Of these, Spanish and Italian are the easiest for native English speakers to learn, followed by Portuguese and finally French.
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.
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.
They found Japanese and Spanish, often described as “fast languages,” clocked the greatest number of syllables per second. The “slowest” language in the set was Mandarin, followed closely by German.
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.
One reason Mandarin is seen as the most challenging language to learn is because its writing system uses characters that might be difficult to grasp for those accustomed to writing with the Latin alphabet, Babbel says.
1. Mandarin Chinese. Interestingly, the hardest language to learn is also the most widely spoken native language in the world. Mandarin Chinese is challenging for a number of reasons.
Top 10 Hardest Languages To Learn – Finnish
After the Hungarian grammar, the Finnish language has the most challenging grammar. It sounds and looks a bit similar to English because of its pronunciation and lettering. But the grammar makes it far more complicated than the English language.
The language that came out as most attractive was Italian; with participants' hearts racing (literally), with beats per minute increasing by 23%. This was followed by Portuguese (20%), with French and Greek making up the top five.
The Adamic language, according to Jewish tradition (as recorded in the midrashim) and some Christians, is the language spoken by Adam (and possibly Eve) in the Garden of Eden.
Sumerian can be considered the first language in the world, according to Mondly. The oldest proof of written Sumerian was found on the Kish tablet in today's Iraq, dating back to approximately 3500 BC.
Jesus' name in Hebrew was “Yeshua” which translates to English as Joshua. So how did we get the name “Jesus”? And is “Christ” a last name? Watch the episode to find out!
Dumi is the world's least spoken language and one of the rarest.
Ainu. This language has become critically endangered because only 10 speakers native to the Japanese Islands can speak it fluently. Ainu is an oral language, and it does not have any relation with known languages.
As we've already mentioned, Japanese is considered the fastest language in the world. It is always mentioned as the first on the list. So, here are 6 of the fastest spoken languages in the world, based on the average number of syllables spoken per second (SPS): Japanese - 7.84 SPS.