The easiest languages for English speakers to learn are: Danish, Dutch, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Swedish, and French. The US State Department lists these languages as Category I languages. This means they are similar to English culturally and/or linguistically.
Except for Frisian, Dutch is linguistically the closest language to English, with both languages being part of the West Germanic linguistic family. This means many Dutch words are cognates with English (meaning they share the same linguistic roots), giving them similar spelling and pronunciation.
So dive right in and practice your Dutch with confidence. For the same reasons Dutch is the closest language to English, German is also a close language, and another one that many English speakers may find easier to learn. Dutch is commonly mentioned as the language nestled between English and German.
Toki pona is probably the simplest language in the world to learn. Its name derives from the English word “talk” and the Esperanto word “bona”, meaning good, so it literally translates to the language of good.
Current data states that there are only 7 remaining speakers of the language. Written records are available, such as a dictionary and several books that show the grammar and syntax of the Dumi language. Dumi is the world's least spoken language and one of the rarest.
Closest Language: Scots
The closest language to English is arguably Scots. We say arguably as the language is often regarded more as a dialect of English than an actual language.
“Lexical similarities” means how many words are identical (or nearly identical) between two languages. For Spanish and French, their lexical similarity is about 75%. In comparison, Spanish and English have a lexical similarity of only 30-50%, and French and English of only 40-50%.
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.
Aramaic is best known as the language Jesus spoke. It is a Semitic language originating in the middle Euphrates. In 800-600 BC it spread from there to Syria and Mesopotamia. The oldest preserved inscriptions are from this period and written in Old Aramaic.
What two languages are the most similar? Spanish and Portuguese are the most mutually understandable pair. In certain circumstances, television stations do not even translate between the two languages, presuming that Spanish-speaking viewers will understand Portuguese and vice versa.
These scores suggest a ranking of linguistic distance from English among these languages: Japanese being the most distant, followed by Mandarin, then French and then Afrikaans, Norwegian and Swedish as the least distant.
Is English Harder than French To Learn? French is not as hard to learn as it is considered by most of the people, especially when compared to English. In fact, it is a language that's much easier to achieve fluency in than you'd have ever expected. English is inconsistent when it comes to pronunciation.
If you're in Canada, for example, learning French could open up job opportunities. If you're in the United States, you're more likely to see Spanish speakers on a regular basis. Not only does being around native speakers help you practise your language skills, but it can help keep you motivated – even on your off days.
The average rates we found were quasi-identical: 176 words per minute for English and 174 words per minute for French. (The rates in syllables per minute were not significantly different either).
Along with Oxford, the best accent one can find in the whole UK (the so-called formal English) is in Cambridge; a real delight for both neophytes and veterans in the English language.
There are 14 different indigenous languages used across the UK. English has the most number of speakers while Cornish, a language used in Cornwall, probably has the least – only about 500 people speak it fluently.
Leonese is one of the most obscure languages in the entire world- only being spoken by between 20,000 and 50,000 people, and only known by a handful more people! Like most other languages in Spain, Leonese too, is a romance language.
What is Dead language? As we have discussed before, a dead language does not have any native speaker, but it has some uses. Still, people use this language for different purposes. For example, Latin, Sanskrit, Coptic, Biblical Hebrew, etc., are the dead language.
There are five countries in the world that do not have an official language. These countries are the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Costa Rica, and Eritrea. English is the primary language spoken in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Most people in Costa Rica speak Spanish.