Second foreign language: What language to choose and where to learn it. Which language is easiest to learn

Who among us has not dreamed of learning at least one foreign language? But someone was lucky enough to chat almost from birth in several languages, and someone cannot learn English in their entire life, which is spoken on all continents.

There are many reasons why a foreign language is not given: lack of ability, poor memory, laziness, improperly compiled educational programs, lack of motivation and the complexity of a particular language for you. The more this foreign language resembles your native language, the easier it is for you to learn it. If you know Russian, quickly master some of the Slavic languages. If you speak Farsi, you can easily master the Arabic language - one of the most difficult in the world.

Of course, it is easier for Europeans to learn languages \u200b\u200bthat are written in Latin or Cyrillic rather than hieroglyphs. But everything is relative. Motivation is the determining factor in any new business, including language learning. If you like to learn Japanese or Arabic, this language will seem much easier to you than, for example, English or German, which you had to cram at school for 10 years.

TOP 5 from American researchers

And yet, the US Foreign Ministry compiled the TOP-5 of the easiest languages \u200b\u200bin the world. There was only one criterion - the language is simple, if it takes no more than 600 hours of intensive classes to learn it. If more time is needed, the language is difficult. It is important that this rating was compiled for those who speak English.

According to this classification, one of the easiest is considered english tongue. Because there is no gender and case in it, words do not need to be coordinated with each other. In Russian, we, without hesitation, change the endings for words, but for foreigners it is more difficult than solving problems in higher mathematics and quantum physics combined.

English words are relatively short compared to, for example, Finnish words. The grammar is very simple, and in colloquial speech it is further simplified. Often, native speakers themselves deviate from academic rules and specifically do not use complex speech structures. Confirmation that English is a simple language - it is spoken by the whole planet. More than 60 countries! Even in India, it is the second state.

It is considered simple spanishtongue. There is no need to learn transcription here: as the word is written, so it is read. It also has a simple grammar with almost no exceptions. It is easy to learn for those who know English - the languages \u200b\u200bare very similar. If you want to learn a foreign language, start with Spanish. Experts say that he is the easiest student in Europe. It is spoken today by approximately 0.5 billion people, many of whom live in Mexico and Argentina.

Similar to English and Spanish is also Italian, which is also called one of the easiest. He, like other Indo-European languages, "grew" from Latin. Therefore, it also lacks cases, declensions, word agreement. Italian words are written in the same way as they are heard. If you want to learn as many languages \u200b\u200bas possible, after Spanish, start learning its "relative" - \u200b\u200bItalian.

American researchers refer to simple languages \u200b\u200bas french... But this is a moot point, because the grammar in it is more difficult than in English. Also, it is difficult for a foreigner to learn how to "burst" and pronounce the grazing "r" correctly. French is easy for those who know English or German. But, if it becomes your first foreign language, you will have to spend a lot of time studying it. By the way, French was once more widespread than English, but then came second. Today French is spoken in 14 countries, and a total of 130 million people.

The artificial language closes this list Esperanto,invented specifically for international communication. It is based on words that can be understood without translation, and a total of 16 grammar rules are used. To master it, you will need no more than 6 months. It is not official in any state, therefore, it is not very common. Esperanto is known by no more than 3 million people - almost no one compared to English.

Polish is considered one of the easiest languages \u200b\u200bfor Russian speakers. And Greek will be easier to learn for those who know Slavic languages. But the English language of Hellas will be more difficult.

The ease of the language also depends on the environment in which you learn it. It is ideal to go to the "homeland" and study it there. You can learn German better in three months in Germany than in all your years of study at school and university. If there is no opportunity to go to language practice, you can try to artificially immerse yourself in the language environment: watch films and read books without translation, communicate with foreigners online. Today the Internet gives us endless possibilities for learning any language. The main thing is your desire and motivation. If this is not the case, any foreign language will seem difficult.

It is believed that any language is easier to learn in a game than cramming and trying to memorize new words and grammar. To be honest, I couldn't tear myself away! Try it! I am sure that one difficult language will become less for you!

I wish you the best in learning your favorite foreign languages!

The complexity and simplicity of learning a particular language, of course, will depend on what nationality and native speaker the student is. It is logical that it will be easier for a German to learn Dutch than a Korean. An Englishman will learn German faster than a Chinese.

No language can be considered simpler or more complex than another. Because there are no absolute criteria for assessing the complexity of a language. Each language consists of grammar, phonetics, certain rules for spelling words. And if in Chinese, for example, spelling is very difficult and tones are present in phonetics, then in the same language grammar will not give you any difficulty. And in Italian, along with simple pronunciation, there are a lot of irregular verbs.

What languages \u200b\u200bwill seem easier for a Russian person to learn and understand?

Russian, along with Belarusian and Ukrainian, are included in the Slavic group of languages \u200b\u200band are called East Slavic. As you know, the vocabulary, phonetics and grammar of these languages \u200b\u200bare almost identical to Russian. Therefore, learning these languages \u200b\u200bwill not be difficult. And the understanding of Ukrainian and Belarusian is understandable practically on an intuitive level, even to those who have not come across them at all.

In the Serbo-Croatian language (used in the countries of Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia) and the Bulgarian language, there are noticeable similarities in terms of vocabulary and grammar. The phonetics of such languages \u200b\u200bis more difficult than writing. The written word (usually in the Latin alphabet) of such languages \u200b\u200bis very similar to the spelling of Russian words only in Latin letters (for example: zaprto - closed, locked (khorv), otprto - open (khorv)) It will be more difficult to pronounce here, it will be necessary to work with stress, which may not be located in the same syllable as in Russian, even if the spelling of the words is almost identical. Such languages \u200b\u200bhave a ramified system of tenses and unstressed particles, which are unusual for the Russian language.

The most difficult Slavic languages \u200b\u200bfor the Russian mentality will probably be Czech and Polish. There are more unfamiliar words here that are no longer very similar to identical Russians, because part of the vocabulary is borrowed from German. But the situation is simpler with stress. It is practically fixed in words: on the first and second syllables from the end.

The situation is a little more complicated with the Baltic languages \u200b\u200b(Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia). If in terms of their lexicon they are a bit like Slavic languages, you will have to work hard to study the richness of their grammar.

Among the Germanic languages, it will be easier to learn English. German and Dutch are slightly more difficult, which will have difficulty in grammar. The greatest difficulty will fall on the Scandinavian languages. There are practically no words of international origin in them and you will have to memorize almost the entire vocabulary. Also, the Scandinavian languages \u200b\u200b(Danish, Norwegian, Swedish) are distinguished by a complex offering and inconsistent spelling of words.

Among the Romance languages, it will be easier to learn Italian or Spanish, Portuguese, rather than French, which has very complex pronunciation and spelling rules.

What languages \u200b\u200bare difficult for a Russian to learn?

Turkic (Turkish) and Finn-Ugric languages \u200b\u200b(Finnish, Hungarian) have strict and logical spelling rules. However, these rules differ from the Russian spelling of sentences. Their verbs, as a rule, are in the last places in the sentence, there are no prepositions at all, and case and number are expressed in different indicators. In addition, such languages \u200b\u200bhave a huge number of cases (there are 20 in Hungarian).

Also, complex languages \u200b\u200binclude Arabic and Hebrew. They have both difficult grammar and pronunciation. The writing system does not convey vowels, there are also many exceptions and irregular verbs that will have to be memorized.

Chinese and Japanese are complex due to their hieroglyphic writing. To write or read something in Chinese, you will have to learn several thousand hieroglyphs, and when learning Japanese you will have to master as many as 2 alphabets - Katakana and Hiragana.

The Center for International Communication "Language Plus" invites you not to be intimidated by the complexity of learning foreign languages \u200b\u200band gladly
will help you learn any language at the most delicious prices.

Which language is easier to learn?

Many of you would definitely like to learn a new foreign language, especially if you are fluent only in your own language. Knowledge of foreign languages \u200b\u200bis always a plus. This is not only your advantage when applying for a job and great psychological comfort while traveling. Knowledge of foreign languages \u200b\u200bhas a positive effect on mental activity, so it is never too late to learn any language. It may be a little harder at 50, but you can still learn it. By the way, the world around you will also change, you will understand the origin of many words, know what languages \u200b\u200bthey came from, you will be able to read in the original and understand. Moreover, the more languages \u200b\u200byou know, the easier each next one will be given to you. A bunch of French-Spanish-Italian is an ideal case: the words are intuitive, the grammar is similar, and after each next, a new language is taught much faster. Many, by the way, choose a suitable language school for themselves, and there they are already beginning to take turns to master the foreign languages \u200b\u200bthey like. Foreign language courses in St. Petersburg at a language school Communication Club, for such students can be much cheaper, because they have discounts for regular students as much as 50% (!).

The most frequently asked question:? There is no single answer to this question, as there are various factors that must be considered. One of them is your native language. The easiest language to learn is the language that is phonetically as close as possible to the native language. Also, keep in mind that each language has borrowed something from each other. For example, if you are a native speaker of English, then the most suitable for learning would be: German, Spanish, French and Italian, as they are the “sisters” of English. For native speakers of Russian (from European languages) it is easiest, especially after English.

Another factor is your personal motivation for learning a particular language, love for the culture of a particular country, desire to study there or leave for permanent residence. Other things being equal, some have greater ability in some languages, and less in others. As an example, the French "p" is obtained without special training :).

- logical, relatively close in pronunciation to Russian, and very interesting language. Most words from the English language are also found in Italian. The Italian language is bright, emotional and beautiful. As a second language, it can be recommended especially for those who love classical music and Italian culture itself.

Many who decide how to learn a language and are asked a choice - a school of foreign languages \u200b\u200bor independent studies are wondering what the top of the easiest languages \u200b\u200bin the world to learn looks like? Many ordinary people and specialists ask such questions, both those who are going to take up the study of a language, and professional linguists.
In this article, we will discuss a number of characteristics that usually determine how easy a language is to learn. It should be noted right away that the most important thing in the process of learning a foreign language is the motivation of the student and the fact whether you like to speak this new language for you. These factors determine which languages \u200b\u200bare the easiest for you. Spanish, French, Esperanto or ... Chinese. If you take on the study of a language that you are deeply uninteresting, then learning it may seem difficult and tedious to you, even if in fact it is not. Learning a foreign language, like everything else in study, must include interest and pleasure, otherwise there will be little sense. You can certainly find additional factors that will make learning a foreign language easy for you. Read the following material and then decide for yourself which languages \u200b\u200bare easiest for you.
According to the State Department, the simplest languages \u200b\u200bfor residents of English-speaking countries are those languages \u200b\u200bthat require about six hundred hours of classroom instruction (we mean more or less good language skills). Specifically, these are the languages \u200b\u200bof the Germanic and Latin language groups. However, the German language itself takes more time, about seven hundred and fifty hours: the grammar of the German language is very complicated.


English
The English language is considered to be quite simple: it has no cases, word harmonization, gender. The grammar of English is pretty simple too. Also, English has the widest distribution, it is spoken almost everywhere. Words in English are short, verbs change exclusively for the third person. The speakers of this language are quite calm about the language mistakes of foreigners, since there is a very large number of people who study English as a second language. Thanks to all this, English is one of the easiest languages \u200b\u200bin the world to learn.

It is estimated that there are about 60 English-speaking countries in the world, i.e. today it is difficult to get a job without knowledge of English, so it is gaining immense popularity in preschool institutions. The main English-speaking states today are the UK, USA, Canada (excluding Quebec), Australia and New Zealand. Also, English is one of the two official languages \u200b\u200bof India, and in addition, it is spoken in most of the southern island states and countries in Africa.


French
French is not difficult either. Many words in French are similar to English words. The French language is widely used all over the world. It's not hard to find an opportunity to learn and speak French. Taking these factors into account, it can be argued that French is also on the list of those languages \u200b\u200bthat are easy to learn.
People who study French are called Francophones. There are 18 countries in the world where French is spoken. The main French-speaking states are France, Belgium, Switzerland and Canada (Quebec). In 14 African countries, this language is the only one or one of two official languages.

Italian
The Italian language is also simple, it has no cases, its pronunciation is quite simple, the vocabulary has roots in the Latin language, in other words, it will be familiar and close to those people who speak one of the languages \u200b\u200bof the Indo-European group.
Learning Italian will be useful for those who at least know or have studied Latin, one of the two official languages \u200b\u200bin the Vatican, a city-state. Italian is the language of music. True, the Italophon world is not too large in its area: the language is spread only in Europe and only in four states: Italy, Vatican, San Marino and Switzerland. Small Italian-speaking minorities outside Europe live in Argentina (Orihundi).


Spanish
The easiest language for a foreigner to learn is Spanish. Its vocabulary is similar to English, the spelling is very simple (as it is written, it is also heard). Spanish is similar to Italian and is quite widely used. It has very simple grammar and pronunciation. Spanish ranks 3-4th in terms of prevalence, number of speakers and its use in speech after English, Chinese and Hindi; it is spoken by about 0.5 billion people, most of whom live overseas. The record holder for the number of Spanish speakers is not Spain, but Mexico! In Mexico, the number of Spanish speakers is 130 million. The largest Spanish-speaking countries are Spain (in Europe), and overseas Mexico (in North America) and Argentina (in South America).


Portuguese
Portuguese can also be classified as light languages. At least there is no one who would not watch the Brazilian soap operas, which were popular among our grandmothers in their time. The pronunciation is almost the same as in Spanish, except that the Portuguese is slightly sibilant in contrast to its eastern Pyrenean counterpart; this is if we talk about the classical (European) version, which is widely used not only in Portugal itself, but also in African countries: Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Sao Tome, Goa, Angola and Mozambique. In the world, Portuguese is the sixth most popular language, despite the fact that the population of this country is only about 10 million, which is even less than the population of Moscow. The Brazilian version deviates significantly from the standard (e.g. no sound "w"). Although these languages \u200b\u200bare similar to each other, the Spaniards do not always understand their neighbors, so the Portuguese sometimes have to write what they say.
Those who study Portuguese are called Lusophones (from Lusitania; ancient name for Portugal). Total Portuguese speakers are about 1/4 billion (250 million native speakers)


Esperanto
You will probably be very surprised, but Esperanto holds the palm in ease. In it, as in Spanish, "as it is heard, so it is precisely written." This language is artificial, which is why it is so simple. But the bad thing about it is that so far relatively few people speak it (about 2-3 million worldwide) - compared to languages \u200b\u200bsuch as Spanish, French or English. However, if you speak Esperanto, the rest of the Esperanto speakers will be very disposed towards you.
Esperanto is NOT the state language IN ANY STATE OF THE WORLD! That is why, knowing and studying it, you can find friends absolutely anywhere. Linguists have conducted research that only a month is enough to master spoken language, and in order to know it perfectly - from 3 months to six months, while the basics of the same English will have to spend at least a semester or a year. I will add that next year, at the end of July, this language will celebrate its anniversary - 130 years since its birth! Recently, a petition has appeared on one of the sites to make Esperanto the official language of the European Union! Anyone can sign it, including you!


Summary
An additional set of conditions that can make the language easy for you personally:

1) Is the new language similar to your native language? If the chosen language is similar to yours, has a vocabulary (vocabulary of words) and grammar similar to it, then this language will be easier for you personally. For example, a person who speaks Arabic will learn Farsi more easily than Spanish, although Farsi is considered very difficult.

2) Do you personally like learning? If the answer is yes, any language can be simple - or at least interesting. And this circumstance will help you learn the language faster.

3) Availability of additional resources. With their help, you can achieve more efficient and faster results. Additional resources include books on vocabulary and grammar, audio, conversations with native speakers, and so on.

The material is based on an article by Frantisek Langer.

To answer the question of which language is easiest to learn, you need to know a number of initial conditions.

You can meet someone who ardently argues that learning Korean is easier than English.

However, the clue lies in the fact that this man studied for many years before switching to Korean, but the languages \u200b\u200bof the German group, to which English belongs, remain a completely new area of \u200b\u200bknowledge for him.

If you start learning from scratch and do not even have basic knowledge of foreign languages, then with a high degree of probability you will choose English, since in recent decades it has become a truly international language.

This is largely due to the development of information technology, where English, due to its brevity and ease of use in programming languages, began to dominate from the very beginning.

Among other things, it is the first language not only in terms of level, but also in terms of the number of learners in the world. Some forecasts say that in the near future half of the world will speak English.

Therefore, choosing a second language to study, you will rely on English, in which you already have knowledge, which means that it will be easier for you to learn the language of a related group, that is, German, French, Spanish and other European languages.

Despite the fact that, for example, English and French belong to different groups (Germanic and Romance), their grammatical structure is very similar, not to mention the many Latin borrowings in the lexical composition of both.

That is why it is much easier for a person who previously studied English to learn than, for example, one of the eastern languages.

Also, learning a second foreign language in any case will be easier, since you will already have an established scheme for gaining knowledge, and your memory will be trained accordingly.

If, when choosing a language for learning, rely only on the complexity of grammar, then you can get completely confused, since any language has its pitfalls. For example:

• there are 15 cases in Finnish;
• hungarian has 14 vowels;
• in Danish and Swedish there are only two genders, and not those that immediately come to mind, but "general" and "average".

In various exotic languages, you can find such phenomena that do not come to mind at all - for example

• in the Ubykh language, which belongs to the Caucasian group, there are 80 consonants and only 1 vowel;
• in the Papuan language tangma, there are only two words for color: mola (red / white / yellow) and muli (green / black);
• in the language of the Australian aborigines, Diirbalu, there are as many as 4 genders: in addition to the masculine, feminine and middle there is an "edible" genus!

As for English, it also has its own difficulties.

For example, they do not facilitate ease of learning. Also difficult are the use of the article, the passive voice (Passive Voice).

But at the same time, English is one of the most laconic and closest languages \u200b\u200bto any European. The reason is that according to the latest research, Latin (including technical and scientific terms) makes up 28.24% of the English language. French, Old French and Anglo French - 28.3%. Ancient and medieval English, as well as Norman and Dutch - 25%. Greek - 5.32%. Words from other languages, including words of unknown origin - 13.14%.

These statistics show that the formation of the English language in the course of the historical process was influenced by other European languages, and vice versa. Thanks to this, any European will be able to find in English features characteristic of his native language, which means that the study will be easier.

Another important factor in the approach to learning a foreign language is the following question: do you need more written language, or spoken?

For example, if you want to feel free to move around the world, you need a spoken language. If you conduct business correspondence, work with documents in a foreign language, or want to read books in the original, your goal is the written language.

At a conversational level, it is easier for a Russian person to learn languages \u200b\u200bsuch as and, but difficulties can arise with German and Swedish.

If we ignore the demand for languages \u200b\u200bin the world arena, we can say that for a Russian-speaking student, the transition from simple to complex languages \u200b\u200bwill look like this:

1. Slavic languages, including Polish and.
2. Italian, Spanish, Portuguese as well as Baltic languages.
3. English as well as French and other Romance languages.
4. German and other Germanic languages, as well as Greek and Hebrew.
5. Other and exotic languages.

In summary, we can say that in the light of modern realities, it is most logical to learn English first.

It is advisable to choose the second language from the Romano-Germanic group.

But the third language may already be exotic for two reasons:

• firstly, you will have a sufficiently developed skill of learning languages \u200b\u200bas such;
• secondly, you will have a decent baggage of knowledge, allowing you to calmly and without haste to study more complex material.