For beginners: "What language should I learn"? "What is the easiest one"? (NOT MY QUESTION!)

[Hamza]

http://yourfrenchcorner.com/20-books-that-will-make-you-love-french-literature/

[frankfurt]

French and Spanish are easy to learn if you know one of them already. They are similar in their ways

[Federico]

Hi all!

When it comes to learning a new language I wouldn't take into account the ease or simplicity of it at all, I would only consider two aspects:

• Passion
• Usefulness

On the one hand, I chose learning French for the first reason mostly, because I'm really passionate about French, but the use I make of it is not that big. On the other hand, I chose learning English because of its usefulness, because of the reasons you all know. Learning a language should be based on the combination of these two aspects in my opinion : https://blog.lingolistic.com/best-way-to-learn-french

[blotteracids]

I think English is the easiest language to learn as it sounds like a lot of other languages and has really similar words... Also, there are no accents and the pronouns are really easy to learn. I think that maybe it's not the same for everyone, but it was the easiest language for me. It's also highly needed and used in today's world, and if you learn english, you can go anywhere and talk to anyone, because everyone knows at least the basics of the language.

[VinayaSpeaks]

Actually, there is no such thing as easy language. If you have interest you will find it easy and it you are uninterested, you will find it hard. You should not try to learn a language just because you find it easy. The motive of learning language should be:

Gain knowledge

Find work

Traveling to the place where that language is spoken,

 

 

[宇崎ちゃん]

2 hours ago, blotteracids said:

I think English is the easiest language ... Also, there are no accents

Is that so?

 

[cutiepie]

If you are an English-speaking person who wishes to learn another language, I have a recommendation to make: choose one of the 5 Romance languages: Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese or Romanian. The primary reason for choosing one of these as a second language is that they "descended" from Latin, which means that the written language is going to have the same alphabetic characters, making it easier to understand and assimilate.

Plus, once you learn one of these languages, the others having similar root verbs and vocabulary will make it easier to pick up any of the other four. And the accents are similar, which means you won't have to learn 5 separate ways to pronounce the words. There will be slight differences, of course, just as there are slight differences in accents spoken in the United States. 

[AndreaDee]

If your native language is English, like mine, your best bet is probably learning Spanish. Spanish is very similar to English in terms of cognates (words that sound like another languages words and are the equivalent) and sentence structure. I was able to pick up Spanish very easily because of this. Because it is not hard, it is enjoyable to learn. I am not particularly interested in Spanish culture, but that does not hinder my efforts to learn in any way.

[ae.swanson]

I have a grandmother who swears up and down that Spanish is so easy to learn, because she grew up speaking Spanish. I tried to learn and just could not grasp it. It would not stick. 

Now, it may be different. I loved trying to learn Spanish so I honestly don't know why it was so hard for me to understand and retain the language. Japanese has been very easy for me as well as German. 

[Sundae Someday]

It seems to me that the languages I enjoy listening to the most are the ones I am most interested in, therefore, I learn them quicker. If certain words catch your attention or if you're naturally drawn to a certain language, you can start there. Another way to look at it as far as easy goes, is to try to learn languages that are closest or most similar to those you currently speak. For example, if you speak French, it should naturally be easier to continue learning one of the other Romance languages. Learn what comes naturally.

[AExAVF]

I have always been fascinated by the Japanese culture as well as the honorifics.  In addition, I have been an anime and tokusatsu fan as I enjoy watching their children's shows.  I also have a lot of Japanese songs from both anime and toku series as well.  At one time, I have considered enrolling in a private university to learn about East Asian cultures, particularly Korean and Japanese.  Later on I enrolled in a Japanese language school and passed Elementary 1, but to me I still came up short.  Since then I have learned to love the Japanese language, and by extension, its culture. I honestly wish I had more time to learn the language even more, but certain events in my life have taken over.

As I am also a taekwondo practitioner, I would very much like to learn Korean, but my heart longs to learn Japanese right now.  I have no plans to learn Chinese, though my late maternal grandfather knows a certain Chinese dialect, but it is definitely not Mandarin.

In my elementary years, I was required to learn Arablc because our school was located in an Arab country.  Because I was "forced" to learn Arabic, it never stuck with me other than the basic phrases and some words.  Though I still passed the subject, I wasn't really fond of the Arab culture, and in the end the Arabic language was a course not worth remembering. 

 

[hades_leae]

English is the best in my opinion. It has an alphabet that has 26 letters, and that is all you need to know to start creating words, there is no pronunciation issues like with languages like mandarin, dialects, no distinctions like Porto Rican and Spanish will claim there is with their languages.

It's really easy to understand the language. In English you say girlfriend, but in Spanish, you can't say Chica Amiga, as that doesn't make sense, which is something that confused me when I started learning. Chica Amiga does mean girl-friend, but you have to say Novia to say girlfriend in Spanish. I said chica amiga to someone in Spanish and they looked so confused. 

You can't put words together in many other languages to create a compound word, English is really basic, and easy to learn for anyone. 

[Ernesto]

Not sure about the "follow your heart" approach, when it comes to languages I am of the school that a language is a as good as its economic prospects; what jobs/markets/opportunities it may open to you. Consequently, I am not one to recommend the very popular choice (at least here in the US) of French. French language is useless as far as economic opportunity is concerned...On the other hand, there are some languages of the future if you're concerned about learning an (economically) useful language, my list ordered according to personal insight:

1- Spanish

2- German

3- Japanese

4- Mandarin

5- Russian

6- tie between Arabic & Portuguese.

 

If you speak the first 3 with English then you're probably a very rich man already

[宇崎ちゃん]

Question @Ernesto, why are both Japanese and Mandarin number 3?
Not saying I disagree, it just seems strange to have 2 languages on the same spot on separate lines.

[Ernesto]

32 minutes ago, Blaveloper said:

Question @Ernesto, why are both Japanese and Mandarin number 3?
Not saying I disagree, it just seems strange to have 2 languages on the same spot on separate lines.

Well spot. I think I was hesitating between Japanese and Mandarin for the Bronze medal .

(corrected now)

 

[Norm A]

Your motivation for learning a particular language will play a great big part in how fast and how well you learn it. Think about why you want to learn a foreign language. I agree with 111kg that your main motivation will come from whether you have an intention of immersing yourself in their culture or not.There is no point learning a new language just so you can sit in the knowledge and not communicate with anyone else. 

[Rooks57]

I think that when it comes to picking a language it was important to have a final goal in mind.  When I was learning Spanish in high school and college, no one spoke Spanish so I didn't feel the need to work really hard to learn it.  But now I live in California and not do I have people who I would like to take Spanish with but there are definitely times when I could have used it.  So I'm restarting to learn what I've lost in the last couple years.  The second language I'm trying to learn is Korean because I want to go travel South Korea.  I love the music, movies, and food so I keep that in mind.  So I agree that you should like parts of the culture of the language you want to learn but sometimes you just want to visit a country or speak to a couple people in their native language.  I do think that picking the 'easiest' language is a wrong way to go about it because you need more to keep going since learning a langue is a long continuous process.

[Norm A]

Your motivation for learning a particular language will play a great big part in how fast and how well you learn it. Think about why you want to learn a foreign language. I agree with 111kg that your main motivation will come from whether you have an intention of immersing yourself in their culture or not.There is no point learning a new language just so you can sit in the knowledge and not communicate with anyone else. 

[Norjak71]

From personal experience Spanish is by far the easiest and I've tried French and German as well. Spanish you can pick up quite easily as it is the most relate-able to English. It is also quite useful as well for people that travel abroad. If you have ever given any thought into Rosetta Stone it is well worth it for Spanish, maybe not for other languages though.  

[MissTe]

A lot of people agree that English and Spanish are the easiest languages to learn by far, but I think that how easy or how hard a language will be to learn depends mostly on how you are learning it, from a native speaker or a non-native speaker. Also I think that it's easier to learn a language when you are surrounded by people who speak that language on a daily basis. 

[Norm A]

8 hours ago, MissTe said:

A lot of people agree that English and Spanish are the easiest languages to learn by far, but I think that how easy or how hard a language will be to learn depends mostly on how you are learning it, from a native speaker or a non-native speaker. Also I think that it's easier to learn a language when you are surrounded by people who speak that language on a daily basis. 

I totally agree with you. English and Spanish seem to be the easiest languages to learn, but I also feel that the person's motivation for learning the language counts for a lot in how easy or how hard they find it to learn that particular language. 

[megsky]

I think it's really interesting that many of the responses to this thread include agreement that the culture the language is primarily attached to plays a huge role in the motivation to learn that language. It's something that I think is probably one of the main reasons behind many individuals choosing to learn less common languages (example: any Romance language.) Personally, the reason I've chosen to learn Korean and Japanese despite a vast majority claiming the languages are 'too hard' to learn for native English speakers is exactly that: I fell in love with the culture of South Korean and Japan, respectively. The fact that it's distinctly different from my own, with various nuances of the languages being directly influenced by the culture is just so interesting to me.

Everyone likely agrees that the language one choose to learn should have some significance to them, that it should be something they deeply care about in order to keep them motivated in their learning process. However, so many still continue to attempt to give one single language the distinguishing title of being the 'easiest language to learn.' The truth is: everyone learns language differently, so one person might be able to learn a given language easier than another individual. Many factors go into the learning process, like the individual's native tongue, and whether there is a lot of good quality material available for learning their target language. English may be one of the easier languages to learn in terms of material, since it's an in demand language for world wide business opportunities, but I personally wouldn't want to relearn English from scratch...and I speak it fluently.

Also, I've seen Esperanto being brought up, and I agree based on a linguistic perspective that it might be a good idea to begin learning Esperanto in order to segue into other language learning, particularly if you want to learn a Romance language. It's supposedly the most difficult to learn your first language (aside from your native tongue), and it gets easier thereafter; in theory, this is because you already have a basis on approaching a different grammar structure, etc.

That being said, I really just think that an individual should discover for themselves what is 'easy' and what isn't, and ignore all the articles that would tell them to stay clear of the language, because it's be too hard for them to learn. Think of how much you're limiting yourself by taking that approach. : (

[MissTe]

I'm just curious. From the answers you have recieved from the other forum members, what language do you think is the easiest to learn? Have you made a decision yet or are you still undecided?

[宇崎ちゃん]

My original post has never been a question @MissTe, it was meant as a guide.
This topic is pinned for a reason.

[m1chael]

On 6/27/2016 at 10:19 AM, Blaveloper said:

Is that so?

 

That is really hilarious. I really like it.

Honestly, unless you have been learning english for many years, it's very hard to get rid of an accent. And even if you learn english for a long time, you may still have an accent. It's different with everybody. Some people who have been, say speaking a language for many years and will still be unable to pronounce some words incorrectly just because of the way they speak.