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The Easiest Language for English Speaker | ||
Tags: Difficulty | English | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| canada38 Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5497 days ago 304 posts - 417 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Japanese | Message 9 of 39 03 March 2010 at 7:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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In my opinion, in increasing difficulty... Scots (if considered a language), Dutch and
Afrikaans (Dutch more resources/speakers; Afrikaans might be easier though in absolute terms though), Spanish, French, Scandinavian/German tie, then Italian/Catalan/Portuguese tie. Edited by canada38 on 03 March 2010 at 7:39pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| magictom123 Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5595 days ago 272 posts - 365 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French | Message 10 of 39 03 March 2010 at 8:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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This is interesting as I was under the impression from previous discussions here that the
general concensus was either Spanish or Italian were the easiet languages for English speakers to learn since they are both very phonetic and have relatively simple grammr rules when compared with other, more exotic languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| IronFist Senior Member United States Joined 6439 days ago 663 posts - 941 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 11 of 39 03 March 2010 at 9:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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To me, German pronunciation is much easier than Spanish. And remembering German words was a bit easier than remembering Spanish words because many of them are similar to English.
But German was made much, much more difficult because you can't tell the gender of a noun from looking at it and each word must be memorized individually. Same thing with plural rules. In Spanish, to make something plural, you basically add an -s. In German, you can add an -n, or an -en, or an umlaut, or any combination of those, or none of them and just change the article. And they all must be memorized individually. And 3 German genders * 4 German noun cases = Spanish is "easier" (can be learned quicker), IMO. However, Spanish has annoying qualities of its own, such as: - Spanish words blend together like crazy. I can barely understood spoken Spanish even when I know all the words that are being used. If one word ends with the same letter that the next word begins with, it becomes a spoken contraction which my English ears DO NOT like. For example, "habla ahora" (AH-blah ah-O-rah) when spoken becomes "hablahora" (AH-blah-O-rah) because the two As blend together. Maybe it won't be an issue for you. - Spanish has too many verb conjugations and by the time I figure out which tense is being used, the speaker is like 3 sentences later. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ayazid Newbie Czech Republic Joined 5579 days ago 14 posts - 33 votes Speaks: Czech* | Message 12 of 39 03 March 2010 at 10:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think that neither German or any Romance language is the easiest one for English speakers (although they should be significantly easier than more distant or completely unrelated languages like Russian, Hungarian, Swahili or Cheyenne). The easiest languages for English speakers (I am not sure in which order, since this might depend on each learner) would be:
1) Dutch (lexically closer to English than German, simpler grammar, however the syntax is something in between the German and English one) 2) Afrikaans (basically a simplified version of Dutch) 3) Swedish (lexically more distant than Dutch, but grammatically maybe even closer) 4) Norwegian (the same as Swedish) 5) Danish (the same as Swedish and Norwegian, but the pronunciation is very complicated even for other Scandinavians) Edited by Ayazid on 03 March 2010 at 10:31pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| brian91 Senior Member Ireland Joined 5446 days ago 335 posts - 437 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 13 of 39 04 March 2010 at 4:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the responses.
Oh, and does anyone know how I can upload an avatar? I uploaded a picture, but that was probably a profile picture. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| brian91 Senior Member Ireland Joined 5446 days ago 335 posts - 437 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 14 of 39 04 March 2010 at 6:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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Okay, here are the top ten easiest languages to learn, according to the Foreign Service Institute:
1 Afrikaans 2 Danish 3 Dutch 4 French 5 Italian 6 Norwegian 7 Portuguese 8 Romanian 9 Spanish 10 Swedish German is at 11. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5455 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 15 of 39 04 March 2010 at 6:24pm | IP Logged | ||
I find it strange that the Scandinavian languages are so far apart. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kveldulv Senior Member Italy Joined 6955 days ago 222 posts - 244 votes 1 sounds Speaks: Italian* | Message 16 of 39 04 March 2010 at 7:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm only hazarding a guess, but aren't they arranged in alphabetical order?
5 persons have voted this message useful |
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