The Best Languages to Learn for English Speakers by Jack White

Believe it or not, English is one of the hardest languages to learn. Most of us are either native speakers or have learned it at a young age. Because of this, we don’t notice these difficulties due to the everyday role of English in our lives.

While being difficult for beginners, English is a gateway to learning other languages and mastering them with ease. As language enthusiasts, we’ve discussed this topic with many linguists and grammar experts.

After doing some research, we’ve determined that these nine languages are the best English speakers to learn. While some may surprise you, but all of them are useful and entertaining.

1. Norwegian

As surprising as it sounds, Norwegian is by far the easiest language for English speakers to learn. A member of the Germanic family, Norwegian shares many of the same grammatical mechanics and words with English.

The word order closely mimics that of English. An also interesting fact is that Norwegian has many different accents and there aren’t strict rules about pronunciation. Under the Vikings, Norwegians ruled England for a certain period of time so a lot of English words originated in Norwegian.

2. Swedish

Norwegian’s close cousin and Scandinavian neighbor Swedish is also incredibly easy for English speakers to learn and master.

First of all, Swedish and English share a lot of cognates. A cognate is a word that a language shares with another, mostly due to a common ancestor.

If you’re interested in immersing yourself in a vibrant and interesting culture, Sweden is the country you want to focus on. Also, there are a lot of summer schools for Swedish learners of all levels.

3. Spanish

While we all know that Spanish has an incredibly wide reach and is practical to study, there are even more benefits. For a couple of centuries, Britain was ruled by the Romans. Most of the legal systems, the administrative rules, and even some towns are leftovers from that period.

The Romans spoke Latin, an ancestor of all Romance languages, amongst which we have Spanish. Used by many cultures, Spanish has a lot in common with English in terms of mechanisms and vocabulary.

4. Dutch

Because English is a Germanic language, it’s not surprising that Dutch is the 3rd Germanic language in our top 4. After German and English, it’s the third most spoken language in the family.

The shared vocabulary along with the similar grammatical characteristics is why it features in this list.

Why are Danish and German left out?

German has some of the most difficult grammar in the world and Danish pronunciation is even scary for some Danes.

Dutch is challenging, but more in an entertaining way.

5. Portuguese

One of the most popular languages for English speakers is, of course, Portuguese. Another Romance language, Portuguese is spoken by hundreds of millions of people in Portugal Brazil, the Portuguese port of Goa in India, and many other places.

The one thing to be wary of is that there’s a difference in dialects. At certain times, Portuguese and Brazilian people might not understand each other, but knowing one dialect will allow you to master the other. The cultural diversity is also astonishing.

6. Indonesian

Surprise! For language enthusiasts, Indonesian is a bit of an unknown. If you are proficient in English, you will find Indonesian a great choice. Most choose to learn it because it’s one of the rare Asian languages that use a Latin script.

Furthermore, 23 million people speak it so you can utilize it in the country any way you want. There are almost no grammatical rules. For example, you don’t have to remember cases if you want to use the plural – repeat the same word twice, and you’re good to go.

7. Italian

Even though isn't as widely spoken as Portuguese or Spanish, there are 63 million native speakers, plus even more non-native speakers. Perhaps the most enticing property of Italian is that it’s the closest living relative to Latin, mostly because it’s considered its direct descendant.

A lot of Italian and English words share the same roots while the grammatical rules aren't too hard. Additionally, you will get to experience one of the most amazing cultures in the world.

8. French

French is perhaps the favorite Romance language of all English speakers. Even though it’s not easier than the others, it has a distinct sound that gives the speaker a sophisticated sound. The Norman conquest of England resulted in English and French sharing many words.

Another benefit of learning French is that it’s spoken on every continent and by an incredibly large number of people. The easy vocabulary and an incredible culture make it a popular learning choice.

9. Swahili

A bit less conventional than other languages on this list, Swahili is an excellent option for those looking to learn something different. The easiest African language, Swahili shares a lot of words with English and is used as a lingua franca between different African tribes and countries.

Many linguists have concluded that it’s one of the most logical languages in existence. If you’re looking for an interesting cultural experience, start learning Swahili.

Learning new languages is a key factor in becoming a more knowledgeable and happier person. Getting to know different cultures through these easy languages is an incredible privilege and pleasure. If you want, you can combine several and challenge yourself like never before.

Jack White is optimistic that he will carry his past success into the future. He managed to work his way up from the bottom and today he is an excellent writer who also works at EssaysScholarAdvisor in the PR department.

It's So Fluffy! What Does "Fluffy" Mean If You Don't Speak English?

The other day I came across something sort of weird... the word "fluffy" isn't very universal. Sure, a lot of languages have similar words, but none are exactly the same. I currently live in Spain, and I've found that my Spanish-speaking friends who speak English understand it, while those who don't can't find a useful translation that really encompasses everything the English word means.

So what does it mean? If you look "fluffy" up in a dictionary, the first definition you might get is: "of, resembling, or covered with fluff".

You must admit, that's pretty useless if you don't know what "fluff" is.

Apparently, "fluff" is "soft fibres from fabrics such as wool or cotton which accumulate in small light clumps".

In English, clouds can be fluffy, clothing can be fluffy, and above all, soft toys can be fluffy. If you've ever seen the film Despicable Me (in English), you'll have seen, without a doubt, the best example of "fluffy" in use.

In the film, a young girl named Agnes sees a plush unicorn toy at a funfair and exclaims "It's so fluffy I'm gonna die!", a perfectly natural reaction to such an incredible and "fluffy" prize. Take a look at the following clip:

As you can see, you can check out this scene out in a multitude of languages. If you go straight to European Spanish, which started the whole debate, you'll see she uses the adjective blandito (soft), while the Mexican Spanish version uses hermoso (beautiful). Here's the European Spanish version for your viewing pleasure:

I'm not criticising the dubbing here, but just pointing out that maybe "fluffy" doesn't really exist or work well in Spanish. However, let's have a look at how they dealt with it in France...

The French version says C'est trop génial!, which is more or less "It's brilliant!", which completely ignores the plush and fluffy nature of the soft toy. However, it doesn't make the scene any less cute!

These aren't the only two examples. The Italian version uses morbido (soft) and the Portuguese version uses fofo (cute).

However, I don't think it's just a Romance language issue! For Danish, they chose to use nuttet (cute).

From the versions available, I reckon German comes the closest with the term flauschig, which apparently means "fleecy" (though I'm not a German expert). To me, that seems quite adequate when it comes to describing the unicorn, don't you think?

Finally, there's the Swedish version, for which I have no idea. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. Here it is:

Apparently the word is fluffsi, or something like that. Is this accurate or a loanword?

When it comes to the word "fluffy", is it uniquely English or just a lacuna between English and Romance languages? Do you have a better translation in your own language? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below, especially Swedish speakers, since your dubbing has me bamboozled!

Languages in the News: January 2016

Since we've already reached the end of January, today we're taking a look back at some of the best news stories and articles from the past month.

Can You Really Sum Up a Whole Year in One Word?

Unsurprisingly, our first bit of language news came in the form of a look back at 2015. This article from The Guardian looked at the terms from the English language that defined 2015. It's definitely recommended if you're interested in the ever-changing lexicon of the English language. You can read it here.

The 1967 Revolution That Allowed Swedes to Finally Call Each Other “You”

This article that was featured on Slate covered a fascinating language shift that made Swedish much more informal. If you're familiar with languages that have formal pronouns, you'll definitely want to read this article on the Swedish language. You can do so here.

Food Culture Gives Rise To New 'Eatymology'

American public radio website NPR told us how foodies and our fondness for food are helping create new English words that describe our culinary obsessions, particularly in the United States. If you're interested in the latest food lingo, you can read NPR's article here.

Sorry, grammar nerds. The singular ‘they’ has been declared Word of the Year.

This article from the Washington Post looks at how English grammar has changed, particularly in terms of personal pronouns. When there was increasing demand for a gender-neutral pronoun, the English language answered the call. If you'd like to learn more, you can read the article here.

How did the months get their names?

The Oxford Dictionary's blog started the year by looking at the months that define our years. As expected, they covered the etymology from January through December in a blog post that told us the roots of all the weird words we use to describe almost every lunar cycle of the year. If you're interested, you can read the post here.

Are there any other language articles you enjoyed in January? Please tell us and our readers about them in the comments below.

Pseudo-Anglicisms: Loanwords English Doesn't Need Back

A great bit of footing.

In the past, we've looked at loanwords that have made their way into English from many different languages, including Russian, Hawaiian, and Malay. Of course, plenty of languages have also borrowed English words with varying degrees of success. These words sometimes remain unchanged from the original English version and keep the same spelling and meaning. However, there are also loanwords that have nothing to do with their English incarnations, which are known as pseudo-anglicisms.

Today we're going to show you a few of our favourite words that went from English into another language and got a bit lost along the way.

If you speak German, you might be familiar with the world Air-Condition. While it's clear that this word means "air-conditioning", it still sounds very peculiar if you speak English as your first language. The same goes for shampooing in French, which is not a verb, but rather the noun for "shampoo".

French, just like Romanian, likes to use baskets to refer to trainers or sneakers, whereas Spanish and Portuguese borrowed the English word "tennis" and changed it to tenis and tênis respectively.

While basketball is quite popular, borrowing the word in its entirety is not. Several languages, including French, have taken "basket" to refer to the sport. Footing is also a popular pursuit in French, Italian and Spanish... Never heard of it? In English, we call it "jogging".

Some tents in a camping.

When you go camping, you stay in a campsite. If you go camping in a country that speaks Croatian, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, or Spanish, you stay in a camping. Do you want to park your car in a "car park" or a "parking lot"? In Arabic, Flemish, French, Swiss German, Greek, Italian, Polish, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, and Spanish, it can sometimes simply be called a parking.

The trend of adding the -ing suffix to English words doesn't end there. Lifting actually refers to a "facelift" in a number of different languages. Arabic, German, Polish, Serbo-Croatian, and Spanish also sometimes use marketing to refer to "advertising", which is of course related to marketing, but doesn't cover all types of marketing.

A number of a languages like to call a tuxedo or suit jacket a smoking. This comes from the English term "smoking jacket", but does away with the most important part for English speakers, with "smoking" developing its own meaning in its new language.

My last pseudo-anglicism is zapping, I absolutely love this word. It means channel-hopping or channel-surfing in Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, and Swedish and has given rise to a number of TV shows that replicate that very idea without you ever having to touch the remote!

What are your favourite pseudo-anglicisms? Are there any words from your language that English has borrowed in a nonsensical way? Tell us about them all in the comments below!

Marvelling at the Minnesotan Accent

I'm not a huge film fan; an hour and a half is usually too long to keep my attention. However, a few months ago I started watching Fargo, the 1996 Coen brothers film. Unfortunately, I had only watched 30 minutes before I had to do something else and forgot to go back to it.

On Monday, I finally returned to the film, re-watching the first 30 minutes and inevitably watching the rest. Before I knew it, Netflix was suggesting that I watch the TV series of the same name that aired last year. I had already received tonnes of recommendations from friends, so after enjoying the film, I was straight onto the series and binge-watched four episodes. While both feature black comedy, which I love, they also sparked my interest in Minnesotan English, which I'll just fondly call Minnesotan from now on.

A beautiful view of the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

My interest in Minnesotan was actually piqued during a visit to the Twin Cities (Minneapolis and Saint Paul) in the spring of 2012, when I fell in love with the accent. This led me to find out more about this unique and fascinating accent and where it came from.

While native Minnesotans may tell me that different accents and dialects can be found across the state, today I'd like to just discuss the accent in a general sense, without over-complicating things but still trying to gain sufficient insights into what it's all about.

Many of the accent's qualities are similar to those of most other English-language accents found throughout North America, but it's the accent's differences that I find so interesting. These differences include monophthongization, a process whereby phonemes that are regularly pronounced as diphthongs become a singular and "pure" vowel.

It's widely believed that many of the accent's traits originate from the area's historic immigration patterns, which have had a lasting influence on many accents in North American English. Many of the people currently living in Minnesota are descendants of Scandinavian and Germanic peoples, notably speakers of Norwegian and German. While this is certainly plausible, it has also been suggested that British accents might be responsible for some traits, as similar effects have been noted in Canadian English.

A postcard picture of the Second Fort Snelling Bridge, Minnesota.

There have also been suggestions that there are traces of a pitch accent in Minnesotan. A pitch accent uses different pitches for certain syllables in order to distinguish words. This is a trait that is also shared with a number of Scandinavian languages, particularly Norwegian and Swedish.

The main issue with pinpointing the origins behind the accent is a lack of information. Early settlers didn't spend a whole lot of time making records for the purpose of linguistic analysis since they were probably too preoccupied with surviving the area's trying winters and making sure that their crops didn't die.

While I've heard accounts that the accents in Fargo (both the film and series) are heavily exaggerated, I could still happily listen to them all day. I've also heard that the intense friendliness is exaggerated, though my experiences in Minnesota and the Midwest certainly don't support this.

How do you feel about the Minnesotan accent? Do you love it or hate it? Is there another US accent that you prefer? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below.

Localizing the Aisle: The Power of "Foreign Branding"

Whenever I go to a massive 24-hour supermarket, I'm confronted by tonnes and tonnes of different choices across plenty of different products from all over the world. I'm not here to get into a debate about giant supermarket chains killing local family-owned stores or price wars, but rather how language plays a part in everything we do.

Despite being a huge fan of pizza (of all shapes and sizes), I still find it difficult when I purchase Dr Oetker brand pizzas due to the fact that the German name doesn't sound as authentic in my head as any Italian-sounding brands.

Mmm... pizza.

My conviction isn't strong enough to stop me buying the brand since I enjoy their pizzas, after all. However, some people would not buy the late August Oetker's pizzas, regardless of whether or not he had a PhD. Marketers are fully aware of this process, so you'll find that products with names that don't match their origin or perceived origin appear to be in the minority in your supermarket.

Berghaus

The outdoor clothing company was founded in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the '60s and chose the name from a very liberal German translation of "LD Mountain Centre", where they were first based, for the name of their company. I speak from experience when I say that the brand name was rarely pronounced correctly in Newcastle by locals wearing the full-length draa-string borg-hoos jackets, as they were called locally.

Dolmio

If you've ever seen the "when'sa your Dolmio day?" adverts, you'll get that this brand really wants you to believe that their range of pasta sauces are far more Italian that Dr. Oetker's pizzas. However, the Dolmio brand is actually Australian and owned by the American company Mars, Inc.

We're sorry if these photos made you hungry.

Häagen-Dazs

Häagen-Dazs is probably one of the oldest examples of this kind of thing. Originally, the name was a tribute to Denmark by founders Reuben and Rose Mattus to a country they felt had treated the Jews fantastically during World War II. However, the name itself is little more than nonsense made up by Reuben to sound Danish. Danish speakers will be fully aware of this as there are no umlauts in Danish nor "z" and "s" appearing together as they do here.

The company actually fought another ice cream brand in the '80s for trying a similar marketing strategy. Frusen Glädjé was an American company that used an alteration of the Swedish for "frozen delight" as their name (the "é" should be without the diacritic).

Matsui

The name may sound Japanese, but when UK electrical retailer Currys launched the brand with the slogan "Japanese Technology Made Perfect" and a logo reminiscent of a traditional Japanese "rising sun", they ended up in trouble for misleading customers. They were forced to get rid of the tagline.

Despite a fine, they were allowed to keep the name, which upset a number of British veterans of World War II who remembered the Japanese general Iwane Matsui, the man responsible for the Nanking Massacre in 1937, which resulted in the deaths of between 40,000 and 300,000 people (depending on who you ask).

Trader Joe's

The American chain of grocery stores sells a number of its own brands. Rather than slapping a label that says "Trader Joe's" on all of their products, they sell products under various names.

Mexican food is labelled as "Trader Jose's", Chinese food goes by "Trader Ming's", the Italian range is "Trader Giotto's", and then "Trader Jacques'" is the name of the French stuff. While it may seem overly simple and incapable of fooling anyone, they wouldn't do it if it didn't work!

The Etymology of Colours: Part 1

Today we're taking a trip through the rainbow as we look at the etymology and origins of the names we use for colours. For simplicity, we're going to start today with the classic "rainbow" colours, which Sir Isaac Newton dubbed the spectrum, from the Latin for "apparition". The term later became used to reference the visible light split through a prism, another Latin word meaning "sawed", which originated as the Greek term prisma.

Red

The first colour of the rainbow has origins in several languages and unfortunately can't be traced back to one single language. The word red was written as rēad in Old English. In fact, the British surname Reed is from the Old English for red, and is pronounced in a similar manner to how it was said before vowel shortening occurred in Middle English.

Before Old English, the word was rauthaz in Proto-Germanic, from rewdʰ, a Proto-Indo European (PIE) word. As a result of this origin, a large number of languages have similar words for the colour.

Orange

The word, colour, and fruit called orange, is often subject to a large degree of debate. While many people claim that it is one of the only words that rhymes with no other word, this is not actually true. The word sporange, a sac where spores are made, is one of the few words that rhyme with it that isn't a proper noun.

Rhyming aside, there is also a debate as to whether the fruit was named because of the colour or whether the colour was named after the fruit. Etymologists consider the colour to be named after the fruit since the word's origins are from the Sanskrit word for the tree. नारङ्ग or nāraṅga made its way into Persian as نارنگ, or nārang, before reaching European languages.

While the word nārang remained fairly true to its roots in a number of European languages, when it reached Old French it is thought to have lost its initial "n" due to rebracketing, whereby the initial "n" was thought to be part of the indefinite article "une" so that "une norenge" was heard as "une orenge".

Yellow

Yellow has an interesting etymology that is similar to that of the colour red. Yellow's roots begin with PIE languages. The root of yellow in PIE has retained the same root as yell for several millennia, as both words originate from the PIE root gʰel-. This shared root has resulted in a number of European languages, particularly the Germanic languages, having similar words for yellow. The words for yellow in Dutch, East Frisian, German, Swedish, and West Frisian all have similar origins.

The term ended up in Proto-Germanic as gelwaz before it became geolu in Old English. This Old English term gave us the word we use today for yellow. However, it should be noted that in Middle English, the term also referred to colours and tones that we wouldn't consider yellow by today's standards, including a number of blue and grey colours.

We'll finish the remainder of the rainbow on Friday when we'll cover the colours with shorter wavelengths.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Learn a Language with the Ikea Catalogue

Last week an Ikea catalogue made its way into the pile of unsolicited post that enters through our letterbox every day. As we went through the seemingly endless pages of utilitarian minimalist furniture, we started pondering what the product names meant, if anything.

I imagined that if the names of the products were in any language, it would be Swedish due to the company's origin. However, it should be noted that Ikea's headquarters are located in Leiden, Netherlands. Since my knowledge of Swedish is fairly limited, simply reading that catalogue was never going to give me the answer to my question.

A typical Ikea kitchen layout.

While it is rare that anyone would ever find the answer to anything in a catalogue, I remembered that I live in a wonderful era where almost everything is at my fingertips and a quick bit of delving into the internet would answer my question. This may seem very foolish to anyone in Sweden or anyone who speaks Swedish, but to me it was the culmination of years of infrequent pondering and terrible Swedish impressions every time I bought flat-pack furniture.

My efforts, though as minimalist as the furniture itself, yielded results. It turned out that all of Ikea's products are indeed real words, rather than foreign-sounding pseudo-language, such as Häagen-Dazs, which is supposed to sound Danish.

In addition to being actual words, all of Ikea's products follow a nomenclature, or naming convention, that is designed to ensure that products belonging to certain groups are all named after certain types of words.

Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, and Danish place names are each allocated to three different groups of product types while the names of Scandinavian lakes, rivers, and bays are used for another group with garden furniture being named after Sweden's islands.

"That's all well and good, but I don't want a geography lesson, I want to learn Swedish!"

Don't worry! Ikea's ranges of bookcases are all the Swedish words for various occupations and the kitchen ranges are often grammatical terms, ideal if you are a prescriptivist. Chairs and desks and fabrics and curtains are men's and women's names respectively, and lighting products are all named after a wide range of terminology from music to the sciences as well as the months of the year and the seasons.

You can learn the names of precious stones and minerals from the bedding and cushions and even mathematics in Swedish from curtain accessories. While we're certainly not saying you'll become fluent in Swedish by walking around their one-way stores and eating meatballs, you should remember next time you find yourself replacing a bookcase that you can expand your Swedish vocabulary while arguing with your other half in Ikea.

Day of the Finnish Language: Part 1

As today is the Day of the Finnish Language, we thought we'd celebrate some of the interesting facts surrounding this Uralic language. First of all, on this day Finns have at least two good reasons to celebrate their language. The first reason is that today is celebrates the life of Mikael Agricola, the man who helped formalise literary Finnish and is credited as its de facto founder and sometimes called the "father of literary Finnish".

Mikael Agricola was also known Michael Olaui, Mikkel Olofsson, and Mikael Olavinpoika if you are referring to him in Finnish. He was a sixteenth-century clergyman who was born in Uusimaa, Finland, though Finland was actually part of Sweden at the time. From a young age his teachers noticed he was good with languages and it is suggested that he was a bilingual child that spoke both Swedish and Finnish. Owing to his abilities with languages, his teachers decided to send him to a Latin school in Vyborg, Russia, where he also trained to become a priest.

The man himself.

During his time in academia, he took the name Agricola, meaning "farmer" after the vocation of his father, as was the style at the time. Agricola then went to Turku, Finland in 1528 where he became the scribe for the bishop there.

After being ordained as a priest in 1531, Agricola was then sent to study in Wittenberg, Germany by the bishop of Turku. He focused his efforts on the Greek language, as the prominent language of the bible, and in 1537, he began translating the New Testament into Finnish.

He returned to Turku in 1539 and became a rector. Following the death of a bishop in 1554, Agricola was consecrated as an Ordinarius by Gustav Vasa, the king of Sweden, meaning that Agricola was effectively the bishop in all but title.

In 1557 Agricola was part of a delegation that headed to Russia to negotiate the end of the Russo-Swedish War. Though the negotiations were concluded and put into effect on 2 April 1557, on the way back Agricola fell ill and died in Uusikirkko, then part of Finland, though now part of Russia.

Since the date of Agricola's birth is unknown, the day of his death and his status as the "father of literary Finnish" is one of the reasons that today is the Day of the Finnish Language. We'll be back on Friday with the other reason. See you then!

Part 1 | Part 2

The EU And Its Languages: Part 2

Yesterday we saw a brief history of the EEC which later became the EU, the countries that formed it and the languages they brought with them. Today we'll be continuing our little history lesson with the Maastricht Treaty, the formation of the EU and countries that became members and brought their cultures and languages with them.

The Colonel Building in the
Dutch city of Maastricht. 

The Maastricht Treaty was signed in 1992 and formally created the European Union. Three years later Austria, Sweden and Finland all joined the club. Austria had little to no worries when it came to linguistic recognition as German had been a permanent fixture since the creation of the EEC. Sweden and Finland, however, led to Swedish and Finnish being added as official languages.

It would take another nine years before the EU would allow any more nations into the community, but when it did it would be the largest expansion to date. On May 1st of 2004, Cyprus, Malta, Slovenia joined, as well as seven former members of the Eastern Bloc: Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia. Czech, Estonian, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Slovak and Slovene all became official languages.

Three years later in 2007, Bulgaria and Romania became EU member states and Bulgarian and Romanian became official languages. Irish also finally gained its official status, no less than 14 years after Ireland joined the EU.

With five years having passed since the last the enlargement, Croatia is due to accede at some point this year and will no doubt bring with it its native language, Croatian.