If you're not sure which language to study, here are some factors to consider:
Availability | Usefulness | Difficulty | Languages in demand by employers
Are materials and other resources available for the language you want to learn? Are there classes in your area? For the popular languages, like French, Spanish and German, this shouldn't be a issue, but it may be difficult to find resources and/or classes for the lesser-studied languages.
[top]
If you want to learn a language with a large number of speakers and which is spoken in many countries, the ones to choose in order of 'usefulness' are: English, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin), German, Japanese, Portuguese and Hindi/Urdu.
This list is based on the number of speakers, the number and population of countries where the languages are spoken, the number of major fields using the languages internationally, the economic power of countries using the languages, and their socio-literary prestige.
The languages with the most speakers are:
| Language | L1 speakers | L2 speakers | Total speakers |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | 380 million | 1.135 billion | 1.515 billion |
| Mandarin Chinese | 941 million | 199 million | 1.14 billion |
| Hindi | 345 million | 264 million | 609 million |
| Spanish | 486 million | 74 million | 560 million |
| Arabic (Modern Standard) | 0 million | 332 million | 332 million | French | 74 million | 238 million | 312 million |
| Bengali | 237 million | 41 million | 278 million |
| Portuguese | 236 million | 27 million | 264 million |
| Russian | 148 million | 108 million | 255 million |
| Urdu | 70 million | 168 million | 238 million |
| Indonesian/Malay | 44 million | 155 million | 199 million |
| German | 76 million | 58 million | 134 million |
| Japanese | 123 million | <1 million | 123 million |
| Nigerian Pidgin (Krio) | 5 million | 116 million | 121 million |
| Arabic (Egytian) | 78 million | 25 million | 103 million |
| Marathi | 83 million | 16 million | 99 million |
| Telugu | 83 million | 13 million | 96 million |
| Turkish | 84 million | 6 million | 90 million |
| Hausa | 54 million | 34 million | 88 million |
| Tamil | 79 million | 8 million | 87 million |
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers
[top]
Each language presents you with a different set of challenges. Languages might have complex inflectional systems, complex writing systems, irregular spelling systems, and/or complex phonology. Generally the more a language differs from your L1 or other languages you know, the harder it is to learn.
For lesser-studied languages it can be hard to find language learning materials and courses. In some cases you might have to learn another language first, e.g. when learning indigenous languages of Latin America it helps if you know Spanish and/or Portuguese as most materials and courses are likely to be in those languages. Many languages are undocumented and have never been written, so training in field linguistics is needed in order to acquire them.
For English speakers the least difficult languages are probably: Scots, Italian, Spanish, French, Dutch, Afrikaans, German, Portuguese, Norwegian and Swedish.
Arabic, Korean, Japanese and Chinese are often considered among the most challenging languages to learn for English speakers, and speakers of other European languages. Learning to read and write Chinese and Japanese is certainly challenging, and Chinese tones can be difficult to master. However, Chinese grammar is relatively straightforward, compared to European languages.
Other languages present you with even more challenges. For example, some indigenous languages of the Americas have extremely compex phonology and syntax, small speaker communities and limited materials and resources to help you learn them. Navajo, for example, apparently has no regular verbs at all.
Languages may include phonemes that don't exist in your L1 which can be difficult to recognise and pronounce, especially if they are rare phonemes such as clicks, ejectives, ingressives, etc. Some languages also have tones or pitch accent, which can be tricky to master.
Languages with relatively few phonemes include Hawaiian, Japanese, Spanish, Italian and Malagasy. Those with large inventories of phonemes include Taa, Xhosa, Zulu, Chechen, Lithuanian, Vietnamese, Romanian, European Portuguese, English, Hindi, Danish and Arabic.
Some languages have shallow orthographies, or in other words, there is a straight-forward relationship between the pronunciation of words and the way they are written. These include Spanish, Finnish, Turkish, Italian, Georgian and Welsh.
Other languages have deep or opaque orthographies. That is, the relationship between spelling and pronunciation is much more complex, irregular and eccentric. The orthography may not have changed in line with the pronunciation and reflects how words were pronounced in the past. The spelling of words may have been deliberately altered to show their origins, or to distinguish them from words in closely related languages. Words may have been borrowed from other languages, and retain their original spelling, although not their original pronunciation. All these things have happened in English, which is why English spelling is somewhat chaotic. Other orthographically deep languages include Japanese, Danish, Faroese, French, Tibetan, Mongolian, Thai, Khmer, Burmese and Lao.
Language Learning Difficulty for English speakers
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Language_Learning_Difficulty_for_English_Speakers
[top]
If you want to learn a language in order to improve your employment/promotion prospects then choose one that is in demand by employers. The list below gives you an idea of which languages are in demand and is based on job ads posted on recruitment sites. You can find links to the recruitment sites on the Careers using languages page.
Note: languages are shown more or less in order of popularity with employers.
English, French, Swahili, Arabic, Portuguese.
English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Japanese.
English, Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Malay/Indonesian, Spanish, Portuguese.
English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Flemish, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Portuguese, Finnish, Greek, Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Mandarin, Arabic.
English, German, Arabic, French, Dutch, Spanish, Japanese, Russian, Italian, Mandarin Chinese.
[top]
From: https://takelessons.com/blog/what-language-should-i-learn-z14
Books on how to learn languages
Language courses, dictionaries, etc.
MLA Language Map Data Center - information based on census data about which languages are spoken in the USA: http://www.mla.org/map_data
Most common languages spoken in the U.S.
http://www.immigrationdirect.com/languages-spoken-in-us.jsp
10 Best Languages to Learn Right Now (i.e. in 2010 in the USA)
http://www.toponlinecolleges.com/blog/2010/10-best-languages-to-learn-right-now/
BBC Voices - details of the languages spoken in the UK, with numbers
of speakers.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/voices/multilingual/
What is the best language to learn?
https://lingualift.com/blog/what-is-the-best-language-to-learn/
Most popular languages (2016)
http://en.bab.la/news/language-worldcup-2016
[top]
You can support this site by Buying Me A Coffee, and if you like what you see on this page, you can use the buttons below to share it with people you know.
If you like this site and find it useful, you can support it by making a donation via PayPal or Patreon, or by contributing in other ways. Omniglot is how I make my living.
Note: all links on this site to Amazon.com
[top]
