder than spanish and italian in that it doesn't sound like it's spelled and the spelling in general is really weird in comparison to the others.

Answer 7

about japanese
the japanese language is thought to be related to korean, manchurian, and mongolian, and more distantly to finnish and jungarian. until the 5th century, when chinese characters were introduced, the japanese had no writing system. thereafter, a system was developed for writing japanese using chinese characters (kanji). using kanji as a base, the japanese devised two syllabic alphabets - hiragana and katakana. each represents the same 47 syllables, and the alphabets are used together with kanji in writing modern japanese. children first learn hiragana and katakana and are gradually introduced to kanji. there are more than 60,000 kanji, most people have a general knowledge of from 3,000 to 4,000 kanji. to simplify matters, most books and newspapers use only 1,945 kanji. there is also a method of writing japanese - called romaji - using he roman alphabet.

asian languages are not easy to learn. you better choose other language if you want easy one.

Answer 8

I'd say spanish is the easiest language to learn as an american. French shouldn't be too hard. German is a language you should put into consideration, too. The pronunciation is a pain in the *** though

Answer 9

If you are learning Spanish, then definitely Italian and Portuguese would be easiest. French is not that easy . .. pronunciation.

If you want to learn a new alphabet, Chinese, Russian, or Arabic are great, but very, very, very difficult since you have to deal with entirely new grammar as well as new alphabets, but if you are going to the countries, it is definitely fun!!

Answer 10

Sign language.