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.
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.
1. Both are Germanic languages. As can be seen in this language family tree, English and German stem from the West Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family and therefore derive from the same syntactic and phonological system.
By linguist criteria English is more similar to German, both belong in the West Germanic languages and its vocabulary has been influenced by other Germanic languages as well. The relationship between these two languages began in ancient times and both languages are closely related linguistically, siblings.
Icelandic and English are both Germanic languages, so although it doesn't sound like it, they have a few similarities. This can make it easier to transfer your knowledge between the two languages. It's also common for Icelanders to know other languages too, including Dutch, Swedish, German and even Spanish.
1. Frisian – most similar language to English phonetically. Frisian (the Netherlands' 2nd official language) is phonetically the closest language to Modern English and is mutually intelligible with Olde English. This isn't surprising since the Anglo-Saxons and the Frisians had recent common ancestors.
#1 The British accent
The accent proved particularly popular in countries like China, Sweden, India and the USA.
English vocabulary comprises 29% French, 29% Latin, 26% Germanic, and 6% Greek.
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.
Having emerged from the dialects and vocabulary of Germanic peoples—Angles, Saxons, and Jutes—who settled in Britain in the 5th century CE, English today is a constantly changing language that has been influenced by a plethora of different cultures and languages, such as Latin, French, Dutch, and Afrikaans.
English has two consonants that are unusual among languages. These are the 'th' sounds, as in 'thunder' or 'think'. Of the world's languages, only 8% have 'th' sounds.
unpleasant, unkind, cruel, or more severe than ... See more at harsh. language. noun.
Dictionaries are regarded as authoritative collections of words in a given language, so they might seem like a good source to use for answering this question. It looks like Korean tops the list with over a million words!
Perhaps the two most iconic English varieties in the world are British and American accents. Both of them have a form of “general” accent which is perceived as more educated or correct than the other varieties, as if having an accent-free speech was a sign of social status.
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.
To narrow down this list, we first looked at the 13 countries where fewer than 10 percent of the population speaks English, according to The Telegraph. These include China, The Gambia, Malawi, Colombia, Swaziland, Brazil, Russia, Argentina, Algeria, Uganda, Yemen, Chile and Tanzania.
Examples of a Dead Language
But Latin isn't the only dead language, some of the other known dead languages are Sanskrit, Biblical Hebrew, Ancient Greek and Gothic, all of which are still studied both academically and religiously.
Dating back to at least 3500 BC, the oldest proof of written Sumerian was found in today's Iraq on an artifact known as the Kish Tablet. Thus, given this evidence, Sumerian can also be considered the first language in the world or one of the ancient languages.
Although English has borrowed a lot of words from Latin, it is not a Romance language. Having developed from the mix between the dialects and vocabulary of Germanic peoples (Angles, Saxons, and Jutes) who settled in Britain in the 5th century CE, English is considered a West Germanic language.
Although its grammar and core vocabulary are mostly West Germanic, it has borrowed many words from French (about 28% of English words) and Latin (also about 28%), as well as some grammar and core vocabulary from Old Norse (a North Germanic language).
The English accent is the one that is victorious, with the latest survey showing that 17 per cent of people have it at the top of their list. French came in next at 13 per cent, which is unsurprising considering that this is the language spoken in the city of love.
Three main varieties of Australian English are spoken according to linguists: broad, general and cultivated. They are part of a continuum, reflecting variations in accent.
Tykes have another reason to be proud of their accents. That's because the Yorkshire accent was ranked the friendliest of all British Isles accents in a poll commissioned by Betfair Casinos. It topped the friendly poll above the Geordie, Scottish, Welsh and Irish accents.