Just like me, a good number of people desires to learn a second language. Although most of us attended language classes while in high school, only a few can actually speak a second language as fluent as they speak English. Conversely, learning a second language, even up to the fourth one is a ‘de riguer’ or socially expected in large part of European countries. You will find the second language learning extremely useful when you travel; it improves the cultural experience at the same time. It is quite fun when the peculiarities and quirks of another language become natural part of you.
Now, the big question; which language should I go for? A good number of languages can serve one useful purpose or another. Some languages like Italian have some lyric beauty, while some languages such as the Mandarin have advantage beauty – however, what matters is the ease of learning a language.
Only few people can devote the time required to embark on intensive language immersion courses. We want to have a feeling of quick progression. We all detest unending staged classroom chat about how the winter is turning out – we prefer to have the skills that would enable us to explore a newspaper or find our way through a foreign city in the fastest way possible. In the entire world, there are virtually seven-thousand (7,000) active languages…so huge isn’t it? Now, which one do you begin with?
According to most language experts, choice of a second (third, fourth) language should be made relative to one’s own languages. Lingos that pose difficult to learn are those with completely different grammar syntax, as well as those that use a varied alphabet. If you are an English speaker trying to learn Russian language, you would need to go through Cyrillic alphabet classes. In the same way, English speakers would need to learn how to read and write in Devanagari (in addition to getting acquainted with the grammar and vocabulary) while trying to learn Hindi language.
The languages that are closely related to English are those that integrate the Latin alphabet – thus, an English speaker would find such languages easier to learn. English is categorized in the Germanic division of the Indo-European language family – this means that languages such as Dutch and German are the closest living relatives of English language.
German sentence structure is more regular compared to English language structure – however, learning to include verbs to end the sentence can be quite annoying. Again, as soon as you are able to master the fundamentals of German phonemes, the words are pronounced just the same way they are written – the case of special pronunciations or silent letters do not exist.
The ease of learning both languages is based on the fact that both languages employ a sufficient use of prefixes and suffixes as well as compound words. The ease is further enhanced since a substantial part of English vocabulary already emanates from German thus, it is easy to relate the words one to another. For instance, you won’t find it difficult remembering that haus is house, just the same way you can easily remember that wilkommen is a German word for welcome.
Image: by Louisa Stokes
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