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Which is the best language to learn? Which one is the easiest?
Two different questions, often spoken in the same breath. But that’s okay, because there will only be one answer. Whatever language you choose with all your heart to study, it will be both the best and the easiest. However, here’s some help choosing.
Option.
Here is the Modern Languages Association’s 2002 list of the most commonly studied languages at the university level in the United States. I have not included ancient languages such as Latin, Biblical Hebrew, or Sanskrit, special purpose languages such as American Sign Language, or American heritage languages, such as Hawaiian or Navajo, because the choice of those languages follows a different dynamic:
1. Spanish
2. French
3. German
4. Italian
5. Japanese
6. Sugar
7. Russian
8. Arabic
9. Modern Hebrew
10. Portuguese
11. Korean
12. Vietnamese
13. Hindi/Urdu
14. Swahili
Hardship, According to Uncle Sam
First consider some cold facts. The US State Department groups languages for the diplomatic service according to difficulty of learning:
type 1. The “easiest” languages for English speakers, requiring 600 hours of classwork for minimum proficiency: Latin and Germanic languages. However, German requires slightly longer, 750 hours, due to its complex grammar.
Category 2. Medium, 1100 hours of classwork required: Slavic languages, Turkic languages, other Indo-Europeans such as Persian and Hindi, and some non-Indo-Europeans such as Georgian, Hebrew, and several African languages. In 900 hours Swahili is ranked easier than the rest.
grade 3. Difficult, requiring 2200 hours of study: Arabic, Japanese, Korean and Chinese languages.
Will you get a chance to practice this language?
Now, consider another important factor: accessibility. To be a successful learner you need opportunities to listen, read and speak a language in a natural environment. Learning a language requires an immense amount of concentration and repetition, which cannot be done solely in the classroom. Will you have access to the language where you live, work and travel?
The 14 most popular courses ranked by a combination of linguistic ease and accessibility.
1. Spanish. Category one. Straightforward grammar is familiar and regular. It is also ubiquitous in the Americas, with a prominent presence in the insular linguistic environment of the Americas as the only foreign language likely to speak and hear it. It is highly preferred accounting for over fifty percent of language studies enrollments in MLA studies.
2. French. Category one. Grammatically complex but not difficult to learn as many of its words have entered English. For this vocabulary affinity, it is easy to achieve an advanced level, especially in reading. It is a world language, and a motivated learner will find it on the Internet, in movies and in music.
3. German. Category One Plus. The rules of syntax and grammar are complex and declension of nouns is a major problem. English is one of the easiest languages to start speaking with a basic vocabulary. Abstract, advanced languages differ markedly, however, where English substitutes Latin words. It values clear explanation, so it is not difficult to understand.
4. Italian. Category one. It has simple grammatical rules similar to Spanish, a familiar vocabulary and the clearest pronunciation among the Latin languages (along with Romanian). Italian skills can easily be transferred to French or Spanish. You may need to go to Italy to practice this, but worse things could happen to you. It has also surfaced in the world of opera and classical music.
5. Russian. Category two. This highly inflected language, with its declension, is quite difficult to learn. The Cyrillic alphabet isn’t particularly difficult, though, and once you can read the language, the many borrowings from French and other Western languages are a pleasant surprise. It’s more accessible.
6. Arabic. Category three. Arabic is spoken in dozens of countries, but many national dialects can be mutually unintelligible. It has only three vowels, but includes some consonants that are not present in English. The alphabet is a formidable obstacle, and good calligraphy is highly prized and difficult to perfect. Vowels are not usually written (except in children’s books) and this can be a hindrance to reading. It is ubiquitous in the Muslim world and there are opportunities to practice it at every level of formality.
7. Portuguese. Category one. One of the most widely spoken languages in the world is often overlooked. It has a familiar Latin grammar and vocabulary, although the phonetics may take some getting used to.
8. Swahili. Category two minus. It contains many borrowings from Arabic, Persian, English and French. It is a Bantu language of Central Africa, but has lost the harder “tones” of Bantu. The sound system is familiar, and is written using the Latin alphabet. A major grammatical idea is the division of nouns into sixteen classes, each with a different prefix. However, the orbits are not arbitrary, and are approximate.
9. Hindi/Urdu. Category two. Hindustani language, an Indo-European language, which includes both Hindi and Urdu. It has a vast number of consonants and vowels, with distinctions between vowels that an English speaker would have difficulty hearing. Word endings are often mutilated, further complicating understanding. Hindi uses many Sanskrit loans and Urdu uses many Persian/Arabic loans, which means that a large vocabulary must be mastered. Hindi uses the phonetically accurate Devanagari script created specifically for the language. Obviously, Urdu’s use of the borrowed Persian/Arabic script brings some approximation to the writing system.
10. Modern Hebrew. Category two. Revived as a living language during the nineteenth century, it has taken on characteristics of many languages of the Jewish diaspora. The resulting language became regular in grammar and syntax, and the vocabulary absorbed many loan words, notably from Yiddish, English, and Arabic. The alphabet has both print and script forms, with five vowels, normally not marked. Vowel marking, or pointing, when it occurs is quite complex. It can be difficult to reproduce sounds in their subtlety and a certain amount of contact makes hearing comprehension problematic. It is not very accessible outside a religious or Israeli context.
11. Japanese. Category three. Learning is difficult, because the vocabulary is unfamiliar, and the requirements for phonetics are so strict that many words borrowed from English, French, and German will sound unrecognizable. With three different writing systems, it is extremely difficult to read and write. Also, social barriers can prevent fruitful interaction.
12. Sugar. Category three. whether your choice is Mandarin or Cantonese (the MLA poll makes no distinction, oddly enough). This is the most difficult language on this list. It includes all the most difficult aspects: unfamiliar phonemes, a large number of phonemes, an extremely complex writing system, and an equally unfamiliar vocabulary. Personal motivation is absolutely necessary to keep the student on track. On the positive side, it is easy to find, as Chinese communities exist all over the world, and Chinese language media, such as newspapers, films, and TV, are present in all of these communities.
13. Vietnamese. Category three. This language belongs to an unfamiliar family of languages, but it borrows a lot of vocabulary from Chinese (helpful if you already speak Chinese!) It has six phonemes, and a grammar with unfamiliar logic. It’s not all bleak, however, as Vietnamese uses a Latin-derived alphabet. The language is not likely to be spoken, although there are 3 million speakers in the United States.
14. Korean. Category three. Korean uses an alphabet of 24 symbols, which precisely represent 14 consonants and 10 vowels. However, the language also includes 2000 Chinese characters commonly used for literary writing and formal documents. Speech levels and norms complicate vocabulary learning, and there is contact between words, making them difficult to distinguish. The grammar is not overly complex and there are no vowels. It has many borrowed Chinese words, but the language is not related to other languages in Asia.
The Most Important Factor of All: Personal Motivation
The third, most important factor is up to you. The easiest language to learn is the one you are most inspired to learn, the one you enjoy speaking, the culture that inspires you, and the history that touches you spiritually. It is useless to try to learn a language if you are not interested in the people who speak it, because learning a language involves participating in its behavior and identifying with its people.
So, consider all three factors: motivation, accessibility, and linguistic ease, in that order, and make the final list yourself. The bad news is that no language is really easy to learn, but the good news is that we humans are designed to have a great amount of linguistic flexibility as long as we know how to trigger the learning process. goes. If the rewards and benefits of language are clear to you, you’ll be able to spark those rusty language synapses in your head and start rattling words. Bonne chance!
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