What is the easiest language to learn? A complete beginner’s guide to linguistics
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Why children find it easier to learn languages
- Children are exposed to about 10,000 hours of language in their first four years. But children are seldom experts in a language by then, suggesting that they find it harder to learn a language.
- Very young children can distinguish between about 800 sounds that make up all languages, but monolingual infants lose this ability in the first year of life as they become more specialised.
- Children can learn more than one language at the same time if they have practice in both.
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It takes 400 to 2,000 hours to master a language
- Research shows that you can effectively learn a language if you desire to learn it (and less if you are told to learn).
- Studies suggest that being bilingual can help you learn a new language because you realise there is no intrinsic link between a word and its meaning.
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The main language of the future
Currently, 40 per cent of the world's estimated 7,000 languages may go extinct, having less than 1,000 speakers.
Chinese is the largest language if we include only native speakers, but English is the largest if we include native and non-native speakers. English is the language of science, the internet and much academic research and is likely to remain important in the future.
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The hardest language to learn
People often think that languages like Russian, Arabic or Japanese are harder to learn, but it is subjective.
Words from different languages have the same etymological origin, such as 'brother' in English and 'Bruder' in German. But languages with different phonetics will be harder to learn. For example, languages such as Thai, Chinese or Vietnamese use tones to change a word's meaning. If you already speak a tonal language, it would be easier to learn another tonal one.
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The best ways of learning a language
The key ingredient in learning a language is time—ideally, hundreds of hours. Then it would be best if you practise regularly.
Research shows the best approach to learn a language is being immersed in it - not just learning words and grammar. Reading magazines, watching TV and talking to native speakers will solidify the learning.
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