What is the closest language to English?

The closest language to English is one called Frisian, which is a Germanic language spoken by a small population of about 480,000 people. There are three separate dialects of the language, and it's only spoken at the southern fringes of the North Sea in the Netherlands and Germany.

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What language is most similar to English?

Closest Major Language: Dutch

Like Frisian and English, Dutch is another West Germanic language that developed from Proto-Germanic. Because of this, Dutch possesses many words and phrases similar to English and has a similar grammatical structure.

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Is English closer to French or Spanish?

In comparison, Spanish and English have a lexical similarity of only 30-50%, and French and English of only 40-50%. That's because not only are the Spanish and French languages neighbors, but from the same family of romance languages.

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Is English closer to French or German?

Informal English is definitely closer to German than French, but the more formal you get, the more French-like it is going to become because of the increased per cent of French vocabulary used in formal English.

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What language does English sound similar to?

Dutch is the most similar language to English. Sometime it is said that dutch is the language between English and German. Some other languages are similar to English , like :- German, Dutch, Afrikaans, Swedish, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian and Norwegian.

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Which Language Is Closest To English?

43 related questions found

What does the Australian accent sound like to foreigners?

Australian accent also features flapping. This is the softening of /t/ in the middle of words or at the end of words between vowels. When the “t” sound is flapped, it'll sound a lot more like a soft /d/ sound. Therefore “letter” /lɛtə/ may at times sound like “ledder” /lɛɾʌ/.

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What 2 languages are the most similar?

The most mutually intelligible pair is Spanish and Portuguese. In some cases, TV stations don't even translate between the two languages, instead assuming that Spanish-speaking audiences would understand Portuguese and Portuguese-speaking audiences would understand Spanish.

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What's the easiest language to learn?

15 of the easiest languages to learn for English speakers - ranked
  • Frisian. Frisian is thought to be one of the languages most closely related to English, and therefore also the easiest for English-speakers to pick up. ...
  • Dutch. ...
  • Norwegian. ...
  • Spanish. ...
  • Portuguese. ...
  • Italian. ...
  • French. ...
  • Swedish.

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What is the hardest language to learn?

Across multiple sources, Mandarin Chinese is the number one language listed as the most challenging to learn. The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center puts Mandarin in Category IV, which is the list of the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers.

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Which language is easiest for English speakers to learn?

Norwegian

This may come as a surprise, but we have ranked Norwegian as the easiest language to learn for English speakers. Norwegian is a member of the Germanic family of languages — just like English!

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Which language is most spoken in the world?

These are the most spoken languages in the world
  • English – 1,121 million speakers. ...
  • Mandarin Chinese – 1,107 million speakers. ...
  • Hindi – 698 million speakers. ...
  • Spanish – 512 million speakers. ...
  • French – 284 million speakers. ...
  • Arabic – 273 million speakers. ...
  • Bengali – 265 million inhabitants. ...
  • Russian – 258 million speakers.

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Why is German so close to English?

One of the main reasons for the English and German language relationship and their similarities is because English is a language which originated from West Germanic at least 2,000 years ago. This means German and English are both members of the family of Indo-European languages' Germanic branch.

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Did English come first or Spanish?

In fact, Spanish actually antedates English in the areas that now make up the composite United States — a fact that surprises many Americans. In terms of continuity and longevity in the United States, the Spanish language is second only to Native American languages that were spoken for centuries prior to colonization.

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What language did Jesus speak?

Most religious scholars and historians agree with Pope Francis that the historical Jesus principally spoke a Galilean dialect of Aramaic. Through trade, invasions and conquest, the Aramaic language had spread far afield by the 7th century B.C., and would become the lingua franca in much of the Middle East.

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Is English the number 1 language?

1. English (1,132 million speakers) According to Ethnologue, English is the largest language in the world for both native and non-native speaker. Like Latin or Greek at the time, English is the universal language of today.

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Is English similar to Chinese?

The Chinese language is vastly different from English, which is one reason why English speakers have a hard time learning it. Chinese has a different writing system. It has a different sound and pronunciation style. It also has different grammar.

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What is the 2 hardest language to speak?

2. Arabic. Arabic is the queen of poetic languages, the 6th official language of the UN and second on our list of toughest languages to learn.

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What are the 4 hardest languages?

The Hardest Languages To Learn For English Speakers
  1. Mandarin Chinese. Interestingly, the hardest language to learn is also the most widely spoken native language in the world. ...
  2. Arabic. ...
  3. Polish. ...
  4. Russian. ...
  5. Turkish. ...
  6. Danish.

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What are the 3 most hardest languages?

Generally, if you're an English speaker with no exposure to other languages, here are some of the most challenging and difficult languages to learn: Mandarin Chinese. Arabic. Vietnamese.

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What are the 3 easiest languages?

Read more about language courses here.
  • NORWEGIAN. Grammar, syntax and word order are all similar to English thanks to shared North Germanic roots. ...
  • SWEDISH. ...
  • DANISH. ...
  • SPANISH. ...
  • PORTUGUESE. ...
  • ITALIAN. ...
  • FRENCH. ...
  • ROMANIAN.

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What is the number 1 language to learn?

First Language

Mandarin Chinese tops the list of most commonly spoken native languages with 870 million native speakers. With less than 200 million second language speakers, the vast majority of Mandarin speakers are native and also located in mainland China.

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Can you learn 2 languages at once?

Answer: Thankfully, your brain can definitely handle learning two (or more!) languages at once! (Two down, 6,998 to go.) But there are also some ways you can make this linguistic task easier on yourself.

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What is the 2nd easiest language?

Easiest (about 600 hours of study)

Of these, Spanish and Italian are the easiest for native English speakers to learn, followed by Portuguese and finally French.

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Why is the Australian accent so funny?

The most widely accepted theory to why Australians have the accent they do is that the first Australian born children (of the colonizers, not the natives obviously) simply created the first trace of the recognizable accent amongst themselves naturally.

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