Language To Learn For Europe

What are the best languages to learn in Europe after English of course?

Assuming that you have no specific language target in mind, here are my general thoughts:French as the French speak the most universally understood version of French and its standards are recorded by the Academie Francaise; also, you’ll find no country where it is cheaper and more pleasurable to formally learn it than France. French is useful well outside of France, or Europe, since it is also the longest accepted and used diplomatic and international civil service language, and the official language of the Olympics, the International Postal Union and one of the core languages of the UN, and an unavoidable language in cuisine, wine-making, modern train technology, aeronautic and space technology, philosophy and international cinema. Most European nobles speak French as a second language with English.Spanish from Spain elicits a snigger of deep-seated petty anti-colonialism outside of Spain (i.e. in Latin America), where even dubbing for movies makes a point of NOT using Spaniards when the movie is for Latin American viewers. If your Spanish will be used mainly in the Americas, I would suggest learning in Mexico, Central America or Colombia/Ecuador/Peru (Andes). However, beginners can get a good start in Spain since Spain has the most number of good quality schools per capita and the culture shock will be less than in some Latin American locations. Nonetheless, for more advanced Spanish acquisition, I would suggest immersion in Latin America if that is your main zone of future usage.Portuguese in Portugal is very different from Brazilian Portuguese and seen as a bit retroactive and quaint by Brazilians. Again, if you plan to use Portuguese mainly in Brazil, it’s better to learn in Brazil.Italian, German, Dutch, Greek, Turkish, Romanian, Scandinavian languages and most Slavic languages are only useful if you have specific need to interact, live or work in those languages i.e. they are of regional or field-specific value only e.g. Italian is obligatory and German is useful if you are an opera singer.Isolated linguistic groups cover Hungarian, Basque, Finnish, all of which have no close language relative.

What European language shall I learn?

English will be an undisputed answer to this question. But I don't think a question like this would have been raised if someone wanted an obvious answer. Every person with access to internet has a basic idea of English language, to say the least.So the second best answer to this question is Spanish. It is the language with second most native speakers. #1 is Mandarin. ( Surprise !! No English. ) ( Source : List of languages by number of native speakers )Spanish is spoken in just about every South American and Central American country, not to mention Spain, Mexico, Cuba, and the U.S.Since you haven't specified the reason why any XYZ language is best to learn for Indians, I leave my answer purely based on number of native speakers and the geographical area covered by it. By this way, you cover 10-15 % world population in terms of verbal communication. It can be very handy for travellars and people who often communicate with people of different nationalities; be it sports, politics, education, etc.And mind you, this accounts for only native speakers. I self-taught Spanish but I do not count as a native speaker. There might be millions more like me.Same goes for English too.

What is the best language to learn when moving to Europe?

If you’re an English speaker, I definitely recommend learning French, German, or Russian depending on what country you want to live in.For German, it’s spoken across all over Europe from Poland, Romania, North Italy in the borders of Switzerland, Austria, and even in the Nordic countries such as Sweden and Denmark. Many Nordic countries are bilingual / trilingual and plenty of Danes know decent German as a 3rd. language besides English.As for French, it’s quite an important Romance language as many people who may be Arab, Turkish, or perhaps Russian, can understand the language spoken there along many Middle Eastern countries who travel there.Lastly, Russian is extremely important when it comes to the Baltic countries such as Lithuania and Latvia that speak the language as a 2nd. language and English seldom being heard of there for not being spoken for both countries but a minor group who may either be fluent or native speakers.In my opinion: It’s mainly German that would be understanding of due to the most advanced countries that are able to speak it when it comes to businesses, social connections, or even traveling. That’s just how I see it as a semi-fluent German speaker and heard that you will have an easy time in most German / Nordic countries and possibly the Slavic countries which involves Hungary and Romania in general. :)

What is the easiest European language to learn from scratch?

Tom Norberg1h agoTry Swedish or Norwegian. Really.Pronunciation is fairly straightforward, no masculine or feminine nouns (although there are some neuter nouns, small in number, in Swedish; Norwegian I don’t know) to learn, super easy conjugation of verbs since there are no verb changes whether in 1st, 2nd or 3rd person in EITHER singular or plural.Compare Swedish “to be” in present tense.I am - jag äryou are - du ärhe, she, it is - han, hon, det ärwe are - vi äryou are - Ni ärtthey are - dom ärCompare German “to be” in present tenseich bindu bister, sie, es iswir sindihr seid,Sie sindsie sind(By the way, all together there are *** 16 *** different ways to say “the” in German, depending on the case used: nominative, accusative, dative and genitive and the gender of the noun - either masculine, feminine or neuter. Unless you want to learn the different cases properly, you will sound like a foreigner as soon as start speaking anything longer than a three word sentence with a noun!)Compare French “to be” in present tenseJe suistu esil, elle estnous sommesvous êtesils, elles sontYou learn “är” once to conjugate “to be” in Swedish in the present tense for all 6 persons (3 persons in singular, 3 persons in plural).But you have to learn 6 different words for the same thing in German - while at the same time keeping in mind that “Sie sind” means polite “you” in German, equivalent to “vous” in French, while “sie sind” means “they are”! “Ihr seid” means informal “you are” in the plural. So you decide whether you actually need 6 or 7 words for “är” in German.Dutch is fairly easy if you know English and German, but most struggle with the very guttural pronunciation. Also far more verb conjugations are needed than in Swedish. Take your pick!Italian, Spanish and Portugese make liberal use of the subjunctive, which certainly does not make for easy learning. Portuguese pronunciation has a quirky “r” that does not sound like any other European “r”.Have fun :-)

What is the easiest language to learn among the European languages?

It depends on your native language. I have most commonly heard that German is the easiest for native English speakers. Once you learn German, similar languages such as Dutch and Afrikaans will also become easily accessible.After German, I think that the next easiest would most likely be Spanish (for native English speakers). Once you have Spanish down, most every other romance language will become easy to learn.I'm going mostly on what I have heard. I had a fun time learning Spanish, but I lived in Mexico for a year and a half, and was therefore immersed in it, which is much different from studying it on one's own.Good luck!

Which Eastern European language is the most useful and the easiest to learn for English people?

It depends on what you plan to do with the language you learn. It also depends on weather you plan to learn other Slavic languages afterwards. In terms of lexical distance, Polish and Czech are the closest to Germanic languages. Polish and Czech use Latin alphabet and have many loanwords from Romance and Germanic language families. See the map below:While Russian has the largest number of speakers, it is also the most distant of all Slavic languages in terms of Wester European influences it absorbed. However, knowing Russian will make transition to Bulgarian and Serbian fairly simple for a language geek.Bulgarian seems to be at the very centre of the cloud, however it has limited number of speakers (but you may find people to practice at conversation exchange sites).Ukrainian and Belarusian are equally distant from Russian and Polish. Knowing these will allow you to understand Russian or Polish with relative ease (in writing, understanding speech takes more practice), however it will still take a lot of time and practice.I’ll be honest with you, all Slavic language are quite difficult to learn because of the archaic grammar that many of our languages retain. As you know, Old English was not a native language of the Isles’ inhabitants, so they dropped a lot of ancient Germanic grammar when they adopted it. In Slavic languages the Proto-Indo-European relicts like Vocative case are used in daily speech. An English speaker trying to master Slavic grammar will need a lot of discipline.

Which is the easiest European language to learn for a non-native English speaker?

Italian and Afrikaans are said to be fairly easy languages to learn. I know Afrikaans isn’t spoken in Europe, but as it’s a Germanic language I’m including it here. Afrikaans and Dutch are closely related, so after taking up Afrikaans you could go for Dutch with little effort. In fact, Afrikaans developed from Dutch, and it might be considered a simpler variety of it.Other than that, I think Spanish is also very easy. Of course, I might be biased as it is my native language, but I would say Spanish is very regular in comparison to other languages and has an easier spelling system. The writing is usually phonetic, with some exceptions. Then, the grammar would require you to learn the irregular forms of some verbs, but for the rest I don’t think it would be much of a problem. The usage of articles is also clear—if a word ends in -o, it is masculine; if it ends in -a, it is feminine—and there are fixed rules for the other endings.