Focus Only On Critical Concepts
As you begin learning the language, dont spend hours upon hours studying things that arent crucial to basic understanding.
Follow the 80-20 rule instead. About 80% of your results will come from 20% of your efforts. Dont be afraid to shoot for the low-hanging fruit and master things like verb tenses, basic vocabulary, and useful phrases first.
The Romance Languages Are Almost Just As Easy To Learn
For a native English speaker such as yourself, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, and Spanish are practically just as easy to learn for you as the Germanic languages. To achieve a professional working proficiency level in any of these languages, youll need about 600 hours or 24 weeks of study. Thats only an extra week! So, lets find out more about the top easiest Romance languages to learn for English speakers.
Top 10 Easiest Languages To Learn For Beginners
Have you always wanted to learn a second language but never started to do it because of the obstacles you would have to face? Maybe your stumbling block would not having enough free time, energy or even money to do it. Maybe you kept thinking that you would not be able to succeed because learning a new language is just too difficult.
Rest assured that we understand your worries. As a matter of fact, learning a language does require a great deal of effort and perseverance. However, different languages are in different levels of difficulty to master, if you consider some factors. Have you ever wondered which language would demand less time and effort in your particular case? In another words, what is the easiest language to learn?
Do not feel ashamed for wanting to make your life easier. The truth is that we are all very busy with our career, family, friends, personal projects, hobbies and life, in general. Therefore, there is no shame in looking for the easiest path to become bilingual. On the contrary, we praise you for wanting to learn a new language despite of everything else youve got going on in your life!
How about we consider these two items in more details?
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Your Strengths As A Language Learner
While some of us may have a knack for grammar , others may get their kicks out of memorising vocabulary or even a whole new alphabet.
Whatever your language talents may be, its worth identifying them so you can pick a language thatll play to your strengths. That way, youll find the hardest parts of learning a particular language the most fun!
Easiest Languages To Learn
- 10 Easiest Languages to Learn
Want to know what language course Santa should put in your stocking this Christmas? We do! Heres a list of the ten languages that are easiest to learn for British speakers.
A European Commission Survey carried out in 2012 revealed that 61 percent of British people that were interviewed did not speak a second language. This is a worrisome development, as the world we live in today focuses more and more on international trade and global communication. Thankfully, English speakers do not have to start from scratch when learning another language, as the language is related to many other European languages.
Maybe you have heard of a language tree before its a kind of tree diagram which shows what languages are related. The English language belongs to the Indo-European language tree. Two of the big branches of this tree are the Germanic branch and the Roman branch, and as English is related to both of these, many Roman and Germanic languages are fairly easy to learn for English speakers. Anne Merit has that are easiest for British people to learn.
Afrikaans
French
Spanish
Dutch
Norwegian
Portuguese
Swedish
Italian
Esperanto
Leo Tolstoj even claimed to have learned it in four hours! The language is so easy because of the regular and phonetic spelling system and simple grammar rules without irregularities. The words are essentially building blocks that you can compound logically. The word watermelon, for example, is akvomelono .
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Similarity To English Structure
Each language that we speak today, including English, has its own origin. Just like we do as humans.
When you track back to the roots of the English language, it began from the Proto-Indo-European language family. Refer to the image below, and you can see languages that are similar to one another. English, for example, is quite similar to German, Afrikaans, Dutch, French, Spanish, etc.
That means these languages are easier to learn as an English speaker, versus Mandarin or Korean . â
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Well, not that you know what are the easiest languages to learn for a native English speaker, you can get to work because being a polyglot is so much easier when you have Mondly., choose any of the 41 languages available and go wild! Youll get to expand your vocabulary while also practicing REAL conversations with a chatbot with speech recognition.
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- Discover your reason for learning the language and keep motivated
- Find a partner. Competition is a great driver for improvement!
- Talk to yourself, even if it seems weird. This can keep information fresh in your mind and give you more confidence for the next time you talk to someone
- Think of fun and creative activities that help you with language learning. Watch a movie, listen to music, write. There are countless possibilities
Try Mondly now and learn the easiest languages faster than you could ever imagine.
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Top 10 Easiest Languages To Learn For English Speaking People
Here is a ranking list of the top 10 easiest language to learn for native English Speakers according to the American Foreign Services Association.
| 1 | Danish | These 5 languages are considered to be of Germanic descent. According to studies, the similarity in vocabulary with English helps native English students understand a good 30% of the new languages from prior knowledge and therefore makes it easier. Note however that Afrikaans is included but German is not in here due to its complexity in its Grammar. |
| 2 | ||
| Some history as to why English is so close to the Germanic languages: |
6 Spanish The romance languages yes, Romanian is one of them are the second easiest in this category due to the fact that even though they might not have many similarities with the English language as the above mentioned, once you know one of them, you know a good part of the next. So, is Italian easy to learn? No, if its your first romance language. But yes, if you already know Spanish, French, Portuguese or Romanian. 7 Italian 8 French 9 Portuguese 10 Romanian The famous pop singer Colombian singer, Shakira, is a great example of how once you know one, you get easiness in learning other European languages. She speaks 6 languages: Spanish , Portuguese, Italian, French, Catalán but also English:
Which Are The Easiest To Learn European Languages Or Asian Languages
The most spoken languages that people like to learn are especially divided into 2 main categories, European languages and Asian languages.
When we look at the AFSA rankings on their categorizations well see that as a general rule, Category 1 is full of European Languages, while most Asian Languages are ranked as Category 4.
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What Is The Easiest Language To Learn
We hope our list of the easiest languages to learn for English speakers inspired you to start with your language lessons. Regardless of what you choose, youre probably going to have a smooth learning process without too many difficulties.
However, that also depends on many other factors. According to the Foreign Service Institute , linguists, and learners, all the languages we mentioned today are fairly easy to learn. Or, easier than other languages, to be more precise.
But whether you learn a new language in a quick and easy way also depends on your learning source. You need to find a good teacher or quality online language lessons. And if you stick to your schedule and follow the suggested learning path, you can learn quite a lot in less than a month.
You shouldnt have unrealistic goals though. Learning a new language takes time, regardless of its difficulty.
And whether you find a certain language difficult or not also depends on your previous experience. For instance, if youre familiar with Spanish, learning Italian will be much easier.
Check out our article on the best way to learn a new language here.
What Is The Easiest Language To Learn For English Speakers
If youâre wondering âwhat is the easiest language for English speakers to learn?â or âwhat language is easiest to learn?â youâve seen thereâs no easy answer. To sum it up, the easiest language to learn is the language youâre most motivated to learn. If you have a clear reason or purpose for learning a language, itâs easier to stick with a language through the more challenging moments.
So there you have it, the answer to what language is easiest to learn for English speakers: the language that strikes a chord with you.
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What Makes Some Languages Easier To Learn
The similarity to your mother tongue: The more related a target language is to a speakers native language roots, usages, and pronunciations the easier it will be to learn. Hence, youll notice that many of the most difficult languages for English speakers to learn come from different language families, while the easiest all come from the Indo-European family that is shared with English.
Exposure: One of the reasons English is such a widely spoken language is due to the amount of exposure English learners have to it. English is dominant across so much media from international news to TV and popular films and social media.
Ability to practice: Languages that are only spoken in their homeland can be harder to learn because you need to be in situ to practice. Languages that are more widely spread across the globe are easier to pick up because youll likely be able to find native speakers closer to home with whom to practice.
The US Foreign Service Institute has developed language learning timelines. Their scoring is based on the amount of time for native English speakers to reach Professional Working Proficiency in other languages. The timescale can, of course, be impacted by the language learners natural ability, prior linguistic experience, and time spent in the classroom.
Source: US Foreign Institute View more
Languages With Simple Grammar Rules
Lets begin by seeing which languages possess easy-to-comprehend grammar rules, even if their pronunciation is not that simple. If your strength is the system of sounds and your weakness is learning the grammar, the following languages could be good choices for you:
1) Esperanto. It is the widely-spoken artificial language in the world. We say artificial because it was invented in the late 19th century to become a universal second language, in order to encourage peace and international understanding. Because of that goal, Esperanto has a simple grammar, easy rules and a lot of words that resemble words from other languages. It was built to be simple and to be learned with minimum effort.
2) Mandarin Chinese. You did not see this one coming, right? Oriental languages are normally considered to be the most difficult ones because they are so different from the occidental languages. However, you would be surprised to see how simple the grammar of Mandarin Chinese is. Besides being a SVO language , there are no inflections of verbs, nouns, pronouns and adjectives. Most words have just one meaning and even if you mix up the speech order, you will be understood. The grammar of Mandarin Chinese is a piece of cake what makes it difficult is its system of sounds.
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Ten Of The Easiest Languages To Learn Allegedly
Afrikaans a West Germanic descendent, there are many similarities with English.
French apparently French has influenced up to a third of the English vocabulary. Well, that makes sense thanks to William the Conqueror, 1066 and all that. From experience, French is easier to speak than to write all those endings and grammar.
Spanish a Romance language, easy to pronounce and read especially if you studied Latin at school. It also sounds nice.
Portuguese a Romance language, grammatically similar to Spanish and Italian.
Dutch another West Germanic relative. Dutch is fairly easy to understand when spoken, but harder to read. A Dutch speaker once told me that the Dutch would happily borrow words from other languages, but then change the spelling so they looked Dutch.
Norwegian another Germanic language, this time classified as North Germanic. Apparently the grammar is straightforward to learn.
Swedish Germanic again. With extra vowel sounds and an attractive rhythm.
Italian the language of romance. And yes, a Romance language. Again, easy to read, especially if you have knowledge of Latin or Spanish. And heaven to listen to.
Esperanto a language fabricated in the 19th centuray and designed to be extremely easy to learn and use. But does anyone actually speak it? Well, apparently yes its officially recognised by UNESCO and has approximately 2 million speakers. Have you ever met one? No, me neither.
How Similar Thelanguage Is To English
First, you have to consider how similar it is to the English language. If the language you want to learn requires you to master a new alphabet that looks nothing like the letters youre familiar with, that can definitely be a challenge.
So, languages that use a similar if not the same alphabet system would naturally be considered the quickest languages to learn.
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Effortless Phonology: Languages With Painless Pronunciation
Have you ever overheard a foreign language like Arabic or Cantonese and thought that it would be intimidating to learn?
To some extent, this is just because the speech sounds of unfamiliar languages often sound garbled and meaningless to foreigners.
But in terms of phonologythe system of speech sounds in a languagenot all languages are made equal. Some have dozens of different consonants and vowels and some have only a few.
If learning all the new sounds of a foreign language is your biggest challenge, you should consider starting with one of these languages:
Easiest Languages To Learn For English Speakers
Founder of Linguatics. Passionate multilinguist.
Do you want to learn a new language but you dont have a lot of free time on your hands?
Indeed, fluency doesnt happen overnight, no matter which language youre learning. And whether you find a certain language easy or not depends on many factors.
However, some languages are generally considered less demanding for English speakers. Whether its their sentence structure or vocabulary, they are simply easier to master than some other languages.
So, if youre looking for an easy foreign language to learn, youve come to the right place.
Keep reading to discover the easiest languages to learn you may be surprised by some of the options.
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Easiest Languages For English Speakers To Learn
So youve decided to learn a language. Your next task, if youre up for it: Choosing among many options. Should you go for a more widely spoken language like Spanish or Mandarin, a politically relevant one like Russian, or one you can use on your next vacation? These are all valid motivations, but heres another: Youre busy. We all are. Why not tackle a language that will be relatively easy to learn? With the help of Babbels team of language-learning experts, weve determined the easiest language to learn for English speakers. Well, lets just say weve narrowed down the list to 9 of them. Hopefully, this will help you narrow down your options, so you can start learning right away.
Easy Languages To Learn: Top 16 Easiest Languages You Can Learn
Wondering what easy languages to learn? Some languages are easier to learn than others. There is a reason why some new language learners become proficient in some languages within a short period.
Its because they focused on one of the easy languages to learn. If you are bothered by the huge number of languages , then you should choose those languages that are easy to learn.
In this article, I will talk about some of the easy languages to learn as an English speaker.
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What Is The Easiest Language For English Speakers To Learn
Considering the factors that I described above, Spanish is the easiest language that English speakers can learn.
When you consider the opportunities to practice Spanish, why it is useful to learn it, and the similarities it has with English, it is the winner here.
Although it does not mean that you should choose the easiest channel. The other languages that I shared in this article are also easy languages to learn for those that speak English. So the choice is yours to make.
Languages With A Simple Phonology
What if you have no problem with learning more complex grammar, but you struggle with complicated system of sounds? It can be quite challenging to pronounce sounds that do not exist in your mother tongue. If you want to learn a language with an easy pronunciation, these may be good choices for you:
8) Spanish. Do you know what orthographic depth is? It is a measurement of how easy it is to predict the pronunciation of a word based on its writing. When the pronunciation of the Spanish words are quite similar to their writing, we say that the language has a shallow orthography, which is the case of Spanish. Although you will have to learn how to conjugate verbs, the fact that the conjugated endings are normally the same and that you pronounce the words the way they are written makes Spanish an easy enough language to learn.
10) Japanese. This may also come as a surprise to you. However, even though Japanese has a complicated writing system, its pronunciation is unexpectedly simple and definitely easier than Chinese, for example. We can say that, with Japanese, what you see is what you get. Obviously, there are some words that can be a little tricky to pronounce, but overall, the fact that Japanese doesnt have many sound variations makes it also an orthographically shallow language.
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