Interested in learning a foreign language, but need one that’s easy and time-efficient to pick up? The Foreign Service Institute has done the handy task of sorting major languages around the world into 5 categories of difficulty according to their differences from English, and Reddit user Fummy has translated that data into a color-coded map to make it all simpler.
The Romance languages, based mainly on Latin, are among the most approachable, and include French, Spanish, and Italian. Tongues like Dutch, Danish, and Swedish share common roots with English, meaning half your work is done already if you choose to learn them. You’re looking at about 6 months of study to achieve proficiency in any of these ‘Category I’ languages.
Are you leaning further towards Japanese, Korean, or Arabic? Get ready for a mammoth 2 years of practice, one of which should be in-country. These are 3 of the languages that make up the fearsome ‘Category V,’ as they’re about as different from English as black is from white.
Scroll down to see all of the statistics for yourself, and if you’re ready to embark on a linguistic journey, you can find free online courses straight from the FSI, the Defense Language Institute, and the Peace-Corps here.
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Share on Facebookmonia monica, only very small parts of belgium or luxembourg speak german (which are very small countries already), and in switzerland they it's swiss- german, which is close to german- but still not german. (Like italian and spanish are close- but still not the same). So no, i would also say that it is not worth the trouble;) i love my language, but wouldn't recommend to study it as much as for example french..
Load More Replies...They are tough for being so far removed from English, but there is logic in Japanese and Vietnamese that I wish would carry over. For example in Vietnamese, everything is separated with a space between each syllable, and every letter can only be pronounced one way as it's written, so you can see a word for the first time and immediately know how to say it. In Japanese, they are very economical in their words, in that they don't use unnecessary grammatical filler, and they don't invent unnecessary synonyms. For example, English "I am scared," becomes "scared" in Japanese; you can assume who the subject is in context. But in English one wouldn't say "I am scared," because we are taught that it is too simple, so we have to say "I'm terrified/frightened/in fear/shaking in my boots," to add flair to what is still a simple expression. Japanese also takes to only one pronunciation for each letter. A E I O U is "ah" "eh" "ee" "oh" "oo" with the only exceptions being consistent.
Tha Japanese grammar is very structured and relatevely easy to understand, but you forgot about kanji - hell of a work to remember how to read even if you know the meaning. All kanji have at least 2 readings and can be used at the same time - my favourite example is Sunday - in kanji 日曜日 - and pronounsation is - Nichiyōbi. The same kanji 日 have different readings within ONE word.
Load More Replies...When you see someone say that Polish is sooo difficult, you can be 99% sure this person is Polish.
Not sure about the infographics of this. Who else thinks that red should stand for had to learn language and green for the opposite?
I am a fluent Finnish speaker. Sadly this is quite useless language to learn unless you live in Finland. Most Finnish people can speak English so for the tourists there is no need to learn Finnish.
But speaking finnish is your superpower. If you can learn finnish, you can learn anything.
Load More Replies...I dunno, I've majored in linguistics and I'm fluent in 4 languages (2 native, 1 acquired throughout adolescence, the 4th acquired in adulthood). The time and difficulty it takes to learn a language depends on your starting perspective and the environment. To a native English speaker, for example, the time to learn Italian will differ from the time needed for a Spanish native speaker; someone speaking only one single language also is not in the same position as someone who grew up bilingually; someone living in, for example, Germany will learn Japanese slower than someone learning it right there in Japan (but not neccessarily) and so on. Not to mention individual affinities, someone will catch a new language easily, someone else will need to work harder. This info needs more background.
Well the article clearly states it’s from the perspective of a native English speaker, not a native Mandarin speaker. And since English has more similarities with Germanic and Scandinavian languages (partly due to historical influences), those languages will be easier and quicker to learn for a native English speaker than let’s say Arabic or Russian or Thai.
Load More Replies...I've been teaching Norwegian for foreigners for some years now, but I never met a English-speaking person who learned Norwegian fluent I six months. Good luck learning the other languages. Learning languages take time...
Probably only the most widely spoken languages are mentioned. The list would otherwise be too long...
Load More Replies...How about Luxembourgish? I know we are a small country, but despite that fact we have have our own language. I need to clarify as well that Luxembourgish is not a German dialect, it is a language on its own, and unfortunately a lot more difficult to master.
A language is more than just words and sentences, it's how you deal with people, plus a pile of historical and cultural references. For example, speaking the same language, Mandarin, with Han Chinese and Taiwan Aborigines (fluent speakers) is different: topics, references, and way of discussing. It fascinates me, but there's not much space here.
"On the map, let's make the easiest to learn RED and the hardest GREEN, BLUE AND VIOLET." What?? I get that they were going by the rainbow but is this normal anywhere where they speak English as the main language?
Sorry but I find it hard to believe that Japanese is considered not only a Category V language, but also the most difficult one. People have commented that Japanese is hard because of the Kanji...but Chinese is ALL Kanji! Chinese is also a tonal language, whereas Japanese is not, which would be extra difficult for an English only speaker. "(Category V languages) are about as different from English as black is from white." The author must not be familiar with the S**T ton of English loan words used in the Japanese language...much more than in Chinese.
Japanase is easy to speak. I can parse words even if i dont know it. The reading/writing is hell. Two alphabets plus Kenji. Kenji have two forms of reading. By sound and by form. Kenji combos are brutal really. You need to knows about 2000 Kenji minimum and there combinations to read a newsletter!
To be honest, I took Korean lessons last year for a few months and I didn't find it as difficult as everyone thinks it is. I think once you know the alphabet it's not too bad from there. Similar to what Troux said, Korean is similar to Japanese in the way that they also don't use fillers, its rather refreshing and easy to catch onto once you learn a bit more.
Exactly. Korean is not so hard. The "spelling", however requires a lot of practice, pretty much like English. Once you learn Hangeul, you're not done. There are various syllabic combinations that may result in needing to check the dictionary even if you know the word.
Load More Replies...Try Polish ;) i think my lang should be in last group. plvsen-768x595.jpg <-- like this one, wher u can see how many we got this grama xD H5 from Poland !
Polish is... Polish. It should has it own group I think
Load More Replies...Komi, Udmurt, Karelian and Mordvinic languages are Cat IV* Samoyedic languages can be more complex in terms of distance. Therefore, Nenets, Nganasan and Selkup are Cat IV* Tibetic languages, Dzongkha, Hmong and Korku Cat IV*. Situation with Dravidian languages is similar. Also, add Livonian as IV*
Abkhaz, Archi, Tabasaran, Okinawan, Inuktitut and Burushaski are all Category V Greenlandic and Chukchi are either Cat IV* or Cat V Chuvash and Basque are IV* Ossetian, Irish and Kurdish are IV.
I dont think Arabic is that difficult. I would put it into the 4th Category.
I really don't think japanese is difficult to speak. I learnt to speak it very very quickly, and self taught. Yes, on top of the anagrams of hiragana and katakana, it does have plural ways to read certain kanjis, but its pronunciation is really most elementary, and no intonation at all! absolute BLISS for foreigner learners! On the other hand, Chinese uses characters all the way, pictographs only, so u need to memorize the countless number of them to read. Many of them also have more than one way of reading them. Each character can be combined with others pictograph in countless ways to form different meaning. The pronunciation is infinitely more difficult, and u have to add the memorizing of the structured 5 intonations to the equation as well. Chinese in fact has a very structured grammar system, which is visible in advanced writing. However, due to the extremely distinctive pronunciation and intonation structure, one can fully comprehended even with a very loose use of grammar.
I took German in school, and for me it seemed tough. I should have taken Spanish, as German is, and has been, useless during my life, and travels in Central/South America would have been easier. I met, and later married, a Thai woman while doing extended travel in Asia, and was certain that I’d learn her language, as I spent over 3 years there total. HAH! I can order some foods in Thai, ask for the bathroom, but everything else: forget it. With 5 “tones”, words mean completely different things depending upon how they relate to the tone of the rest of your sentence. The word “ma”can mean mother, or dog, or horse. After 7+ years of independent travel in Asia/South America in many places where NO ONE spoke English, I know that I can get along without knowing the language. The bottom line: don’t go crazy trying to learn a language simply to travel to a place.
I still don't know my native language very well (Turkish) perhaps it does not take just 44 weeks. Lol. But to be honest, you never stop learning, it's because language is a living thing, you need to catch up with it all the time. Even some grammar rules which we think they will never change are evolving.
jää-äärsete kuu-uurijate öötöö - moon researchers' night work at the ice edge, in Estonian
The strangest language must be Irish. The only language where 'mh' sounds like V (as in the name 'Niamh'), 'bh' also sounds like V, and which has capital letters in the middle of a word - as in 'nGháilghe' which I believe is the name of the country.
In my comment, for 'the country' please read 'the language'.
Load More Replies...re polish in 44 weeks - I quess you should be able to go buy bread and milk... so good luck with that... hahha
Yea. Soo true. Polish is one of most difficult languages in whole World.
Load More Replies...Saddly there is no source of the data that was used to create this map linked to the post. Polish is much more complex comparing to other slavic languages. But still, you understand that this is assuming you are practicing language 25 hours a week for 10 months... Nah, I still don't believe you can master Polish in 10 months. Perhaps Russian, but not Polish.
Podczas suszy Sasza szedł suchą szosą. Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz, Wola Bożynowska, Powiat Łękołody. Touch this. Japaneee or Korean are much difficult than Polish? Hehehe you make me luagh :)
True, Polish language is hard as hell. But Japaneese and Korean are even harder.
Load More Replies...I can speak Afrikaans! And since it's so similar to dutch and german, I can understand those too!
ahm..are you maybe exaggerating? like, a lot? An example: "how are you?" in german: "wie geht es dir?" africaans: "wat doen ye?" dutch: "havor skal du hen?" ....as obvious enough, dutch and german are completely different languages, more distinct than just a dialect. I am german- and i don't understand dutch^^. Same for africaans. Germans also have to learn english- even though there are some similar words..
Load More Replies...Not at all for slavic peuple. Polish is much, nuch more difficult.
Load More Replies...Every country claims they have the most difficult language. I heard it so often too.
Load More Replies...monia monica, only very small parts of belgium or luxembourg speak german (which are very small countries already), and in switzerland they it's swiss- german, which is close to german- but still not german. (Like italian and spanish are close- but still not the same). So no, i would also say that it is not worth the trouble;) i love my language, but wouldn't recommend to study it as much as for example french..
Load More Replies...They are tough for being so far removed from English, but there is logic in Japanese and Vietnamese that I wish would carry over. For example in Vietnamese, everything is separated with a space between each syllable, and every letter can only be pronounced one way as it's written, so you can see a word for the first time and immediately know how to say it. In Japanese, they are very economical in their words, in that they don't use unnecessary grammatical filler, and they don't invent unnecessary synonyms. For example, English "I am scared," becomes "scared" in Japanese; you can assume who the subject is in context. But in English one wouldn't say "I am scared," because we are taught that it is too simple, so we have to say "I'm terrified/frightened/in fear/shaking in my boots," to add flair to what is still a simple expression. Japanese also takes to only one pronunciation for each letter. A E I O U is "ah" "eh" "ee" "oh" "oo" with the only exceptions being consistent.
Tha Japanese grammar is very structured and relatevely easy to understand, but you forgot about kanji - hell of a work to remember how to read even if you know the meaning. All kanji have at least 2 readings and can be used at the same time - my favourite example is Sunday - in kanji 日曜日 - and pronounsation is - Nichiyōbi. The same kanji 日 have different readings within ONE word.
Load More Replies...When you see someone say that Polish is sooo difficult, you can be 99% sure this person is Polish.
Not sure about the infographics of this. Who else thinks that red should stand for had to learn language and green for the opposite?
I am a fluent Finnish speaker. Sadly this is quite useless language to learn unless you live in Finland. Most Finnish people can speak English so for the tourists there is no need to learn Finnish.
But speaking finnish is your superpower. If you can learn finnish, you can learn anything.
Load More Replies...I dunno, I've majored in linguistics and I'm fluent in 4 languages (2 native, 1 acquired throughout adolescence, the 4th acquired in adulthood). The time and difficulty it takes to learn a language depends on your starting perspective and the environment. To a native English speaker, for example, the time to learn Italian will differ from the time needed for a Spanish native speaker; someone speaking only one single language also is not in the same position as someone who grew up bilingually; someone living in, for example, Germany will learn Japanese slower than someone learning it right there in Japan (but not neccessarily) and so on. Not to mention individual affinities, someone will catch a new language easily, someone else will need to work harder. This info needs more background.
Well the article clearly states it’s from the perspective of a native English speaker, not a native Mandarin speaker. And since English has more similarities with Germanic and Scandinavian languages (partly due to historical influences), those languages will be easier and quicker to learn for a native English speaker than let’s say Arabic or Russian or Thai.
Load More Replies...I've been teaching Norwegian for foreigners for some years now, but I never met a English-speaking person who learned Norwegian fluent I six months. Good luck learning the other languages. Learning languages take time...
Probably only the most widely spoken languages are mentioned. The list would otherwise be too long...
Load More Replies...How about Luxembourgish? I know we are a small country, but despite that fact we have have our own language. I need to clarify as well that Luxembourgish is not a German dialect, it is a language on its own, and unfortunately a lot more difficult to master.
A language is more than just words and sentences, it's how you deal with people, plus a pile of historical and cultural references. For example, speaking the same language, Mandarin, with Han Chinese and Taiwan Aborigines (fluent speakers) is different: topics, references, and way of discussing. It fascinates me, but there's not much space here.
"On the map, let's make the easiest to learn RED and the hardest GREEN, BLUE AND VIOLET." What?? I get that they were going by the rainbow but is this normal anywhere where they speak English as the main language?
Sorry but I find it hard to believe that Japanese is considered not only a Category V language, but also the most difficult one. People have commented that Japanese is hard because of the Kanji...but Chinese is ALL Kanji! Chinese is also a tonal language, whereas Japanese is not, which would be extra difficult for an English only speaker. "(Category V languages) are about as different from English as black is from white." The author must not be familiar with the S**T ton of English loan words used in the Japanese language...much more than in Chinese.
Japanase is easy to speak. I can parse words even if i dont know it. The reading/writing is hell. Two alphabets plus Kenji. Kenji have two forms of reading. By sound and by form. Kenji combos are brutal really. You need to knows about 2000 Kenji minimum and there combinations to read a newsletter!
To be honest, I took Korean lessons last year for a few months and I didn't find it as difficult as everyone thinks it is. I think once you know the alphabet it's not too bad from there. Similar to what Troux said, Korean is similar to Japanese in the way that they also don't use fillers, its rather refreshing and easy to catch onto once you learn a bit more.
Exactly. Korean is not so hard. The "spelling", however requires a lot of practice, pretty much like English. Once you learn Hangeul, you're not done. There are various syllabic combinations that may result in needing to check the dictionary even if you know the word.
Load More Replies...Try Polish ;) i think my lang should be in last group. plvsen-768x595.jpg <-- like this one, wher u can see how many we got this grama xD H5 from Poland !
Polish is... Polish. It should has it own group I think
Load More Replies...Komi, Udmurt, Karelian and Mordvinic languages are Cat IV* Samoyedic languages can be more complex in terms of distance. Therefore, Nenets, Nganasan and Selkup are Cat IV* Tibetic languages, Dzongkha, Hmong and Korku Cat IV*. Situation with Dravidian languages is similar. Also, add Livonian as IV*
Abkhaz, Archi, Tabasaran, Okinawan, Inuktitut and Burushaski are all Category V Greenlandic and Chukchi are either Cat IV* or Cat V Chuvash and Basque are IV* Ossetian, Irish and Kurdish are IV.
I dont think Arabic is that difficult. I would put it into the 4th Category.
I really don't think japanese is difficult to speak. I learnt to speak it very very quickly, and self taught. Yes, on top of the anagrams of hiragana and katakana, it does have plural ways to read certain kanjis, but its pronunciation is really most elementary, and no intonation at all! absolute BLISS for foreigner learners! On the other hand, Chinese uses characters all the way, pictographs only, so u need to memorize the countless number of them to read. Many of them also have more than one way of reading them. Each character can be combined with others pictograph in countless ways to form different meaning. The pronunciation is infinitely more difficult, and u have to add the memorizing of the structured 5 intonations to the equation as well. Chinese in fact has a very structured grammar system, which is visible in advanced writing. However, due to the extremely distinctive pronunciation and intonation structure, one can fully comprehended even with a very loose use of grammar.
I took German in school, and for me it seemed tough. I should have taken Spanish, as German is, and has been, useless during my life, and travels in Central/South America would have been easier. I met, and later married, a Thai woman while doing extended travel in Asia, and was certain that I’d learn her language, as I spent over 3 years there total. HAH! I can order some foods in Thai, ask for the bathroom, but everything else: forget it. With 5 “tones”, words mean completely different things depending upon how they relate to the tone of the rest of your sentence. The word “ma”can mean mother, or dog, or horse. After 7+ years of independent travel in Asia/South America in many places where NO ONE spoke English, I know that I can get along without knowing the language. The bottom line: don’t go crazy trying to learn a language simply to travel to a place.
I still don't know my native language very well (Turkish) perhaps it does not take just 44 weeks. Lol. But to be honest, you never stop learning, it's because language is a living thing, you need to catch up with it all the time. Even some grammar rules which we think they will never change are evolving.
jää-äärsete kuu-uurijate öötöö - moon researchers' night work at the ice edge, in Estonian
The strangest language must be Irish. The only language where 'mh' sounds like V (as in the name 'Niamh'), 'bh' also sounds like V, and which has capital letters in the middle of a word - as in 'nGháilghe' which I believe is the name of the country.
In my comment, for 'the country' please read 'the language'.
Load More Replies...re polish in 44 weeks - I quess you should be able to go buy bread and milk... so good luck with that... hahha
Yea. Soo true. Polish is one of most difficult languages in whole World.
Load More Replies...Saddly there is no source of the data that was used to create this map linked to the post. Polish is much more complex comparing to other slavic languages. But still, you understand that this is assuming you are practicing language 25 hours a week for 10 months... Nah, I still don't believe you can master Polish in 10 months. Perhaps Russian, but not Polish.
Podczas suszy Sasza szedł suchą szosą. Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz, Wola Bożynowska, Powiat Łękołody. Touch this. Japaneee or Korean are much difficult than Polish? Hehehe you make me luagh :)
True, Polish language is hard as hell. But Japaneese and Korean are even harder.
Load More Replies...I can speak Afrikaans! And since it's so similar to dutch and german, I can understand those too!
ahm..are you maybe exaggerating? like, a lot? An example: "how are you?" in german: "wie geht es dir?" africaans: "wat doen ye?" dutch: "havor skal du hen?" ....as obvious enough, dutch and german are completely different languages, more distinct than just a dialect. I am german- and i don't understand dutch^^. Same for africaans. Germans also have to learn english- even though there are some similar words..
Load More Replies...Not at all for slavic peuple. Polish is much, nuch more difficult.
Load More Replies...Every country claims they have the most difficult language. I heard it so often too.
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