![]() ![]() Globally, it’s spoken by 300 million people, across France, Canada, Belgium, and Madagascar.įrench speakers in France may use the same words as those in Quebec but words and phrases could have vastly different meanings or even no meaning at all. French is a popular language to learn and ranks as the third most spoken language in Europe. It’s a great language to learn for anyone wanting to dive deeper into South African media and entertainment, as it’s frequently used across these channels. It’s considered the easiest language for native English to learn, as it shares many Germanic-derived root words with English, which helps with pronunciation, and it has a logical and non-inflected structure, meaning most of its words don’t change based on gender, number, and tense.Īdditionally, it only has three tenses: Past, present, and future, so learners don’t have to tackle cases like imperfect, pluperfect, and subjunctive.įinally, Afrikaans doesn’t have verb conjugation. Today, almost 9 million people globally speak Afrikaans, mainly in South Africa and Namibia. Like English, Afrikaans is in the West Germanic language family, once thought of as a Dutch dialect. The following ten languages are most closely related to English, and are therefore the easiest for a native English speaker to learn: 1. Source: US Foreign Institute - View more 10 Easiest Languages for English Speakers to Learn The timescale can, of course, be impacted by the language learner’s natural ability, prior linguistic experience, and time spent in the classroom. Their scoring is based on the amount of time for native English speakers to reach “Professional Working Proficiency” in other languages. The US Foreign Service Institute has developed language learning timelines. Languages that are more widely spread across the globe are easier to pick up because you’ll likely be able to find native speakers closer to home with whom to practice. English is dominant across so much media - from international news to TV and popular films and social media.Ībility to practice: Languages that are only spoken in their homeland can be harder to learn because you need to be in situ to practice. Hence, you’ll 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.Įxposure: One of the reasons English is such a widely spoken language is due to the amount of exposure English learners have to it. The similarity to your mother tongue: The more related a target language is to a speaker’s native language - roots, usages, and pronunciations - the easier it will be to learn. What makes some languages easier to learn? Understanding your drive can help you stay motivated when things get tough, or tongues get tangled. It’s a multilingual word, with only a quarter of online content in English. Our clients at Unbabel localize their customer support, marketing campaigns, and other materials to meet the demands of their customers or to help them scale into new markets. You might be learning a new language to help prepare for a new job, an international move, to connect with friends and family, or simply as a new hobby. Much like localization, you’ll also want to approach language learning with an understanding of why you’re doing it. What do we mean by that? Don’t aim for immediate fluency from the get-go - take it step by step and build solid foundations, as some lessons you’ve learned in one language may help you conquer another. ![]() The approach for language learning is quite similar to that for localizing a company’s customer experience: Don’t try to boil the ocean.
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