When I click on the link to claim the prize and enter my name and email address, I keep getting a message saying "Sorry, there was an error. Please try again later." I have tried with different browsers and devices.
But necessarily. I speak, to varying levels, 8 languages. I'm very passionate about Georgia and the Georgian language but the grammar, especially for verbs, is extremely difficult.
I really hate Esperanto included in these Top easiest languages. It's a made up language, so it's designed to be easy. If we are looking for a made up language, maybe Toki Pona would be better.
4:42 Here is my explanation as an Indonesian speaker. While it is true that we express plurality by repeating words, that is not always the case. This may be confusing for English speakers, but in Indonesian we do not need to change a noun just because it is singular or plural. Usually we just add a number in front of the noun to express quantity. For example, "two bicycles" is simply "dua sepeda", never "dua sepeda-sepeda". That is why we are not confused by words like "kupu-kupu", which is already a reduplication, because we never need to say "dua kupu-kupu kupu-kupu". Moreover, according to the Indonesian dictionary, "kupu" already means "butterfly", even without the reduplication. So, technically, you can express sentences like “butterflies are flying around” by simply saying “kupu beterbangan” and leave it at that, since the verb “beterbangan” itself already indicates that there are many butterflies involved.
In fact, the reduplication (as it seems is the term for this) is not used for expressing a plural but changes the signification of the noun into something more generic. For example, when you want to speak about one person you say "satu orang". If you mention "orang orang", you speak about people in general, or "buku buku" when you speak about all the books (present or not present in front of you) with no precision.
When he asked that I was thinking that you all probably treat it in the same way that people treat Buffalo or moose in english being both singular and plural
Not having an explicit he/she/it is annoying though. And the rules around using "to be" are goofy. And the lack of time tense with verbs means you have to be specific and use extra verbiage (you can't just say "I will read" or "I read", you have to add something to indicate when something has or will occur.) Indonesian is painful. 😂
Years ago I fell in love with Italian. I started learning it by myself and it was so enjoyable. I was flying through the manual. I think if you love the language you are learning it's much more easier
@@chocolatecookie8571 not really the point. I was female when I rapidly became fluent in Mandarin (my favorite language); still female when I gave up on French because it just wasn't motivating me.
Please note the hours required in the FSI chart. The 24-30 weeks assumes about six hours of full-time study EVERY DAY for six or seven months. And this is not to achieve fluency but a basic proficiency in the B1-B2 range. I went through the Russian course at Defense Language Institute and the standards are very similar to FSI. After 47 weeks of full time study, the best students were probably B2 and the average students were mid to upper B1.
Can confirm Swahili is incredibly simple to understand and grasp, it’s quickly become my favourite language I’ve ever learnt! Kiswahili ni lugha rahisi sana! Unaweza kukijifunza haraka sana 🫶🏻🇰🇪🇹🇿
I don't speak Italian and never studied it. But just by knowing Portuguese and Spanish and being quite alert, I could hold conversations in "Italian", when I was in Rome. Ok, it wasn't really Italian, but we had rather long conversations where we mutually understood each other. Just by figuring some basic stuff like present and past tense conjugation, and plural, and there you go.
well old form of Indonesian (classical Malay) were lingua franca in South East Asian region back then even Vietnam knows classical Malay let alone traders
Just for reference..the dude singing 2:28 - 2:32 did not pronounce a single swedish word...that was international jibberish in my swedish ears. Update: OK, he might have gotten the first word "Hej" right, after that it was all "nothingness" as a swede. The attempt was "Hej tomtegubbar, slå i glasen och låt oss lustiga vara! "...he got "Hej" right.
lmao I'm glad to hear that confirmation of what I was thinking- I lived in Sweden for a few years - didn't have too much time to seriously study the language but I learned a semi-decent amount and certainly HEARD it every day, mostly on the bus or the local ICA- and to me it was jibberish and sounded VERY American, not at all Swedish. I guess I at least got to a point where bad, American-sounding "Swedlish" is obvious as being that even to me!
wow! OLLY RICHARDS!! dankon pro spekti kaj inkluzivi min en via video!!! I am truly humbled and honoured and super motivated to continue my Esperanto learning journey! WOW!❤
I just came back from those 3 countries- Denmark, Norway, Sweden was fairly easy to understand the languages in writing I bought a book in Swedish and read it
I fell in love with Spanish when I was 5, watching Sesame Street when they taught the numbers 1-10 in Spanish. I ended up with a Master's degree in teaching Spanish because of that lol.
Great video Olly! Thanks to your content I found a way to learn French. After roughly 10 months I am at a lower B1 level. All thanks to your story learning method! I just wanted to make a comment to your point at 3:10. While it is true that many Scandinavians understand the other two languages, we must remember that this requires extremely good listening skills, and an English person learning Swedish will probably not pick up Norwegian and Danish as easy as it might sound. Go out on the streets of Norway or Sweden and ask random natives if they understand spoken Danish. Most people will actually say no. The Scandinavians who immerse a lot in the other two languages mostly have no issues, but a lot of native Scandinavians really struggle with understanding the other two languages. Due to our many dialects a lot of Scandinavians struggle to also understand some people from the same country! I am a native Norwegian in a relationship with a Swede. We understand each other just fine. But whenever we visit her family in Sweden, I have to adjust my Norwegian to a middle road language called "Svorsk" (Swedish with a thick Norwegian accent). Because if I speak to her family in my west Norwegian dialect, they understand nothing. For a person learning Swedish, understanding Norwegian and Danish as well is going to take a lot of time. In order to comprehend Norwegian and Danish, your Swedish listening skills must be superb, close to native level. And for this reason, your target when learning Swedish should be to learn Swedish, and not Norwegian and Danish. However, if you move to Sweden and learn Swedish, and then move to Norway for some reason, you will pick up Norwegian to a good level in no time. Probably less than six months. But if you learn Swedish and expect to understand Norwegian and Danish as well, you might be disappointed. I think we can compare it to Spanish and Catalan. A person from Catalonia can probably understand Spanish just fine. A Spanish person can maybe get by in Catalonia. However if I, a native Norwegian, were to learn Spanish to a B2 level. Would I also understand Catalan? Definitely no. But if I were to move to Barcelona I could probably pick it up easier than a person who speaks no Spanish. My channel is fairly new, but I have already made a video about this exact subject. Check it out if you are interested. As always, thanks for your videos Olly. I'm a huge fan of your content and also the story learning method.
Thanks for the explanation! To be fair, Olly only says "you can also understand Norwegian and Danish too". He doesn't say "spoken Norwegian and Danish". İ for one find it not that difficult understanding written Danish and Norwegian. Even though İ sometimes don't understand a thing when Danes and Norwegians talk. Especially Danish is super difficult to follow. İn fact, this happened to İ several times: İ thought a bunch of people were talking Cantonese or Vietnamese. İ only hear they at first, then İ see those people and they're blond. After listening more closely İ realize that they're Danes. 🙆🏽♀️ The last time this happened is actually less than a month ago.
i was going to compare spanish with portuguese... im a native portuguese speaker and listening spanish is very easy. many portuguese speakers pick up spanish really easy
Great video. Another important thing is (for us whom English is our second language) that the list will vary depending on your mother tongue. For english speakers it's easier to learn chinese than it is for spanish speakers. On the other hand Japanese is a LOT easier for spanish speakers than it is for English speakers, since the vowels in Japanese have the same sound as in Spanish. And that goes for any other language. The closer it is to your mother tongue and the more passionate you are about that language, The more you will enjoy learning it. ❤
Finally, someone notices that Bahasa Indonesia is such a simple language. But you will notice soon if you come to Indonesia that the people of Indonesia don't speak regular Bahasa Indonesia; there is also much Indonesian slang that is added to the conversation. Learning regular Bahasa Indonesia doesn't help you so much actually, as people in Indonesia think that regular one is too formal and kind of weird to bring it into conversation. That's why we, as the Indonesian itself, feel that our language is hard to understand (especially its poetry). Some of my friends even said that it's easier to get a better score at the English examination compared to Bahasa Indonesia (even though we're not an English-speaking country).
@@timgilligan3885 That's not the best example though. Because the difference between BBC English and Scottish English is the accent (and sometimes a few Scots or Gaelic words here and there, depending on where and who you talk with), while the original comment talks about something more similar to what Finnish has with Standard vs colloquial.
I guess Malaysian accent is kinda closest to standard Indonesian for most part of city in Malaysia (except Northern part of Malaysian had accent that even Malaysian cant even know they spoke).Maybe except few Dutch loanword like Handuk and Kantor
Than you very much for mentioning my two favourite languages in the video. I love Swedish and keep learning this just for fun, because it is a language of ABBA and Roxette. Kaj mi multege dankas por la menciado de Esperanto! The overview of this language was very positive, and additionally very nice and kind Esperanto speakers were shown as examples. Esperanto can truly help in learning some other European language thanks to its similarities to them. It also can help to overcome the barrier of hesitation when it comes to learning langiages. Way not all people are linguistically gifted if it comes to learning them, since reading rules, grammar nuances or exceptions can discourage to continue the learning. Esperanto in this regard is quite flexible, so that one can learn it playfully remaining free of stress. I can endlessly speak about Esperanto's upsides, but it's really worthy, at least, it brings lots of pleasure.
Esperanto also helps learning other languages in general. The most difficult language a person learns is their 1st 2nd language. Esperanto helps in that, since it is easier. Although you still have to put work in. In time you should have developed good study habits. Esperanto additionally helps in learning Agglutinative languages, since word formation is done similarly. Free Word Order as well, you can switch it up to get used to languages that have a different word order. Still waiting for your "Short Stories in Indonesian" and "Short Stories in Afrikaans" Olly. 😉
Yes, although a good chunk of that is that it's dead simple if you speak any of the languages that were used to create it. But, the bigger benefit is that you can skip the step where it sound weird hearing foreign words coming out of your mouth and establish that it's possible to learn a new language so you stop fighting it.
Esperanto is the fastest to learn & builds motivation, concept of multilingual benefits, & good structure to link the other languages that are less logical (eg English, 1 of the most illogical spelling & idioms ;) my 5th & best language (not counting the split from Serbocroatian to 4 different & similar - Slovenian, Bulgarian, Slovak...)
Esperanto! Category 0 - hands down, the easiest living language in the world to learn. And it's more useful than one might think. They say if you want to make money, the language to learn is English. But if you want to make friends, you should learn *Esperanto*. And this is absolutely true: I have made hundreds of friends around the world (and met many of them in their home countries, or they have visited mine) all because of Esperanto. Yes, there isn't a single country where the language is official, but there are Esperantists in just about every city and country around the world. This can be a big advantage: you'll never travel alone when you know Esperanto, in just about any foreign country you will have locals who are your instant friends wherever you go. No need to stick to just the tourist traps when local friends can show you the authentic local country & culture!
@@Emjazzuli The vocabulary might be easier for romance speaking people, but overall the language is easier for everyone. Many Japanese people told me how much Esperanto is easier for them than English.
Great list. i love that you put Esperanto on here. it is a great language for someone who is just starting off learning other languages. and it is surprisingly useful
02:16 No way Georgian and the Uralic languages are not level 5. No matter what the FS says. The grammar is incredibly difficult. For instance, Russian is MUCH easier to lean than Georgian. I speak both, and there's no comparison. I've also worked in Georgia with many FS officers, and I've never heard one who could actually speak Georgian to any meaningful level.
Similar issues with them putting Danish in Category 1. I can't imagine anyone who's ever actually taught Danish, or learnt it as an adult, agreeing with this. Heck, even Norwegians have trouble understanding most variants of spoken Danish these days, and Dutch speakers have a hard time with it too. Being able to read a book or say something that people will more or less understand doesn't equal "having learnt a language". You need to be able to have conversations if you're learning for work purposes.
είμαι εξωγήινος και δεν μου φτάνουν τα αγγλικά, που ειναι μια γλώσσα χίμαιρα από μόνη της. θέλω να μάθω άλλη μια, που ειναι σαν κάδος απορριμάτων της αργκου όλης της Ευρώπης, συγχαρητήρια ποδολαγνείοι, κερδίσατε μια θέση σε αυτόν τον πλανήτη με προοπτική να γίνεται νούμερο ένα γλώσσα. γιατί όπως ξέρουμε όλοι, ειναι μια γλώσσα που δεν έχει ρίζες... ναι εντάξει... και θα φέρει την ειρήνη... ναι ναι οκ. Εντάξει κόβω
When i was in the Netherlands i was amazed how well they speak English. The Norwegians also! The younger folks speak better English than most Americans. When I was in Europe in the 1970's French was the universal language ( so i was told) . The English spoken was with a British accent. For the most part I didn't hear that anymore in my most recent trip. They are speaking with a American accent. Very informative video. Thank you
The american accent is maybe because you can find more movies and videos in that version than in British. Like as you have to put the "british version" in the search to not get american voices as a search result.
It was a pleasant surprise to see Esperanto mentioned here. I speak it, it definitely was much easier to learn than other languages I studied and it was much more useful than I could ever imagine.
@@jlcarrasco In addition to the many benefits you get from learning any language, Esperanto can be useful for many reasons, to get friends from smaller countries like Iceland, Hungary. For travelling there is a service called Pasporta servo where you can get free accommodation while travelling, you often get free guides while visiting various cities, etc.
@@MrPleers same, i have heard people said it made learning other languages easier, but i wonder why not just put that time into actually learning these languages
English is more similar to Spanish than Italian. Spanish is much more regular, plural is almost equal to English, past perfect tense is exactly equal to English, possesive is similar. Definitively Spanish is much easier for an English speaker. Spanish has not thousands of double consonants like in Italian.
Languages are more than textbook practice. Immersion is extremely helpful. For English speakers, the Germanic languages are difficult to get an immersion experience in because it’s hard to find non-English-speaking people to patiently work with you. So Italian or Spanish are much easier in that sense because there are millions of monolingual speakers to practice with.
For Swedish if you want listening experience there is a certain sport Lemont talked about watching where they speak in NOTHING but Swedish. Can't remember what specific sport it was but that is great for input since so many Swedish media in one way or another he was finding English in there. I wish there was something similar with Hindi and many other Indian languages.
The easiest is the one that you wanna use and study every day - I studied Spanish 2 years in high school, didn’t use it for 1.5 and then took it up again last year in septemer. Now a year later I speak it fluently enough to have coherent conversations without many standstills.
No1: Native Language : Most useful language is the one in the society you live in. No2 : English Language : Most useful Global workable language. No3 : Spanish Language : (Personal Choice) Most interesting culturally. No4 : Russian Language : (Personal Choice) Second most interesting culturally. For Global World Travel : (Personal Choice) English, Spanish, French, Russian, Mandarin, Hindi, Arabic.
The song used to introduce Swahili is actually Lingála, one of the 4 official languages in the Congo and the most influential language in contemporary African music. It's Massu by the great Franco Luambo Makiadi. I was really surprised by this mistake cause I speak both languages. Lingála is also a bantu language of the Benue-Congo family while Swahili has got a lot of Indian, Arabic influences. For modern concepts english words are often borrowed and in urban areas they speak some kind of swahili-english "creole". In general I can say that bantu languages are easy to learn and one rule of thumb to learn any language is to live with people or have friends who speak the langue and speak exclusively that language.
@PhansiKhongoloza yes that's right. DRC having been colonized by Belgium is a french speaking country so when it comes to Swahili in urban areas in Eastern Congo it is mixed with french (same for Rwanda and Burundi probably). For instance the Kenyan girl in the video talked about "Valentine's day" in Congo we'd say "la Saint Valentin" which is the holiday's name in french.
2:19 Ok, but is that from an English point of view? I guess so, bc I would think that it is easier for example for a Polish to learn Russian than German, and it is easier for a Korean to learn Japanese or an Arab to learn Hebrew or for a Dutch/Swede/Dane/Norwegian to learn German than to learn French etc..
I fell in love with languages at age 6 and I'm now 25. I am fluent in German, Russian, Spanish, Albanian, Italian, and French. I'm currently learning Italian, Arabic, and Mandarin. My wife hates it when I talk to her in other languages but I do it anyway. I am currently teaching my 2 boys German, Spanish, and Albanian and they are advancing quickly. Must be a genetic gift.
Be realistic my friend , learning any language is not easy , because there are also different levels of understanding and especially speaking ,in all languages . Ok , it is easy in all languages to learn simple things like ‘ can I have ´ , ‘ I like this ‘ etc etc , but when it comes to giving your opinion and speaking with real native speakers ,that is another question ! I speak as an English person who speaks French fluently , and who has a good knowledge of German and Arabic . NONE OF THE MAJOR USEFUL WORLD LANGUAGES ARE EASY , and each one needs hours of patient learning , listening , reading and speaking ! So let’s be realistic and not give simplistic , media friendly solutions to complex learning situations ! And something else : There are many different language families in the world , and your learning capacity will be effected by which language family you come from and in which language family is the language you want to learn .
Tourist friendly short dialogues are easily learnt but really mastering a foreign language takes time and full immersions. When I write "really mastering" I mean having a spoken and written vocabulary almost as rich as the one you have in your mother tongue
Absolutely, regardless whether the language is considered "easy" for English speakers for example, the hard part about language learning is definitely understanding natives, getting used to a foreign sound system, learning vocabulary. Related languages make it easier to use specific grammar constructions because of their similarities, but you still need a high number of hours spent with the language, regardless of its lexical similarity with your own language
Very true. I am a native Dutch speaker and I speak English, Indonesian , French , Spanish and German. I always hear people talking about how easy Indoneisan is and I guess that’s kind of true if you’re talking survival level and informal conversation. But most foreign speakers of Indonesian make many mistakes but they’ll never realize it until they try something like a formal letter or an academic or literary text. Indonesian are usually too polite to point out errors anyway. Several things said about the language in the video are misleading. Purely phonetic? No, for instance Indonesian has two phonemes represented by the letter e, it also has digraphs, it has a word-initial velar nasal which many people can’t pronounce properly, it has a glottal stop represented by k in some words but not in others… Doubling a word for the plural form does exist but is not appropriate in every context (“two houses” is NOT dua rumah-rumah). There is a considerable difference between the formal and informal register in vocabulary but also in the use of grammatical prefixes and suffixes. I see videos with titles like “guy amazes locals by speaking perfect Indonesian” only to see them address older people with the informal pronoun “kamu” which is kinda rude, no Indonesian would address a person of authority like that, but Indonesians will generally tolerate it in everyday interactions with foreigners. However wouldn’t recommend it if you are talking to a government official in order to get some kind of permit. Try explaining something technical or legal in formal Indonesian, with lots of relative clauses for example, and the “simple suffixes” suddenly aren’t so simple anymore.
You may notice he did not say "Easy languages to learn". He said "Languages you can learn fast". Not the same thing Besides ease is relative. Maybe all of those languages were hard for you and as a native English speaker even Spanish gave me some trouble but a friend I went to high school with found it super easy. And given that Olly's audience is primarily native English speakers I don't think he needs to clarify You may also notice he literally listed the hours on his category chart. Like category 2 takes supposedly 900 hours - I don't think anyone would define that as easy unless we're talking in comparison to other languages. Which he is. So I can't even figure out what your problem is Like you came and wrote this whole paragraph but I can't even figure out what your specific complaint or proposed solution is
Please make a beginner guide on how to learn indonesian language 🙏 Really interested in this language but can't find where to practice my listening skill and grammar especially.
The best part about Italians saying in bocca al Lupo for good luck is that the response is Crepi, (or crepi il lupo) meaning, "May it die" (or "may the wolf die")
just a tip for dutch learners, the flemish accent (spoken in Belgium) uses a much softer form of the g, ch and sch sound so it may be easier for you to pronounce and a softer g will sound more natural to a native's ear than overcompensating on the g's and making it harsher.
I was watching a wonderful horror film called dead snow 2, a bit of it is in Norwegian and Icelandic, despite the subtitles, after a while you start to get your ear in and almost don't need the subtitles
Fast is a relative term. It takes hours and hours of intensive study to learn a language past phrase book level. Personally, I stick to my native language and try to speak that as best I can. It's not going too badly, so far.
Out of all those languages, only Italian can be learned fast (provided you speak French or Spanish). Swedish for instance definitely cannot be learned fast and Norwegian is actually easier to learn for English speakers than Swedish is. 3:00 is Danish, not Swedish.
Swedish has difficult phonetics while Danish, as far as I know, has more restricitve syntax than German, so I would not dare to say any of them can be learned quickly.
@@agatastaniak7459 Well either way my point still stands: Swedish, Norwegian or Danish are not languages you can learn fast. Italian yes but not the rest.
Thanks for this video! I was exactly looking for new languages to learn, i want to arrive as quick as possible at 10 and i'm stuck at 7, i seriously don't know what to choose.
Nice video! I am learning German and it isn’t even on the list. That’s not a shocker at all! For a possible next video it would be nice if you could talk about different regional accents in Oklahoma and Arkansas. I live in Oklahoma and where I live we have some twang going on. We use Midwestern and Southern dialect mashed up together. For instance instead of saying “sir-up” we say “surp.” Another example is we elongate the “a” in words too. The word “grandma” sounds like you add an “L” at the end of it. We say “y’all” and drop the “g” in “ing” all the time. I reckon that’d be the influence from the South. For me I say “ope” and that’s definitely from the Midwest. That’s the only thing I can think of. Moving on, I want to learn more about my regional accent because there isn’t one for the Oklahoma and Arkansas region. Oklahoma isn’t in the Deep South but we have a twang going on.
I think German is considered "mid-difficult" mostly for its grammar. Vocabulary and pronunciation is about as difficult as Dutch, probably, but the gender and case system can quickly be a handful.
I know a few languages to varying degrees. It is amusing to me how easily I pick up "hard" languages. Maybe I just want it more and am prepared to work harder. [Mine in order of attempt are Spanish, Russian, Finnish, German, Japanese, and French. I tried Hungarian before Finnish, but I've forgotten almost everything of that one.]
I think a lot of the languages categorized as "hard for English speakers" may just be figuring in having another alphabet or writing system to learn, of course it's easier to learn Italian when you already know the Latin alphabet, etc. I've worked as a German translator for 15+ years, I enjoyed it more than Spanish, which I took in high school. I am working on Arabic now, because I enjoy it, not because of an alleged difficulty level. But in any language, it's good to get interested in the culture, whether cooking, music, movies, etc. I am watching cartoons on UA-cam in Arabic lately; I recall Olly talking on this channel about people watching dubbed versions of "Friends," and so on! And so many people get into Japanese because they already love Japanese culture and just want to be able to read it and understand anime and movies. Great motivator. I mostly learned French to read original versions of books that were in French, not so much to speak it.
I jump around between 13 or more languages and I‘m glad Swedish was first on the list because I can confirm it‘s insanely easy to acquire new phrases. Also, Finding Nemo is really cool to watch in Swedish lol.
My current favorite easiest language is Interlingua. It finds the commonality in the main romance languages and tries to be as simple as possible while still sounding natural. Plus if you learn it, you can understand and be understood by romance language speakers fairly well.
Toki Pona! It's a tiny language and it's easy to find resources online if you just search. Of course, it's not a "real" language, it's not actually widely used and nobody's a native in it, but it's great for a first foreign language to get your confidence up and learn the basics of language learning you can build upon to learn other, more complex languages. As it's far easier than English, it's also an easy international language to use with basic, everyday stuff. It's also a gateway into conlangs, which are a cool area of study. Honestly though, serious conlangs are boring, "cursed" ones are the way to go.
Hi… new subscriber, I’m thinking about learning a new language (Korean),love the content of your channel 👍🏼 I always dreamed to become a polyglot; I already speak Spanish, English, & able to understand/ communicate 15% of couple of other romanic languages… Do you think I should get proficient in those or do embark on a new journey…
I have Instant Indonesian, Berlitz and Lonely Planet Indonesian phrasebooks, and Indonesian language books. Later on, I will get an Indonesian language subscription from Mango Languages, Babbel, and iTalki.
With all due respect, "learning" a language is not simply a matter of vocabulary! The grammatical rules of EACH language have their own particularities, and there is also the entire culture that accompanies the language. In Portuguese, for example, you have different levels of language use. From the simplest and most vulgar to the most polished and "elite", including regionalisms. Therefore, if the title refers to "learning" in the sense of simply having a good understanding of the basic rules (such as how to inflect and have a reasonable understanding of agreement, for example) and a vocabulary that covers the minimum possible number of words, yes... perhaps Spanish is considered easy for someone who lives in the US, due to contact with native Spanish speakers, as well as for someone who speaks Portuguese (whether from Portugal or Brazil), since they have a lot in common BUT are still very different languages, rich and full of details. And I haven't even mentioned the famous "false cognates". But as I said, I had no intention of belittling the work (which must have been quite a lot). And congratulations for encouraging learning!
Exactly. People who just go "don't learn grammar, just go for vocab" is a bit delusional in my opinion. Because let's think about a language like a house, the vocab is the bricks and the grammar is the cement that holds all of it perfectly together.
I’m really interested in Esperanto now. Because I speak French (terribly) and recognized a lot of French words in the language which I feel can help me more with French.
Great video and really fun to listen to all these different languages and your explanations. Just one little mistake that bothered me in the Italian bit was that the writing on the screen at 13:48 said "Lo parlo" instead of "Io parlo". But that's probably difficult to fix once the video is out. Otherwise: top notch overview over the easiest languages. Thank you, Olly.
I wonder what about English? Isn’t it category 3 or 4 as second language learner? I am Korean American who was born in South Korea in 67 and came to the USA for studies in 91. First few years I had a hard time to speak and write but It was so helpful to speak when I had an American Girl Friend. She help me to improve my speaking and written English skill. I think English as second language put in the category between 3 to 4. As a baby all human being are expose the mother language during pregnancy period and up to 2 to 3 years to start mumble words and short sentence. As language learner everyone need 10000 hours to start speak. 10000 hours divided by 8 hours per day equals 1250 days and it divided by365 equals 3.425 years with rounding. Let me hear from you about this approach.
it depends on your native language if you are west European it should be very easy if you are Korean it could be a lot harder since the vocabulary is so different
Those categories are made by the USA's Foreign Service Institute. It's all in relation to English speakers, and measured by how many hours they need to learn those languages. It would make no sense trying to give English a category in that list. What you'd need to do, is make a similar list for Korean speakers (or for any other language), and you'd have to re categorize every language on that list. For instance, Japanese would probably jump from Category V to maybe I or II (guessing here, I heard it's easy for Koreans). For speakers of German or Dutch, English wouldn't be as hard as it would be for speakers of Korean, Mandarin, or Arabic, so you'd need to make full lists for every language.
@@frechjo yes you are right I agree with your observation about languages from Korean perspective. Language of Korean is based on sound not the meaning. It is so easy if you know Korean consonants and vowel. 14 consonants and10 vowels. You are able to read and speak
A German friend of mine, whose American-accented English was flawless, was offered an insane scholarship to learn Spanish in Madrid. After that she got an offer to teach German and English at a university in Mexico. Her colleagues were a little distant when she first got there, but she's German, so she understands "distant". Then she got into the classroom, and when the students heard her Castilian accent, they threw things at her, called her a whore, walked out, and vandalized her car. That was in the 1980s, so maybe Mexicans are more tolerant of various Spanish accents these days.
There are 3 countries that speak it (+ some Caribean islands) and you can easily communicate with Afrikaans speakers in South Africa and Namibia with it. Also is a good gateway to learning German afterwards.
@@kimashitawa8113All of those countries speak a much more common language aswell. Dutch is beautiful but unless one is marrying into, has deep love for the culture, plans to work, wants to become a dutch citizen; theres not a whole lot of “usage” for the languge. But i personally dont think there needs to be one for someone to want to learn.
@@Dylan-oy3ch That's still at least 2 countries (Dutch is spoken by more people in Belgium than French) I'm still pretty sure it's 3 because isn't Dutch also the biggest language in Suriname?
I took Spanish in high school thinking I'd use it, and I never did. Having taken Latin first really helped, and I can also understand Italian without having studied it at all. I watch UA-cam documentaries in Italian, Spanish, French. I can understand written Swedish/Danish/Norwegian and Dutch and Afrikaans just from their similarities with English and German. Still, easiness doesn't work for me as a sole motivator, I guess, which is why I've been getting back into Latin after 30 years of not using it, and have been working on Arabic for the past year. Motivation and interest > easiness, in my opinion, though it's great fun to accidentally be able to understand languages you don't speak.
Italian has seven vowel sounds written with five letters. Spanish has five vowel sounds written with five letters. The stress of the Italian words is not indicated by their spelling, except in oxytonous plurisyllabic words. In Spanish, the location of the stress of the word is always predictable by its spelling.
Swedish also has the benefit of being riddled with compound words. I can't recall off the top of my head, but it's well over 50% off all words. This means that if you learn a set number of base words, you can exponentially expand your vocabulary in very little time. It's also structure in the same way as English is, which helps. For example. The word for fire truck or fire engine is just brandbil, which is a combination of fire (brand) and car (bil) - That's 3 words added to your vocabulary. The word for toy is leksak, which is a combination of play (lek) and thing (sak) - That's another 3 words. As you can imagine, your vocabulary will probably grow pretty fast once you get the hang of it. Wish you luck! 😃
It's arguable whether a compound word is a different word than its part, I guess. Linguists rarely discuss vocabulary, in the matter of how many words a language "has". Just about every single point in defining it could be debated.
I’m wanting to learn 5 languages but I see that 2 of said languages are category 4s 😂 (my great grandmother who passed a month after I was born knew 7 languages including her own native language which wasn’t English) One is cuz my gfs family is Cantonese & the other is Korean cuz I find attraction to the language. The other 2 languages are either finish or Swedish & then finally spanish. I deal with a lot of Spanish at my workplace, so it’s a must & would help greatly, the other ones I’m debating between is because it’s the places I would move to if I moved to Europe. Edit: Kind of scared of all the effort & time it’s going to cost me, but I’m willing to try. Just need to fix a few more things in my life before I can truly have energy or mentality for it.
I had never heard Swahili before, it sounds amazing! Now I wanna learn it! Edit: Oh, and he forgot to mention that Dutch is also spoken in South America.
If we left off the writing system, Japanese is very easy. I know some people are obsessed with pitch accent but you learn it naturally you don’t need to study it much. Japanese is easy to pronounce and the grammar isn’t too hard unless you are going to higher level concepts. Japanese is really only hard in that it takes time to read, write, and speak.
12:40 Spanish is objectively simpler than Italian (seen from English, of course), even if the differences are minimal: Spanish has fewer phonemes (v.g. Italian makes a distinction between long and short o and e, that Spanish does not), and Italian keeps a couple of grammar features that Spanish lost in the early modern period (compare the Italian sentences "lui l'ha chiamata (he has called her), lui l'ha chiamato (he has called him) lui è stato (he has been), lei è stata (she has been)", grammatically reduced in the Spanish "él lo ha llamado, el la ha llamado, el ha estado, ella ha estado"). I also take it personal to say Italian is closer to Latin, but whatever, both are beautiful languages, not that Portuguese nasal babbling (just joking, love Portuguese too. Great video!)
I'm learning European Portuguese right now and in what I've seen so far is that Brazilian Portuguese might be slightly more easy to learn. Sure you have to get used to the pronunciation but I think it's isn't that hard and plus you only have to learn four different conjugations. Also there are a lot of Brazilian content out there
4:42 for translating butterflies you just say kupu-kupu, no need to repeat again because it has plural sense too. Or just say "banyak kupu-kupu" in terms of quantity.
I am doing a couple of languages at the same time. I recommend doing languages that interest you rather than just because it is relatively easy. Especially if you have exposure to a language, because the best way to learn a language is through comprehensible input. So if you have exposure, you can just learn over time without putting much effort in it. I am doing Tagalog because I have exposure to it. It is related to Indonesian and there are some similarities, but I still find it difficult. I am a native Dutch speaker. Dutch is a difficult language to learn, the reason it is high on the list, is because it is similar to English. It is also similar to German. Dutch has a lot of exceptions and Dutch people use a lot of expressions. I am also doing German, because it is so similar to Dutch and I learned some German in school, I just want to get better at it. I also had French in school, so I am also trying to brush that up. Furthermore I am doing Esperanto. I tried to learn Esperanto decades ago, but stopped then, now I am just doing the Duolingo course and occasionally watching some comprehensible input on UA-cam. I also started learning Spanish, mainly because Tagalog uses a lot of Spanish vocabulary and for me it is much easier to learn than Tagalog. Finally I started learning some Chinese. I do get some exposure to it here in Asia. So far it seems to be an easy language to me, just reading and writing is difficult. I am also trying to do a local language here in the Philippines. Many locals do not speak foreign languages like Filipino or English. But there is not that much material available in that language and no courses, so I have to rely on my exposure and maybe make my own materials using AI. I am also improving my comprehension of Filipino-English. Filipinos use a lot of Tagalog ways of saying things that do not make sense to people with a background in English or American English. The words are all English, but it doesn't make sense to me sometimes. They actually learn that in school here, and they don't have a clue why foreigners do not understand them. The course I like most is Languagetransfer, so all languages they have are at least on my maybe list. It's a good way to get a quick start with a language. I also do Duolingo. It's not the best way to learn a language, but it's good enough and it's entertaining and good to get a learning routine. They have many languages, but for the smaller languages (like Esperanto and Chinese) it's just a start to get you going. From there you can learn more through exposure.
As someone who comes from a very dutch family, dutch is quite easy if you just want to be able to speak a bit of the language. If you want to sound like a real local however, then its a different story.
I was also thinking that Afrikaans should be included here. Also, I think that some languages would be even easier for Afrikaans speakers to learn than for English-only speakers, including Indonesian and Malay (which share most vocabulary AFAIK), as Afrikaans also includes "loan words" from Malay/Indonesian - such as piesang, bobotie...
Olly, I have a video idea. The easiest to hardest Slavic languages to learn. Or the three or five easiest. Or if you want to learn a Slavic language, do you start with one using the Cyrillic alphabet or one that uses the Latin alphabet.
@@tovarishchfeixiao What's interesting is the Western Slavic, that use the Latin Alphabet, are considered harder than the others. I guess that makes Slovene the easiest Latin Alphabet.
Last year I casually studied Norwegian for about six weeks and can understand and read most of what I hear/see. Speaking it, however, not so much. Would need a little more time.
4:40 - the word such kupu-kupu is called "kata ganda semu" (pseudo-reduplication word) it's not deliver as plural word, the word has to be reduplicated to deliver its meanings, or the words will be have no meaning, or be as a bound morpheme. There's abundant of them Kanak-kanak (kids), if only kanak without reduplication, it has no meaning Anting-anting (earings), same case, you need to reduplicate the word to deliver the meaning biri-biri (sheep), umang-umang (hermit crab), obor-obor (jellyfish), anai-anai (termite), kura-kura (tortoise), etc. However, there are some of these pseudo-reduplication words have different meaning if they are not reduplicated, which means they can be a free morpheme with a meaning too, Orang-orang - means scarecrow, if spelled only "orang" without reduplication it means "people" Angkut-angkut - a type of wasp, if spelled only "angkut" it will be a verb means to carry, or to transport Okay, so to make them plural, they don't need to do a reduplication again, it wld be redundant, yet not practical, simply use the plural maker words, or word that describes the quantities, or quantifier, example you want to say; "there is a few butterflies - beberapa ekor kupu-kupu" "a group of butterflies - kawanan kupu-kupu" "There are five sheep in the barn - terdapat lima ekor biri-biri di dalam bangsal" Hope this explanations help, I'm a Malay speaking person by the way.
I already speak American English, Danish and Swedish as a native speaker due to family connections and where I grew up. I fully understand Norwegian, especially bokmål, although I dont speak it. I teach both English and Danish as second languages. Danish is much harder to learn for English speakers as there is very little melody in the language compared to Swedish and Norwegian. Grammar is relatively easy and there are many words in Danish similar to English, but pronunciation is the real killer for most learners. The Scandinavian languages have three extra vowel sounds that don’t exist in English. I’m probably an A2 to B1 in German, and I’m attempting to learn Persian and West Greenlandic. The latter is by far the hardest. I love the Persian script. It’s like learning a code language.
If you're going to bring up conlangs, Toki Pona is like 120 or so words. Most of the difficulty will probably be trying to figure out how to break down your sentences into far simpler ones.
Thanks for Esperanto - Modern Intercontinental or interplanetary. The astronaut Mark Shuttleworth (South African entrepreneur) flew aboard the Russian Soyuz mission in 2002. While onboard, he communicated in Esperanto as part of his outreach to international audiences. Shuttleworth’s use of Esperanto helped raise awareness of the language in unique & high-profile setting. Esperanto is inter cultural language to understand the world. Esperanto was taught in schools in 1905 in China, Macedonia, Samos... Esperanto gained traction in Japan, especially among intellectuals & students during early 1900s. French schools started teaching Esperanto in 1900s as part of broader movement to promote international communication. Educational institutions in Germany included Esperanto in their curricula during early XX century. Herzberg am Harz, Esperanto Urbo became popular, & flourished economically.
I find Norwegian fairly easy to pick up because of the Afrikaans I grew up speaking. The sentence structure is very similar so far (in what I've learned so far), with the only big difference being that Afrikaans uses a 'double negative' to indicate negatives, and Norwegian does not. Obviously I easily understand written Dutch fairly well and spoken Dutch (spoken slowly enough) because of my Afrikaans. (When I was there I was told by locals that they very much prefer to call their language 'Netherlands' and NOT Dutch). Some Italian and Portuguese words I catch because I've been studying Spanish casually.
Have you won your guaranteed prize yet? 👉 storylearning.com/big-autumn-giveaway
Olly you can play Interlingua on Closemaster
Why didn't you add Toki Pona as a bonus easy language?
Bahasa melayu/Indonesia is the easiest.
When I click on the link to claim the prize and enter my name and email address, I keep getting a message saying "Sorry, there was an error. Please try again later." I have tried with different browsers and devices.
The closest language to English is SCOTS.
The easiest language for you is the one you are passionate about.
Nein,Nein,Nein!
But necessarily. I speak, to varying levels, 8 languages. I'm very passionate about Georgia and the Georgian language but the grammar, especially for verbs, is extremely difficult.
So true
i agree
More like it will make you stay at it and more often
1. Swedish/Danish/Norwegian
2. Indonesian/Malay
3. Swahili
4. Dutch/Flemish (in 🇧🇪)
5. Italian
6. Spanish
7. Esperanto
I really hate Esperanto included in these Top easiest languages. It's a made up language, so it's designed to be easy. If we are looking for a made up language, maybe Toki Pona would be better.
You forgot Low German. Its grammar is much easier than the High German one.
@@DanSolo871 Why do you hate it? Have you experienced misuse of it.
@@DanSolo871which european language is easiest plz tell me
@@Mehedihasan-yt6mxdutch
4:42 Here is my explanation as an Indonesian speaker. While it is true that we express plurality by repeating words, that is not always the case. This may be confusing for English speakers, but in Indonesian we do not need to change a noun just because it is singular or plural.
Usually we just add a number in front of the noun to express quantity. For example, "two bicycles" is simply "dua sepeda", never "dua sepeda-sepeda". That is why we are not confused by words like "kupu-kupu", which is already a reduplication, because we never need to say "dua kupu-kupu kupu-kupu".
Moreover, according to the Indonesian dictionary, "kupu" already means "butterfly", even without the reduplication. So, technically, you can express sentences like “butterflies are flying around” by simply saying “kupu beterbangan” and leave it at that, since the verb “beterbangan” itself already indicates that there are many butterflies involved.
Terima kasih untuk komentnya
In fact, the reduplication (as it seems is the term for this) is not used for expressing a plural but changes the signification of the noun into something more generic. For example, when you want to speak about one person you say "satu orang". If you mention "orang orang", you speak about people in general, or "buku buku" when you speak about all the books (present or not present in front of you) with no precision.
When he asked that I was thinking that you all probably treat it in the same way that people treat Buffalo or moose in english being both singular and plural
Not having an explicit he/she/it is annoying though. And the rules around using "to be" are goofy. And the lack of time tense with verbs means you have to be specific and use extra verbiage (you can't just say "I will read" or "I read", you have to add something to indicate when something has or will occur.) Indonesian is painful. 😂
Masuk angin always made me laugh.
Years ago I fell in love with Italian. I started learning it by myself and it was so enjoyable. I was flying through the manual. I think if you love the language you are learning it's much more easier
On average women learn languages faster.
@@chocolatecookie8571 not really the point. I was female when I rapidly became fluent in Mandarin (my favorite language); still female when I gave up on French because it just wasn't motivating me.
@@Yarniac I don't shy away from the facts which is that women learn languages faster on average than men.
@@chocolatecookie8571 why would they learn faster
what's your mother tongue?
Please note the hours required in the FSI chart. The 24-30 weeks assumes about six hours of full-time study EVERY DAY for six or seven months. And this is not to achieve fluency but a basic proficiency in the B1-B2 range. I went through the Russian course at Defense Language Institute and the standards are very similar to FSI. After 47 weeks of full time study, the best students were probably B2 and the average students were mid to upper B1.
I've actually saw those charts thinking I was mentally slow af 😂😂 Gosh that's a relief!
Вы были одним из лучших студентов или просто средним?
@@FeaurumДа, я закончил курс вторым лучшим из шестидесяти студентов.
which is enough to travel... B2 is already quite high...
@@headstanding_PenguinYes, B2 is a good level of proficiency for getting along quite well in a culture.
Can confirm Swahili is incredibly simple to understand and grasp, it’s quickly become my favourite language I’ve ever learnt!
Kiswahili ni lugha rahisi sana! Unaweza kukijifunza haraka sana 🫶🏻🇰🇪🇹🇿
Hongera!!! :-)
@zoologistsam I used to watch Jessie on Disney Channel. The little girl's name was Zuri, which in Swahili, means good.
I don't speak Italian and never studied it. But just by knowing Portuguese and Spanish and being quite alert, I could hold conversations in "Italian", when I was in Rome. Ok, it wasn't really Italian, but we had rather long conversations where we mutually understood each other. Just by figuring some basic stuff like present and past tense conjugation, and plural, and there you go.
Agree, Spaniard here, never a problem when l go to Italy, very similar
John McWhorter(linguist) suggested that colloquial Indonesian would be an ideal universal language of the world.
yup. Bahasa melayu/Indonesia is the easiest language to learn and master.
@@nsevv colloquial malay is so much more complicated than colloquial indonesian.
At least it definitelly would be more optimal than English.
well old form of Indonesian (classical Malay) were lingua franca in South East Asian region
back then even Vietnam knows classical Malay let alone traders
Just for reference..the dude singing 2:28 - 2:32 did not pronounce a single swedish word...that was international jibberish in my swedish ears. Update: OK, he might have gotten the first word "Hej" right, after that it was all "nothingness" as a swede. The attempt was "Hej tomtegubbar, slå i glasen och låt oss lustiga vara! "...he got "Hej" right.
lmao I'm glad to hear that confirmation of what I was thinking- I lived in Sweden for a few years - didn't have too much time to seriously study the language but I learned a semi-decent amount and certainly HEARD it every day, mostly on the bus or the local ICA- and to me it was jibberish and sounded VERY American, not at all Swedish. I guess I at least got to a point where bad, American-sounding "Swedlish" is obvious as being that even to me!
@@kalevipoeg6916 The language melody was 'fairly' successful, though...
I'm Slavic and idk why but Swahili sounds so interesting to me, for me prefixes are way easier then changing the end of the word.
wow! OLLY RICHARDS!! dankon pro spekti kaj inkluzivi min en via video!!! I am truly humbled and honoured and super motivated to continue my Esperanto learning journey! WOW!❤
I just came back from those 3 countries- Denmark, Norway, Sweden was fairly easy to understand the languages in writing I bought a book in Swedish and read it
I fell in love with Spanish when I was 5, watching Sesame Street when they taught the numbers 1-10 in Spanish. I ended up with a Master's degree in teaching Spanish because of that lol.
Great video Olly! Thanks to your content I found a way to learn French. After roughly 10 months I am at a lower B1 level. All thanks to your story learning method!
I just wanted to make a comment to your point at 3:10.
While it is true that many Scandinavians understand the other two languages, we must remember that this requires extremely good listening skills, and an English person learning Swedish will probably not pick up Norwegian and Danish as easy as it might sound. Go out on the streets of Norway or Sweden and ask random natives if they understand spoken Danish. Most people will actually say no. The Scandinavians who immerse a lot in the other two languages mostly have no issues, but a lot of native Scandinavians really struggle with understanding the other two languages. Due to our many dialects a lot of Scandinavians struggle to also understand some people from the same country!
I am a native Norwegian in a relationship with a Swede. We understand each other just fine. But whenever we visit her family in Sweden, I have to adjust my Norwegian to a middle road language called "Svorsk" (Swedish with a thick Norwegian accent). Because if I speak to her family in my west Norwegian dialect, they understand nothing.
For a person learning Swedish, understanding Norwegian and Danish as well is going to take a lot of time. In order to comprehend Norwegian and Danish, your Swedish listening skills must be superb, close to native level. And for this reason, your target when learning Swedish should be to learn Swedish, and not Norwegian and Danish. However, if you move to Sweden and learn Swedish, and then move to Norway for some reason, you will pick up Norwegian to a good level in no time. Probably less than six months. But if you learn Swedish and expect to understand Norwegian and Danish as well, you might be disappointed.
I think we can compare it to Spanish and Catalan. A person from Catalonia can probably understand Spanish just fine. A Spanish person can maybe get by in Catalonia. However if I, a native Norwegian, were to learn Spanish to a B2 level. Would I also understand Catalan? Definitely no. But if I were to move to Barcelona I could probably pick it up easier than a person who speaks no Spanish.
My channel is fairly new, but I have already made a video about this exact subject. Check it out if you are interested.
As always, thanks for your videos Olly. I'm a huge fan of your content and also the story learning method.
Thanks for the explanation!
To be fair, Olly only says "you can also understand Norwegian and Danish too".
He doesn't say "spoken Norwegian and Danish".
İ for one find it not that difficult understanding written Danish and Norwegian. Even though İ sometimes don't understand a thing when Danes and Norwegians talk.
Especially Danish is super difficult to follow.
İn fact, this happened to İ several times: İ thought a bunch of people were talking Cantonese or Vietnamese. İ only hear they at first, then İ see those people and they're blond. After listening more closely İ realize that they're Danes. 🙆🏽♀️
The last time this happened is actually less than a month ago.
That time chart is Fu*k@d. Who can spend 25 hours per week on this? 8, maybe. So triple the number of weeks listed in this silly chart.
They aren't separate languages for nothing!
i was going to compare spanish with portuguese... im a native portuguese speaker and listening spanish is very easy. many portuguese speakers pick up spanish really easy
Great video. Another important thing is (for us whom English is our second language) that the list will vary depending on your mother tongue.
For english speakers it's easier to learn chinese than it is for spanish speakers. On the other hand Japanese is a LOT easier for spanish speakers than it is for English speakers, since the vowels in Japanese have the same sound as in Spanish.
And that goes for any other language. The closer it is to your mother tongue and the more passionate you are about that language, The more you will enjoy learning it. ❤
Finally, someone notices that Bahasa Indonesia is such a simple language.
But you will notice soon if you come to Indonesia that the people of Indonesia don't speak regular Bahasa Indonesia; there is also much Indonesian slang that is added to the conversation. Learning regular Bahasa Indonesia doesn't help you so much actually, as people in Indonesia think that regular one is too formal and kind of weird to bring it into conversation. That's why we, as the Indonesian itself, feel that our language is hard to understand (especially its poetry). Some of my friends even said that it's easier to get a better score at the English examination compared to Bahasa Indonesia (even though we're not an English-speaking country).
Yes. Colloquial is difficult.
Yeah! You can understand BBC English well but you would be totally lost in parts of Scotland!
@@timgilligan3885 That's not the best example though. Because the difference between BBC English and Scottish English is the accent (and sometimes a few Scots or Gaelic words here and there, depending on where and who you talk with), while the original comment talks about something more similar to what Finnish has with Standard vs colloquial.
@@tovarishchfeixiao Agree with this as an Indonesian, it's easier to understand indian accent much more than the british accent
I guess Malaysian accent is kinda closest to standard Indonesian for most part of city in Malaysia (except Northern part of Malaysian had accent that even Malaysian cant even know they spoke).Maybe except few Dutch loanword like Handuk and Kantor
Than you very much for mentioning my two favourite languages in the video. I love Swedish and keep learning this just for fun, because it is a language of ABBA and Roxette.
Kaj mi multege dankas por la menciado de Esperanto! The overview of this language was very positive, and additionally very nice and kind Esperanto speakers were shown as examples.
Esperanto can truly help in learning some other European language thanks to its similarities to them. It also can help to overcome the barrier of hesitation when it comes to learning langiages. Way not all people are linguistically gifted if it comes to learning them, since reading rules, grammar nuances or exceptions can discourage to continue the learning. Esperanto in this regard is quite flexible, so that one can learn it playfully remaining free of stress. I can endlessly speak about Esperanto's upsides, but it's really worthy, at least, it brings lots of pleasure.
Esperanto also helps learning other languages in general. The most difficult language a person learns is their 1st 2nd language. Esperanto helps in that, since it is easier. Although you still have to put work in. In time you should have developed good study habits.
Esperanto additionally helps in learning Agglutinative languages, since word formation is done similarly.
Free Word Order as well, you can switch it up to get used to languages that have a different word order.
Still waiting for your "Short Stories in Indonesian" and "Short Stories in Afrikaans" Olly. 😉
Yes, although a good chunk of that is that it's dead simple if you speak any of the languages that were used to create it. But, the bigger benefit is that you can skip the step where it sound weird hearing foreign words coming out of your mouth and establish that it's possible to learn a new language so you stop fighting it.
Bahasa melayu/Indonesia is the easiest.
Esperanto is the fastest to learn & builds motivation, concept of multilingual benefits, & good structure to link the other languages that are less logical (eg English, 1 of the most illogical spelling & idioms ;) my 5th & best language (not counting the split from Serbocroatian to 4 different & similar - Slovenian, Bulgarian, Slovak...)
I'm wanting to get back into language learning, I'm thinking this is the way I'll go.
Esperanto menciita :D
My aunt is from 11:52 Utrecht, she actually got me started on learning Nederlands alongside her daughter/my cousin.
Esperanto! Category 0 - hands down, the easiest living language in the world to learn. And it's more useful than one might think.
They say if you want to make money, the language to learn is English. But if you want to make friends, you should learn *Esperanto*.
And this is absolutely true: I have made hundreds of friends around the world (and met many of them in their home countries, or they have visited mine) all because of Esperanto. Yes, there isn't a single country where the language is official, but there are Esperantists in just about every city and country around the world. This can be a big advantage: you'll never travel alone when you know Esperanto, in just about any foreign country you will have locals who are your instant friends wherever you go. No need to stick to just the tourist traps when local friends can show you the authentic local country & culture!
I have never met anyone anywhere who speaks Esperanto, but it sounds easy to learn. Maybe I will try it.
Same for English
Easy for European language speakers
@@Emjazzuli The vocabulary might be easier for romance speaking people, but overall the language is easier for everyone. Many Japanese people told me how much Esperanto is easier for them than English.
Great list. i love that you put Esperanto on here. it is a great language for someone who is just starting off learning other languages. and it is surprisingly useful
If you don't mind me asking, in which situations is it useful? I'm thinking of learning it through UA-cam and Duolingo, but i'm researching first.
i got so happy when i saw italian! i’m trying to learn it for 6 months now
02:16 No way Georgian and the Uralic languages are not level 5. No matter what the FS says. The grammar is incredibly difficult. For instance, Russian is MUCH easier to lean than Georgian. I speak both, and there's no comparison. I've also worked in Georgia with many FS officers, and I've never heard one who could actually speak Georgian to any meaningful level.
Similar issues with them putting Danish in Category 1. I can't imagine anyone who's ever actually taught Danish, or learnt it as an adult, agreeing with this. Heck, even Norwegians have trouble understanding most variants of spoken Danish these days, and Dutch speakers have a hard time with it too. Being able to read a book or say something that people will more or less understand doesn't equal "having learnt a language". You need to be able to have conversations if you're learning for work purposes.
that fsi ranking is quite bad anyway they put everything they don't know much about in level 4 and why is German its own rank anyway
Finnish learner here, and I agree; the grammar is diabolical. But I love the language anyway.
@@corinna007I'm learning finnish too, in a matter of vocabulary the language is easy, but then you put all the grammar there and you're in hell.
@@rdklkje13 person: where do we put danish on here?
fsi: Just put in Category 1, for both english and danish being germanic.
Only 2 million Esperanto speakers in the world. So unless you really search for them , the chance that you ever use it is almost zero.
In general we Esperantists actively seek each other. We are a real international community. I use Esperanto every day.
Mi lernas Esperanton por amuzo, ne por "uzi ĝin por laboro" aŭ kio ajn
@@danielcotarelogarcia1615Good for you. And you can keep that dodo language
@@AirtimeAdrenalineThat reads like very basic kitchen Portuguese
είμαι εξωγήινος και δεν μου φτάνουν τα αγγλικά, που ειναι μια γλώσσα χίμαιρα από μόνη της.
θέλω να μάθω άλλη μια, που ειναι σαν κάδος απορριμάτων της αργκου όλης της Ευρώπης, συγχαρητήρια ποδολαγνείοι, κερδίσατε μια θέση σε αυτόν τον πλανήτη με προοπτική να γίνεται νούμερο ένα γλώσσα.
γιατί όπως ξέρουμε όλοι, ειναι μια γλώσσα που δεν έχει ρίζες... ναι εντάξει... και θα φέρει την ειρήνη... ναι ναι οκ.
Εντάξει κόβω
Hello from Indonesia! I am an Esperanto speaker. Thanks for making this video 🙋🏻
Ankaux mi parolas Esperanton!
When i was in the Netherlands i was amazed how well they speak English. The Norwegians also! The younger folks speak better English than most Americans.
When I was in Europe in the 1970's French was the universal language ( so i was told) . The English spoken was with a British accent. For the most part I didn't hear that anymore in my most recent trip. They are speaking with a American accent. Very informative video. Thank you
The american accent is maybe because you can find more movies and videos in that version than in British. Like as you have to put the "british version" in the search to not get american voices as a search result.
It was a pleasant surprise to see Esperanto mentioned here. I speak it, it definitely was much easier to learn than other languages I studied and it was much more useful than I could ever imagine.
I'm curious how was it useful
@@jlcarrasco In addition to the many benefits you get from learning any language, Esperanto can be useful for many reasons, to get friends from smaller countries like Iceland, Hungary. For travelling there is a service called Pasporta servo where you can get free accommodation while travelling, you often get free guides while visiting various cities, etc.
@@jlcarrasco Wondering the same thing. I'm 53, but I never met someone who speaks it. And I traveled a lot in my life.
@@MrPleers same, i have heard people said it made learning other languages easier, but i wonder why not just put that time into actually learning these languages
Hi Olly. Interesting video. Have you thought about a video on Irish/Scots Gaelic? Would love to see one please. 👍
🙏🙏🙏
As an English-as-a-second language learner, I confirm Dutch sounds to me like English used to... Plus a flemgh.
It sounds like German with a really weird accent to me, haha. Or somewhere between German and English.
@@AmyBalotAs a Dutch person I first started realising just how much Dutch is in between English and German, when started learning German. 😅😊
English is more similar to Spanish than Italian. Spanish is much more regular, plural is almost equal to English, past perfect tense is exactly equal to English, possesive is similar. Definitively Spanish is much easier for an English speaker. Spanish has not thousands of double consonants like in Italian.
Languages are more than textbook practice. Immersion is extremely helpful. For English speakers, the Germanic languages are difficult to get an immersion experience in because it’s hard to find non-English-speaking people to patiently work with you. So Italian or Spanish are much easier in that sense because there are millions of monolingual speakers to practice with.
For Swedish if you want listening experience there is a certain sport Lemont talked about watching where they speak in NOTHING but Swedish. Can't remember what specific sport it was but that is great for input since so many Swedish media in one way or another he was finding English in there.
I wish there was something similar with Hindi and many other Indian languages.
I would have never assumed that about Swahili. Super interesting vid!
Glad you liked it!
The easiest is the one that you wanna use and study every day - I studied Spanish 2 years in high school, didn’t use it for 1.5 and then took it up again last year in septemer. Now a year later I speak it fluently enough to have coherent conversations without many standstills.
I knew that either Indonesian or Malaysian would be on here. Super simple!
most my former workmate were working here master Malay/Indonesian about 3 months
Thanks for this epic video Ollie!
Glad you liked it!
Do you even know what "epic" actually means?
No1: Native Language : Most useful language is the one in the society you live in.
No2 : English Language : Most useful Global workable language.
No3 : Spanish Language : (Personal Choice) Most interesting culturally.
No4 : Russian Language : (Personal Choice) Second most interesting culturally.
For Global World Travel : (Personal Choice) English, Spanish, French, Russian, Mandarin, Hindi, Arabic.
The song used to introduce Swahili is actually Lingála, one of the 4 official languages in the Congo and the most influential language in contemporary African music. It's Massu by the great Franco Luambo Makiadi. I was really surprised by this mistake cause I speak both languages. Lingála is also a bantu language of the Benue-Congo family while Swahili has got a lot of Indian, Arabic influences. For modern concepts english words are often borrowed and in urban areas they speak some kind of swahili-english "creole".
In general I can say that bantu languages are easy to learn and one rule of thumb to learn any language is to live with people or have friends who speak the langue and speak exclusively that language.
DRC Swahili is heavily influenced by French however and differs vastly from other Swahili dialect. Not so?
@PhansiKhongoloza yes that's right. DRC having been colonized by Belgium is a french speaking country so when it comes to Swahili in urban areas in Eastern Congo it is mixed with french (same for Rwanda and Burundi probably). For instance the Kenyan girl in the video talked about "Valentine's day" in Congo we'd say "la Saint Valentin" which is the holiday's name in french.
2:19 Ok, but is that from an English point of view?
I guess so, bc I would think that it is easier for example for a Polish to learn Russian than German, and it is easier for a Korean to learn Japanese or an Arab to learn Hebrew or for a Dutch/Swede/Dane/Norwegian to learn German than to learn French etc..
I fell in love with languages at age 6 and I'm now 25. I am fluent in German, Russian, Spanish, Albanian, Italian, and French. I'm currently learning Italian, Arabic, and Mandarin. My wife hates it when I talk to her in other languages but I do it anyway. I am currently teaching my 2 boys German, Spanish, and Albanian and they are advancing quickly. Must be a genetic gift.
Be realistic my friend , learning any language is not easy , because there are also different levels of understanding and especially speaking ,in all languages . Ok , it is easy in all languages to learn simple things like ‘ can I have ´ , ‘ I like this ‘ etc etc , but when it comes to giving your opinion and speaking with real native speakers ,that is another question !
I speak as an English person who speaks French fluently , and who has a good knowledge of German and Arabic . NONE OF THE MAJOR USEFUL WORLD LANGUAGES ARE EASY , and each one needs hours of patient learning , listening , reading and speaking ! So let’s be realistic and not give simplistic , media friendly solutions to complex learning situations !
And something else : There are many different language families in the world , and your learning capacity will be effected by which language family you come from and in which language family is the language you want to learn .
Tourist friendly short dialogues are easily learnt but really mastering a foreign language takes time and full immersions. When I write "really mastering" I mean having a spoken and written vocabulary almost as rich as the one you have in your mother tongue
Absolutely, regardless whether the language is considered "easy" for English speakers for example, the hard part about language learning is definitely understanding natives, getting used to a foreign sound system, learning vocabulary. Related languages make it easier to use specific grammar constructions because of their similarities, but you still need a high number of hours spent with the language, regardless of its lexical similarity with your own language
Very true. I am a native Dutch speaker and I speak English, Indonesian , French , Spanish and German. I always hear people talking about how easy Indoneisan is and I guess that’s kind of true if you’re talking survival level and informal conversation. But most foreign speakers of Indonesian make many mistakes but they’ll never realize it until they try something like a formal letter or an academic or literary text. Indonesian are usually too polite to point out errors anyway. Several things said about the language in the video are misleading. Purely phonetic? No, for instance Indonesian has two phonemes represented by the letter e, it also has digraphs, it has a word-initial velar nasal which many people can’t pronounce properly, it has a glottal stop represented by k in some words but not in others… Doubling a word for the plural form does exist but is not appropriate in every context (“two houses” is NOT dua rumah-rumah). There is a considerable difference between the formal and informal register in vocabulary but also in the use of grammatical prefixes and suffixes. I see videos with titles like “guy amazes locals by speaking perfect Indonesian” only to see them address older people with the informal pronoun “kamu” which is kinda rude, no Indonesian would address a person of authority like that, but Indonesians will generally tolerate it in everyday interactions with foreigners. However wouldn’t recommend it if you are talking to a government official in order to get some kind of permit. Try explaining something technical or legal in formal Indonesian, with lots of relative clauses for example, and the “simple suffixes” suddenly aren’t so simple anymore.
You may notice he did not say "Easy languages to learn". He said "Languages you can learn fast". Not the same thing
Besides ease is relative. Maybe all of those languages were hard for you and as a native English speaker even Spanish gave me some trouble but a friend I went to high school with found it super easy. And given that Olly's audience is primarily native English speakers I don't think he needs to clarify
You may also notice he literally listed the hours on his category chart. Like category 2 takes supposedly 900 hours - I don't think anyone would define that as easy unless we're talking in comparison to other languages. Which he is. So I can't even figure out what your problem is
Like you came and wrote this whole paragraph but I can't even figure out what your specific complaint or proposed solution is
Being realistic doesn't sell.
Omg, the kid speaking Italian doing the hand gestures is the cutest thing
Olly, in your foreign language stories books, it would be really helpful to have story translations and a glossary at the end of the books.
Please make a beginner guide on how to learn indonesian language 🙏
Really interested in this language but can't find where to practice my listening skill and grammar especially.
The best part about Italians saying in bocca al Lupo for good luck is that the response is Crepi, (or crepi il lupo) meaning, "May it die" (or "may the wolf die")
4:28 that was a beautiful song. Now I need to listen to the full version.
Awesome clip. Enriching to see how native speakers articulate their own language.
just a tip for dutch learners, the flemish accent (spoken in Belgium) uses a much softer form of the g, ch and sch sound so it may be easier for you to pronounce and a softer g will sound more natural to a native's ear than overcompensating on the g's and making it harsher.
Hey Olly, thanks for your videos! They are very good. What languages do you speak currently?
I was watching a wonderful horror film called dead snow 2, a bit of it is in Norwegian and Icelandic, despite the subtitles, after a while you start to get your ear in and almost don't need the subtitles
Fast is a relative term. It takes hours and hours of intensive study to learn a language past phrase book level. Personally, I stick to my native language and try to speak that as best I can. It's not going too badly, so far.
Out of all those languages, only Italian can be learned fast (provided you speak French or Spanish). Swedish for instance definitely cannot be learned fast and Norwegian is actually easier to learn for English speakers than Swedish is. 3:00 is Danish, not Swedish.
Swedish has difficult phonetics while Danish, as far as I know, has more restricitve syntax than German, so I would not dare to say any of them can be learned quickly.
@@agatastaniak7459 Well either way my point still stands: Swedish, Norwegian or Danish are not languages you can learn fast. Italian yes but not the rest.
Thanks for this video!
I was exactly looking for new languages to learn, i want to arrive as quick as possible at 10 and i'm stuck at 7, i seriously don't know what to choose.
Nice video! I am learning German and it isn’t even on the list. That’s not a shocker at all! For a possible next video it would be nice if you could talk about different regional accents in Oklahoma and Arkansas. I live in Oklahoma and where I live we have some twang going on. We use Midwestern and Southern dialect mashed up together. For instance instead of saying “sir-up” we say “surp.” Another example is we elongate the “a” in words too. The word “grandma” sounds like you add an “L” at the end of it. We say “y’all” and drop the “g” in “ing” all the time. I reckon that’d be the influence from the South. For me I say “ope” and that’s definitely from the Midwest. That’s the only thing I can think of. Moving on, I want to learn more about my regional accent because there isn’t one for the Oklahoma and Arkansas region. Oklahoma isn’t in the Deep South but we have a twang going on.
I think German is considered "mid-difficult" mostly for its grammar. Vocabulary and pronunciation is about as difficult as Dutch, probably, but the gender and case system can quickly be a handful.
I know a few languages to varying degrees. It is amusing to me how easily I pick up "hard" languages. Maybe I just want it more and am prepared to work harder. [Mine in order of attempt are Spanish, Russian, Finnish, German, Japanese, and French. I tried Hungarian before Finnish, but I've forgotten almost everything of that one.]
vov russian and finish are very hard languages I couldn t dare to touch those beast languages 😂
I think a lot of the languages categorized as "hard for English speakers" may just be figuring in having another alphabet or writing system to learn, of course it's easier to learn Italian when you already know the Latin alphabet, etc. I've worked as a German translator for 15+ years, I enjoyed it more than Spanish, which I took in high school. I am working on Arabic now, because I enjoy it, not because of an alleged difficulty level. But in any language, it's good to get interested in the culture, whether cooking, music, movies, etc. I am watching cartoons on UA-cam in Arabic lately; I recall Olly talking on this channel about people watching dubbed versions of "Friends," and so on!
And so many people get into Japanese because they already love Japanese culture and just want to be able to read it and understand anime and movies. Great motivator. I mostly learned French to read original versions of books that were in French, not so much to speak it.
Will you be having more flight ticket competitions again? I only saw your channel for the first time now😮
Learning dutch and already learnt italian and spanish. I 100% agree with you
How is that possible?
I jump around between 13 or more languages and I‘m glad Swedish was first on the list because I can confirm it‘s insanely easy to acquire new phrases. Also, Finding Nemo is really cool to watch in Swedish lol.
Please name those 13 languages. Cheers
My current favorite easiest language is Interlingua. It finds the commonality in the main romance languages and tries to be as simple as possible while still sounding natural. Plus if you learn it, you can understand and be understood by romance language speakers fairly well.
I love the Swedish language. It is very easy but there are words and the way how you say him can be complicated if you're not used to it.
Indonesia mentioned rrraaahhh 🇮🇩 🦅🗣️🔥
Toki Pona!
It's a tiny language and it's easy to find resources online if you just search.
Of course, it's not a "real" language, it's not actually widely used and nobody's a native in it, but it's great for a first foreign language to get your confidence up and learn the basics of language learning you can build upon to learn other, more complex languages. As it's far easier than English, it's also an easy international language to use with basic, everyday stuff. It's also a gateway into conlangs, which are a cool area of study. Honestly though, serious conlangs are boring, "cursed" ones are the way to go.
Hi… new subscriber, I’m thinking about learning a new language (Korean),love the content of your channel 👍🏼
I always dreamed to become a polyglot; I already speak Spanish, English, & able to understand/ communicate 15% of couple of other romanic languages…
Do you think I should get proficient in those or do embark on a new journey…
Danish is probably easy in written form but they have many different vovels that make it harder to learn comparing Norwegian/Swedish
I have Instant Indonesian, Berlitz and Lonely Planet Indonesian phrasebooks, and Indonesian language books. Later on, I will get an Indonesian language subscription from Mango Languages, Babbel, and iTalki.
With all due respect, "learning" a language is not simply a matter of vocabulary! The grammatical rules of EACH language have their own particularities, and there is also the entire culture that accompanies the language. In Portuguese, for example, you have different levels of language use. From the simplest and most vulgar to the most polished and "elite", including regionalisms. Therefore, if the title refers to "learning" in the sense of simply having a good understanding of the basic rules (such as how to inflect and have a reasonable understanding of agreement, for example) and a vocabulary that covers the minimum possible number of words, yes... perhaps Spanish is considered easy for someone who lives in the US, due to contact with native Spanish speakers, as well as for someone who speaks Portuguese (whether from Portugal or Brazil), since they have a lot in common BUT are still very different languages, rich and full of details. And I haven't even mentioned the famous "false cognates". But as I said, I had no intention of belittling the work (which must have been quite a lot). And congratulations for encouraging learning!
Exactly. People who just go "don't learn grammar, just go for vocab" is a bit delusional in my opinion. Because let's think about a language like a house, the vocab is the bricks and the grammar is the cement that holds all of it perfectly together.
Every language has its own hand gestures, even you are using hand gestures as you are speaking. This is natural, it adds depth in our everyday speech.
🖐️ 🖐️ 🤚 ✋ 👌
Thank you 👍 😊
The Esperanto-speaking baby at 19:21 is now an engineering student and a world traveller.
I’m really interested in Esperanto now. Because I speak French (terribly) and recognized a lot of French words in the language which I feel can help me more with French.
Great video and really fun to listen to all these different languages and your explanations. Just one little mistake that bothered me in the Italian bit was that the writing on the screen at 13:48 said "Lo parlo" instead of "Io parlo". But that's probably difficult to fix once the video is out. Otherwise: top notch overview over the easiest languages. Thank you, Olly.
I wonder what about English? Isn’t it category 3 or 4 as second language learner?
I am Korean American who was born in South Korea in 67 and came to the USA for studies in 91. First few years I had a hard time to speak and write but It was so helpful to speak when I had an American Girl Friend. She help me to improve my speaking and written English skill.
I think English as second language put in the category between 3 to 4.
As a baby all human being are expose the mother language during pregnancy period and up to 2 to 3 years to start mumble words and short sentence. As language learner everyone need 10000 hours to start speak.
10000 hours divided by 8 hours per day equals 1250 days and it divided by365 equals 3.425 years with rounding.
Let me hear from you about this approach.
1250 days is 3.422 years rounded to the nearest thousandth.
@@FebruaryHas30Days check your division. It is 3.42465753
it depends on your native language if you are west European it should be very easy if you are Korean it could be a lot harder since the vocabulary is so different
Those categories are made by the USA's Foreign Service Institute. It's all in relation to English speakers, and measured by how many hours they need to learn those languages. It would make no sense trying to give English a category in that list.
What you'd need to do, is make a similar list for Korean speakers (or for any other language), and you'd have to re categorize every language on that list. For instance, Japanese would probably jump from Category V to maybe I or II (guessing here, I heard it's easy for Koreans).
For speakers of German or Dutch, English wouldn't be as hard as it would be for speakers of Korean, Mandarin, or Arabic, so you'd need to make full lists for every language.
@@frechjo yes you are right I agree with your observation about languages from Korean perspective.
Language of Korean is based on sound not the meaning. It is so easy if you know Korean consonants and vowel.
14 consonants and10 vowels.
You are able to read and speak
Hi Olly are you planning on making a short stories in Indonesian?
A German friend of mine, whose American-accented English was flawless, was offered an insane scholarship to learn Spanish in Madrid. After that she got an offer to teach German and English at a university in Mexico. Her colleagues were a little distant when she first got there, but she's German, so she understands "distant". Then she got into the classroom, and when the students heard her Castilian accent, they threw things at her, called her a whore, walked out, and vandalized her car. That was in the 1980s, so maybe Mexicans are more tolerant of various Spanish accents these days.
Thats hilarious 😂
Even closer to English than Dutch is Frisian. Definitely not as useful (Dutch isn’t very useful on its own though)
There are 3 countries that speak it (+ some Caribean islands) and you can easily communicate with Afrikaans speakers in South Africa and Namibia with it.
Also is a good gateway to learning German afterwards.
@@kimashitawa8113All of those countries speak a much more common language aswell. Dutch is beautiful but unless one is marrying into, has deep love for the culture, plans to work, wants to become a dutch citizen; theres not a whole lot of “usage” for the languge. But i personally dont think there needs to be one for someone to want to learn.
Regardless how close and easier Frisian is to English, the lack of resources make it extremely difficult to learn.
@@Dylan-oy3ch That's still at least 2 countries (Dutch is spoken by more people in Belgium than French)
I'm still pretty sure it's 3 because isn't Dutch also the biggest language in Suriname?
There are several cities near me (in the Midwest) where Dutch and Friesian are widely spoken and most people there learn them as their first language.
I took Spanish in high school thinking I'd use it, and I never did. Having taken Latin first really helped, and I can also understand Italian without having studied it at all. I watch UA-cam documentaries in Italian, Spanish, French.
I can understand written Swedish/Danish/Norwegian and Dutch and Afrikaans just from their similarities with English and German.
Still, easiness doesn't work for me as a sole motivator, I guess, which is why I've been getting back into Latin after 30 years of not using it, and have been working on Arabic for the past year. Motivation and interest > easiness, in my opinion, though it's great fun to accidentally be able to understand languages you don't speak.
Italian has seven vowel sounds written with five letters. Spanish has five vowel sounds written with five letters. The stress of the Italian words is not indicated by their spelling, except in oxytonous plurisyllabic words. In Spanish, the location of the stress of the word is always predictable by its spelling.
Swedish also has the benefit of being riddled with compound words. I can't recall off the top of my head, but it's well over 50% off all words.
This means that if you learn a set number of base words, you can exponentially expand your vocabulary in very little time. It's also structure in the same way as English is, which helps.
For example.
The word for fire truck or fire engine is just brandbil, which is a combination of fire (brand) and car (bil) - That's 3 words added to your vocabulary.
The word for toy is leksak, which is a combination of play (lek) and thing (sak) - That's another 3 words.
As you can imagine, your vocabulary will probably grow pretty fast once you get the hang of it. Wish you luck! 😃
It's arguable whether a compound word is a different word than its part, I guess. Linguists rarely discuss vocabulary, in the matter of how many words a language "has". Just about every single point in defining it could be debated.
I’m wanting to learn 5 languages but I see that 2 of said languages are category 4s 😂 (my great grandmother who passed a month after I was born knew 7 languages including her own native language which wasn’t English)
One is cuz my gfs family is Cantonese & the other is Korean cuz I find attraction to the language.
The other 2 languages are either finish or Swedish & then finally spanish. I deal with a lot of Spanish at my workplace, so it’s a must & would help greatly, the other ones I’m debating between is because it’s the places I would move to if I moved to Europe.
Edit: Kind of scared of all the effort & time it’s going to cost me, but I’m willing to try. Just need to fix a few more things in my life before I can truly have energy or mentality for it.
I had never heard Swahili before, it sounds amazing! Now I wanna learn it!
Edit: Oh, and he forgot to mention that Dutch is also spoken in South America.
Surprisingly interesting!
If we left off the writing system, Japanese is very easy. I know some people are obsessed with pitch accent but you learn it naturally you don’t need to study it much. Japanese is easy to pronounce and the grammar isn’t too hard unless you are going to higher level concepts. Japanese is really only hard in that it takes time to read, write, and speak.
12:40 Spanish is objectively simpler than Italian (seen from English, of course), even if the differences are minimal: Spanish has fewer phonemes (v.g. Italian makes a distinction between long and short o and e, that Spanish does not), and Italian keeps a couple of grammar features that Spanish lost in the early modern period (compare the Italian sentences "lui l'ha chiamata (he has called her), lui l'ha chiamato (he has called him) lui è stato (he has been), lei è stata (she has been)", grammatically reduced in the Spanish "él lo ha llamado, el la ha llamado, el ha estado, ella ha estado"). I also take it personal to say Italian is closer to Latin, but whatever, both are beautiful languages, not that Portuguese nasal babbling (just joking, love Portuguese too. Great video!)
I think Spanish is the easiest Romance language imo
@@PotatoSoundSystem I also think that, and I have a Excell table to back it up hahaha, but then again I'm biased, since it's my native language.
Italian and Romanian are the two closest languages to Latin. :))
I'm learning European Portuguese right now and in what I've seen so far is that Brazilian Portuguese might be slightly more easy to learn. Sure you have to get used to the pronunciation but I think it's isn't that hard and plus you only have to learn four different conjugations. Also there are a lot of Brazilian content out there
@@jmwild22 No they're not, you silly.
It would be great if you added a dutch course to story learning.
4:42 for translating butterflies you just say kupu-kupu, no need to repeat again because it has plural sense too. Or just say "banyak kupu-kupu" in terms of quantity.
I love learning Esperanto, it is surprisingly fun!
I am doing a couple of languages at the same time. I recommend doing languages that interest you rather than just because it is relatively easy. Especially if you have exposure to a language, because the best way to learn a language is through comprehensible input. So if you have exposure, you can just learn over time without putting much effort in it.
I am doing Tagalog because I have exposure to it. It is related to Indonesian and there are some similarities, but I still find it difficult.
I am a native Dutch speaker. Dutch is a difficult language to learn, the reason it is high on the list, is because it is similar to English. It is also similar to German. Dutch has a lot of exceptions and Dutch people use a lot of expressions.
I am also doing German, because it is so similar to Dutch and I learned some German in school, I just want to get better at it.
I also had French in school, so I am also trying to brush that up.
Furthermore I am doing Esperanto. I tried to learn Esperanto decades ago, but stopped then, now I am just doing the Duolingo course and occasionally watching some comprehensible input on UA-cam.
I also started learning Spanish, mainly because Tagalog uses a lot of Spanish vocabulary and for me it is much easier to learn than Tagalog.
Finally I started learning some Chinese. I do get some exposure to it here in Asia. So far it seems to be an easy language to me, just reading and writing is difficult.
I am also trying to do a local language here in the Philippines. Many locals do not speak foreign languages like Filipino or English. But there is not that much material available in that language and no courses, so I have to rely on my exposure and maybe make my own materials using AI.
I am also improving my comprehension of Filipino-English. Filipinos use a lot of Tagalog ways of saying things that do not make sense to people with a background in English or American English. The words are all English, but it doesn't make sense to me sometimes. They actually learn that in school here, and they don't have a clue why foreigners do not understand them.
The course I like most is Languagetransfer, so all languages they have are at least on my maybe list. It's a good way to get a quick start with a language. I also do Duolingo. It's not the best way to learn a language, but it's good enough and it's entertaining and good to get a learning routine. They have many languages, but for the smaller languages (like Esperanto and Chinese) it's just a start to get you going. From there you can learn more through exposure.
As someone who comes from a very dutch family, dutch is quite easy if you just want to be able to speak a bit of the language. If you want to sound like a real local however, then its a different story.
Afrikaans is also a very easy language to learn. Did you know we have 11 official languages in south africa😮
I was also thinking that Afrikaans should be included here. Also, I think that some languages would be even easier for Afrikaans speakers to learn than for English-only speakers, including Indonesian and Malay (which share most vocabulary AFAIK), as Afrikaans also includes "loan words" from Malay/Indonesian - such as piesang, bobotie...
Olly, I have a video idea. The easiest to hardest Slavic languages to learn. Or the three or five easiest. Or if you want to learn a Slavic language, do you start with one using the Cyrillic alphabet or one that uses the Latin alphabet.
You will have to learn the alphabet either ways. lol
Because even the latin alphabet won't be anywhere close to how english uses it.
@@tovarishchfeixiao What's interesting is the Western Slavic, that use the Latin Alphabet, are considered harder than the others. I guess that makes Slovene the easiest Latin Alphabet.
Last year I casually studied Norwegian for about six weeks and can understand and read most of what I hear/see. Speaking it, however, not so much. Would need a little more time.
4:40 - the word such kupu-kupu is called "kata ganda semu" (pseudo-reduplication word) it's not deliver as plural word, the word has to be reduplicated to deliver its meanings, or the words will be have no meaning, or be as a bound morpheme. There's abundant of them
Kanak-kanak (kids), if only kanak without reduplication, it has no meaning
Anting-anting (earings), same case, you need to reduplicate the word to deliver the meaning
biri-biri (sheep), umang-umang (hermit crab), obor-obor (jellyfish), anai-anai (termite), kura-kura (tortoise), etc.
However, there are some of these pseudo-reduplication words have different meaning if they are not reduplicated, which means they can be a free morpheme with a meaning too,
Orang-orang - means scarecrow, if spelled only "orang" without reduplication it means "people"
Angkut-angkut - a type of wasp, if spelled only "angkut" it will be a verb means to carry, or to transport
Okay, so to make them plural, they don't need to do a reduplication again, it wld be redundant, yet not practical, simply use the plural maker words, or word that describes the quantities, or quantifier, example you want to say;
"there is a few butterflies - beberapa ekor kupu-kupu"
"a group of butterflies - kawanan kupu-kupu"
"There are five sheep in the barn - terdapat lima ekor biri-biri di dalam bangsal"
Hope this explanations help, I'm a Malay speaking person by the way.
I already speak American English, Danish and Swedish as a native speaker due to family connections and where I grew up. I fully understand Norwegian, especially bokmål, although I dont speak it. I teach both English and Danish as second languages. Danish is much harder to learn for English speakers as there is very little melody in the language compared to Swedish and Norwegian. Grammar is relatively easy and there are many words in Danish similar to English, but pronunciation is the real killer for most learners. The Scandinavian languages have three extra vowel sounds that don’t exist in English.
I’m probably an A2 to B1 in German, and I’m attempting to learn Persian and West Greenlandic. The latter is by far the hardest. I love the Persian script. It’s like learning a code language.
If you're going to bring up conlangs, Toki Pona is like 120 or so words. Most of the difficulty will probably be trying to figure out how to break down your sentences into far simpler ones.
The Swedish at the beginning was familiar enough to me that I thought it was Norwegian Bookmal, at first.
I always dreamt of going to China but I'm also interested in learning Japanese. Can I learn more than 1 language?
Thanks for Esperanto - Modern Intercontinental or interplanetary. The astronaut Mark Shuttleworth (South African entrepreneur) flew aboard the Russian Soyuz mission in 2002.
While onboard, he communicated in Esperanto as part of his outreach to international audiences. Shuttleworth’s use of Esperanto helped raise awareness of the language in unique & high-profile setting.
Esperanto is inter cultural language to understand the world.
Esperanto was taught in schools in 1905 in China, Macedonia, Samos... Esperanto gained traction in Japan, especially among intellectuals & students during early 1900s.
French schools started teaching Esperanto in 1900s as part of broader movement to promote international communication.
Educational institutions in Germany included Esperanto in their curricula during early XX century. Herzberg am Harz, Esperanto Urbo became popular, & flourished economically.
I find Norwegian fairly easy to pick up because of the Afrikaans I grew up speaking. The sentence structure is very similar so far (in what I've learned so far), with the only big difference being that Afrikaans uses a 'double negative' to indicate negatives, and Norwegian does not.
Obviously I easily understand written Dutch fairly well and spoken Dutch (spoken slowly enough) because of my Afrikaans. (When I was there I was told by locals that they very much prefer to call their language 'Netherlands' and NOT Dutch).
Some Italian and Portuguese words I catch because I've been studying Spanish casually.
Where would Catalan fall in this list (for native English speakers)?