There are over 1000 languages in the world. Among them, there are 100 languages that are widely spoken nowadays. Sadly, by the linguistic researchers prediction, hundreds of the languages will be dead by the end of 2100.
What languages will be left? Easy languages tend to have high chances to pass along the generations. Over the years, English has become popular and it also becomes easier when it is more widely used. Similarly, spoken French is omitting its part of speech when they speak, while they keep the latin grammar in writing. Also, many languages changed their writing system from their original scripts to the latin alphabet which is called latinisation or romanisation, For example, Malay, Indonesian, Vietnamese and Turkish had their own writing in the past, but they use latin alphabet now.
Before we shortlist the easiest languages, let’s see the common difficulties in learning a languages.
When we talk about the writing system, the Latin alphabet system wins. So, if you happen to be a European languages speaker, congratulations! The only difference lies in the pronunciation. You only need to learn 26 alphabets to write the languages! It makes children or language beginners pick up the writing in some days. Some researchers say that the reason European cultures and technology advance fastest in the world is that people save years of time to pick up the languages.
What makes you happier than knowing there is no past, present, or future tenses? In some languages, e.g. Chinese, tenses are specified by merely adding “adverb of time” without modifying any verbs.
As you know, in English the verb mainly changes for the third person (he, she it) as the subject. In some latin languages, like French and Spanish, there are 6 cases.
In contrast with German, Spanish, Russian (you name it!), many languages does not classify nouns into masculine, feminine, and neuter. Moreover, in Indonesian, they even use “dia” to describe both ‘he’ and ‘she’, and also “adik” to call the ‘younger brother’ or ‘younger sister’.
For the plural forms, in English, you needs to add a “s" in the nouns. In French, you need to changes the nouns, articles and adjectives. In Spanish, you need to change the nouns, articles, adjectives, and verbs. Imagine, there is no plural forms in some languages, for example, in Japanese, Chinese and Indonesian. They just add a plural determiner.
You may get used to the English speaking and forget that you may silent some alphabets. Statistics from linguistic researchers says that English word is spoken only 70% the same as its spelling. For French, it is even only 50%. French learners are almost learning 2 languages: the written French and spoken French. One reason is due to the long history for French languages. It keeps mostly its written form, but the speaking evolute over centuries. In contrast, Korean, German, Turkish, it’s nearly 100% the same for their writing and speaking. You simply read exactly what you write. You may say Spanish also pronounces each single alphabet, however, the “r” is hard to pronounce. People can take a year to practise how to pronounce “r” in French or Spanish.
Consider this.
我可以问你吗？Wǒ kě yǐ wèn nǐ ma ? Can I ask you something?
我可以吻你吗？Wǒ kě yǐ wěn nǐ ma ? Can I kiss you?
In English, you know, a little voice rises at the end of a sentence is normal when we’re asking questions. However, for a tonal language like Chinese, different tone can change its meaning, even lead to misunderstandings. There are 4 tones in Chinese mandarin, 5 tones in Thai, 6 tones in Vietnamese, 9 tones in Cantonese. A language with tones can add some confusions for foreign learners.
Vocabulary is one of the most important elements in a language. Neighbouring countries are sharing common vocabulary due to cultural and historical reasons. You definitely have more advantages in picking up the language of your neighbouring countries than someone else living far away. Not only are many words the same, neighbouring countries also share some similar cultures and traditions which is helpful in learning the language.
A linguist took the average of European languages to create a “neutral” language – Esperanto which is an interesting concept. It could be fair and easy for most of the people in the world.
If you learn some latin, the classic language which contributes many words to English or other European languages. Once you learn some Latin, you can pick up many European languages more easily.
Useful tips: enrich your vocabulary, and you’re halfway there! 😊 How to Memorize Vocabulary? Here are 7 Tips to Memorize Vocabulary. As you can find the keywords in the sentence, you will have no problem to guess the entire message that wants to be delivered.
As you are reading this, I believe that English is one of the languages you’re probably fluent in. Due to the globalization, the language borrowed more English words, it would be a easier language. For example, thousands of Indonesian words are similar to English. Several of them even directly borrowed without any standardization (notice the word ‘internet’ below). Without realizing it, you might have known a lot of another language!
By learning Indonesian, you will find that there are tons of loanwords from Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, Portuguese, and even Sanskrit. You will understand once you see the example below.
| Language | English | Original Word | Indonesian Word |
| Arabic | news | (khabar) خبر | kabar |
| Saturday | (sabt-u) سبت | sabtu | |
| Chinese | noodles | 面 (hokkien: mi) | mi |
| teacup | 茶碗 (cháwǎn) | cawan | |
| Dutch | refrigerator | koelkast | kulkas |
| towel | handdoek | handuk | |
| English | internet | internet | internet |
| satellite | satellite | satelit | |
| Portuguese | doll | boneca | boneka |
| party | festa | pesta | |
| Sanskrit | earth | भूमि (bhoomi) | bumi |
| language | भाषा (bhasha) | bahasa |
One more point that people often neglect is the popularity of a country’s culture. French is not easy grammatically, however, you can be exposed to lots of French movies, art and cuisine which actually helps people to find more learning material easily. Similarly, we often hear that people learn Japanese via manga, cartoons or video games. With the world class production of Hollywood movies and TV comedies, people are having lots of chances to practice their listening skills in American English. Recent years, with the popularity of K-pop, people also find interest in learning Korean.
Over the years, English has become popular and it also becomes easier when it is more widely used. It is the languages you can easily expose English as it is commonly use intentionally, it enable everyone know at least a few English vocabulary to a number of it. Also, English vocabulary are adopted in many languages, in the other side, you can find some english vocabulary that is very similar in your language.
Unlike many latin languages or Germanic languages, there is no gender in its nouns, adjectives, nor articles. The grammatical person is also simplify from other European languages. Basically, there are only 2 cases, the third person case and non-third person case. What you have to change is the verb, not other part in the sentence. Luckily, the verb changes are not heavily inflected by different tenses or person.
When a language is widely used geographically, there are more variations in the pronunciations, accents, spelling or even grammars. For example, American English, they spell “color", while in British english, it spell “colour". The word “centre" can also spell as “center". There is a always debate if it is a wrong spelling.
Surprisingly, If you ask which language’s grammar is the easiest, Chinese stands out. Unlike the latin languages, there is no tense, there is no gender nor plural form for its noun or adjectives.
Chinese is also simplifying its writing system from the traditional Chinese characters into simplified Chinese characters. Interestingly, people also comment that the traditional Chinese character is easier to distinguish while the simplified characters look similar and that may cause confusion.
Although you may have heard that there are thousands of Chinese characters, the characters are actually constructed scientifically by limited basic parts and some rules. It’s a false impression that you need to learn thousands of characters. In fact, you just need to learn limited basic parts. Each character consists of its own meaning, and more correctly, you can treat thousands of characters as vocabulary. There ain’t less vocabulary in English.
Nevertheless, the latin transliteration, Pinyin and Zhuyin are created in the Chinese language, especially in its teaching process.
Some people claimed that Indonesian is one of the easiest languages to learn. Here are several considerations to help you determine whether learning Indonesian is easy or not. First Indonesian is written in Latin Alphabet. There is no special characters! You won’t find any “à, ê, ö, ñ” in the middle of learning Indonesian. It is not a tonal language.
Just like English, the word order in Indonesian is generally “Subject-Verb-Object”. In fact, the grammar is quite flexible too. You can put the time determiners in the beginning or end of the sentence, it’s up to you!
e.g. We (kami) went (pergi) to (ke) Bali yesterday (kemarin).
Kami pergi ke Bali kemarin, or
Kemarin kami pergi ke Bali.
Indonesian does not classify nouns into masculine, feminine, and neuter. Moreover, we even use “dia” to describe both ‘he’ and ‘she’, and also “adik” to call the ‘younger brother’ or ‘younger sister’. There is no plural forms, either. Plurality is expressed simply by duplication of an object or addition of plural determiner.
car, cars
mobil, mobil-mobil
buku, beberapa buku
book, some books
By learning Indonesian, you will find that there are tons of loanwords from Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, Portuguese, and even Sanskrit. Thousands of Indonesian words are similar to English. Several of them even directly borrowed without any standardization (notice the word ‘internet’ above). Without realizing it, you might have known a lot of Indonesian vocabs!
By learning Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian), you can have a good conversation with more than 260 million people! Aside from that, there are other reasons why you should learn Indonesian.
Fairly speaking, it is hard to rank what is the easiest language overall, however, it depends on the person’s background, you can certainly find your easiest, most “interesting”, most “useful” languages to learn. We know people are busy and want to find the easiest way to learn a language. Therefore, we created the app, “LingoCards”, which simplifies the learning process. We use machine learning technology to pick the most common vocabulary and phrases, so you can learn the most useful content. With our audio looping features, you can listen and learn languages any time anywhere. There are 52 languages taught in our apps, LingoCards. You can certainly choose to learn from your mother tongue which greatly increases the learning efficiency. In addition, our trilingual mode also enables you to learn multiple languages at the same time. Learning a language is much easier and efficient with LingoCards. Check out LingoCards now!
