Frankly speaking, English will be the easiest to learn since it is used worldwide.
But did you know that Mandarin, Spanish, French, and Arabic have more or less the same number of English speakers around the globe?
Find out what languages are the easiest to learn with this useful guide.
Which languages are the most spoken around the world?
Your go-to language to learn this year should be diverse, as there are more than 5 languages today that has a huge population of native speakers or has it as an official language.
Language learners should be aware that most foreign language has grammatical structures different from each other.
If you’re curious about the here are the most spoken languages around the world:
- English
- Mandarin
- Spanish
- Hindi
- Arabic
Since data for these languages change per year, we can’t put the total number of people and the chronological order for them.
But just last year, there is approximately 1.35 billion people that speak the English language as their native language or secondary language.
Running second is Mandarin with at least 1.12 billion native speakers and those using Mandarin as their second language.
Most people will think Spanish, Hindi, or Arabic are the hardest languages when in fact it is one of the most popular languages around the world.
You can already try memorizing one of these common languages through online resources or from a native speaker that can teach you.
So, how do you know if you need to study a Germanic Language more than a Romance language first?
Here are our suggestions on which language skills you should improve next if you are studying a similar family language.
If your native language is Italian, you should learn Spanish!
Romance languages are part of the Indo-European Language Family which dates back to the Roman times that previously used Vulgar Latin.
Other Romance languages include Portuguese, French, and Romanian that almost all have the same verb conjugation patterns and rules with noun genders and verb forms.
However, one should remember that learning one Romance language doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll learn the other related Latin languages quickly.
There are differences with words intended for a specific meaning that might be interpreted into a negative connotation depending on that country’s culture.
Tip: When learning Romance languages, gendered nouns, regular verb endings, as well as article agreement are very important.
If your native language is English, then you should try Dutch!
Some branches of Germanic languages apart from English and Dutch are Afrikaans, Norwegian, German, Swedish, Faroese, Danish, and Icelandic.
They all come from the Nordic family or the Scandinavian language and even have branched out to other Northern Germanic or Western Germanic languages.
As of today, there are at least 515 million Germanic language speakers today. Not so difficult language after all!
What makes Dutch speakers think that Spanish or Italian is a challenging language is its verbal moods and verbal conjugation. Spanish and Italian both have many rules in comparison to the Germanic family.
Overall, our tip when learning a Germanic language family is to really listen to the intonation or the tonal language of these languages. Many words may look like one another but when spoken, can convey a different meaning.
If your native language is Japanese, then put Korean or Chinese in your next class!
Asian languages are now a popular language due to the rising interest in Korean and Japanese culture.
But did you know that the Chinese language has been around for centuries? It even dates back to 6000 years which makes it a very ancient language.
However, no language is static, and most of the students of the Indo-European and even Germanic languages feel that Chinese, Korean, or Japanese has some of the most difficult characters they’ve ever encountered.
They all have 3 alphabets to memorize and totally look different from each other (Korean also has the Hanja and still study Chinese because of it).
Most learners find Asian languages have difficult pronunciation since they have far different phonetic structures than African languages, Spanish, or other popular languages.
One common technique (and tip) that English learners use when learning Korean, Chinese, or Japanese is to find cognates.
These are words that have similar-looking words, which are also known as loan words that have the same meaning. But be careful of false cognates too!
Moreover, when learning any of these three languages Chinese is considered the easiest since it is the basic language of all three and you can find almost all vocabulary in the other two.
Learning Malay or Indonesian? Try Tagalog (Filipino)!
The Austronesian language has branched out to many families of languages.
Formerly known as the Malayo-Polynesian language, you won’t be surprised how many of these
Malaysia, Indonesia, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, and some parts of Taiwan are from the Malayo-Polynesian language
One of the many Malayo-Polynesian branches gaining interests in English speakers is Tagalog (Filipino)
However, the Philippines has other dialects and languages with a mix of Indonesian or Malay languages that is two levels deep from the Austronesian language family.
Moreover, English speakers are eager to learn Tagalog. That is because more than 2.4 million speakers reside in the U.S and Tagalog is already considered the sixth-most spoken language there.
As of now, there are 25 million speakers in the Philippines of the Tagalog language and its closest branch, Cebuano, Bisayan, Hiligaynon (Ilongo) are 14 million.
Our tip when learning Tagalog is to learn that it has many cognates in the speakers of Austronesian languages like Indonesian and Malaysian.
You will simply need to learn vocabulary through Youtube videos or listening to a podcast and you can find the meaning of certain words through context.
Don’t forget, Tagalog speakers also consider English as their second language. So you’ll more or less hear sentences in both Tagalog and English at the same time.
Are grammar rules learned before or after deciding a language to study?
You might miss out on the fun of language learning if you’re only focused on policies in terms of grammar, conjugation, and pronunciation.
It won’t harm you if you skip that on your first try. But, what’s important is that you should know rules like silent letters or vowel sounds as you listen to audio courses.
A language partner can help you practice these languages daily and then switch to the next one or even learn them simultaneously.
So what languages are the easiest to learn? You can try learning the basics of that family language.
Here are our suggestions for easy to study languages
- Romance language: Spanish
- Germanic language: Dutch or Swedish
- Chinese language
- Malayo-Polynesian language: Malaysian, Indonesian, or Tagalog