Major language families. America: the population of the continent, its origin and features Native language for most of the population of the south
Various languages of the peoples of the world belong to certain language families (at a lower level of hierarchy - groups), which unite languages according to their linguistic structure and origin. To identify individual languages, a language dictionary is used, and to group language indicators, usually a linguistic classification into language families and groups, based on the sign of linguistic relationship. Data to characterize the linguistic composition can be obtained from population census materials, as well as from current population records, special surveys, etc.
The total number of languages in the world is estimated at 5 - 6 thousand(it is impossible to establish the exact figure due to the conventional distinction between different languages and dialects of the same language). In the past, there were approximately 4 thousand more languages, now forgotten. In genealogical classification, languages are grouped into families based on kinship, established by comparing their vocabulary and grammar. Families are divided into groups (or branches), and some groups, in turn, are divided into subgroups.
Most linguists distinguish the following language families: Indo-European, Afroasiatic, Kartvelian, North Caucasian, Dravidian, Ural, Eskimo-Aleutian, Altai, Chukchi-Kamchatka, Niger-Cardafan, Nilo-Saharan, Khoisan, Sino-Tibetan, Australasian, Andamanese, group of Papuan families, Australian and group Indian families. Yukaghir, Korean, Japanese, Nivkh, Ket, Basque, Ainu and a number of other languages are considered isolated (not included in any linguistic family).
The largest language family, comprising languages spoken by almost half of the world's population, is Indo-European. It is numerically predominant in the Russian Federation and the CIS, in most of foreign Europe, Iran and Afghanistan, in the north of the Hindu subcontinent, in the vast majority of American countries, in Australia and New Zealand.
Afroasiatic family of languages, distributed in Northern and Northeastern Africa and Southwestern Asia, consists of 5 groups: Semitic, Egyptian, Berber, Pashtun and Chadian.
To the Kartvelian family(Western Transcaucasia) includes the Mingrelian language with its close Laz language, united in the Georgian-Zan group, and the Svan language. All these languages are spoken by Georgians, among whom the Mingrelians, Laz and Svans partially retained their languages in everyday life.
To a North Caucasian family include the Abkhaz-Adyghe and Nakh-Dagestan groups.
The dominant Dravidian family in South India consists of seven groups. The most numerous is the southern group, which includes such multimillion-dollar languages of South India as Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada.
Languages of the Afroasiatic (or Semitic-Hamitic) family common among peoples living in North and North-East Africa, as well as in South-West Asia.
The population of sub-Saharan Africa speaks the languages of the Niger-Kordofanian (East and West Africa), Nilo-Saharan (mainly Central Africa) and Khoisan (South-West Africa) families.
Uralic language family geographically localized in the north of the European part of the Russian Federation, in Central Europe (Hungary), in the Volga region, the Baltic states, Finland and in the north of Scandinavia. It consists of two groups - Finno-Ugric (or Finno-Ugric) and Samoyed.
Eskimo-Aleut language family includes the Eskimo languages and the closely related Aleutian. Their carriers are settled in the vast Arctic areas of America, as well as in the extreme northeast of Asia.
To the Altai family of languages, distributed over vast areas from Turkey in the west to north-east Siberia in the east, include Turkic, Mongolian and Tungus-Manchu languages. Turkic languages include subgroups: Chuvash, or Bulgar (Chuvash language), Oguz, or southwestern (Turkish, Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Sakha (Buryat) and some others), Kipchak, or northwestern (Tatar, Bashkir, Kazakh, Kyrgyz , Karakalpak, Karachay-Balkar, Kumyk, Nogai and Karaite), Karluk, or southeastern (Uzbek and Uyghur), Yakut (Yakut and Dolgan), South Siberian (Altai, Khakass, Tuvan and other languages) subgroups.
To modern Mongolian languages, widespread mainly in the Central Asian regions, include Mongolian proper, Buryat, Kalmyk, close to it Oirat and a number of others. The Tungus-Manchu languages include the Manchu language in China, which is gradually falling out of use, as well as Evenki, Evenki, which is close to it, and some other languages of Eastern Siberia and the Far East.
Chukotka-Kamchatka family, localized in the extreme northeast of Russia, unites Chukchi, Koryak, Itelmen and other languages.
The largest of the language families are as follows: Indo-European (44.8% of the total world population), Sino-Tibetan (22.6%), Niger-Kordofanian (6.1%), Afroasiatic (5.6%), Austronesian (4.9%), Dravidian ( 3.9%). The thirteen most common languages are spoken by almost 2/3 of the population of our planet. The most common languages of the world include (number of speakers, end of 20th century, million people): Chinese (1300), English (460), Hindi and Urdu (370), Spanish (320), Russian (260), Bengali, Indonesian and Arabic (190 each), Portuguese (180), Japanese (130), German (100), French (100).
Along with the most widespread, there are so-called isolated languages, or isolated languages, not understandable even to close neighbors; their use is limited to small areas (Yukaghir, Nivkh, Ket, Basque, etc.) or individual countries (Japanese).
In the vast majority of cases, the names of the people and the language coincide. There are, however, cases where several peoples speak the same language. So, English (with minor local differences) is spoken by the British, US Americans, Australians, New Zealanders, English-Canadians and some others. Spanish is the native language not only of Spaniards, but also of most of the peoples of Latin America. German is spoken by Germans, Austrians and German-Swiss. Usually, each nation speaks the same language (sometimes dialect differences are so great that communication between individual groups of people without knowledge of the generally accepted literary language is impossible).
However, the practice of bilingualism is becoming increasingly widespread when parts of a people or even entire nations use two languages in everyday life. Bilingualism is a fairly common phenomenon in multinational countries, where national minorities, in addition to their native language, usually also use the language of the largest nation. Bilingualism is also typical for countries with massive immigrant populations. Therefore, the number of speakers of individual languages does not always coincide with the number of peoples for whom these languages are native. This especially applies to the languages of large nations that serve as languages of interethnic communication.
Culture
The development of oral communication skills can probably be considered one of the most significant achievements in the field of human relationships on our planet. Moreover, since humanity first began to develop the language of communication, many variations and varieties of different languages have appeared, while the process of modification of this tool of communication continues today. Information about the number of languages on our planet is extremely contradictory, but according to some data their number exceeds six thousand. However, the following ten languages are used on our planet by the largest number of people (the number of people for whom a particular language is native is presented in brackets).
10. German (90 million people)
The German language belongs to the so-called Indo-European family of languages, the Germanic branch (in fact, like English). The German language is used mainly in Germany, having the status of an official language there. However, German is also an official language in Austria, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg; he is also one of the official languages of Belgium(along with Dutch and French); one of the four official languages of Switzerland (along with French, Italian and the so-called Swiss Romansh); as well as the official language of part of the population of the Italian city of Bolzano. In addition, it is known that small groups of citizens living in countries such as Poland, Denmark, Hungary and the Czech Republic also communicate in German.
9. Japanese (132 million people)
The Japanese language belongs to the category of the so-called Japanese-Ryukyu languages (which also includes the Ryukyu language itself, which is spoken on the island of Okinawa as part of the group of islands of the same name). Most people whose native language is Japanese live in Japan. However, people for whom Japanese is also their native language can be found in Korea, the United States of America, Europe... Japanese is the official language in Japan, but it also has official status in one of the states in the Republic of Palau - an island state in the western Pacific ocean.
8. Russian language (144 million people)
Russian belongs to the East Slavic subgroup of languages in the Slavic group, which also includes Belarusian and Ukrainian languages. The vast majority of Russian-speaking people for whom Russian is their native language live, of course, in the Russian Federation, where Russian, in fact, has the status of an official language. Besides, it is a well-known fact that a large number of Russian-speaking people live in Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and other republics of the former Soviet Union (and not only). It is noteworthy that in this top ten most widely used languages, Russian is the only language that uses the Cyrillic alphabet.
7. Portuguese (178 million people)
Portuguese belongs to the Romance group of languages. As is the case with other languages of this group, Latin is considered one of the predecessors of the Portuguese language. Portuguese is considered an official language in Portugal and Brazil, where he lives the vast majority of the world's population speaking it. In addition, Portuguese is considered the official language in Angola, Cape Verde, East Timor, Guinea-Bissau, Uruguay and Argentina. Today, Portuguese is one of the four most frequently studied languages (according to some sources, about 30 million people study it).
6. Bengali (181 million people)
The Bengali language (or Bengali language) belongs to the so-called Indo-Aryan branch, along with languages such as Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu. Most people who speak this language live in the Republic of Bangladesh, where Bengali is the official language. Moreover, people speak it who live in the Indian states of West Bengal, Tripura and Assam. This language is also spoken by some people living in Europe, the United States of America and even Saudi Arabia. The Bengali language is characterized by a rich literary tradition. In addition, the concept of Bengali nationalism is widely known in the world. The basis of Bengali writing is related to the basis of Sanskrit and Hindi writing.
5. Arabic (221 million people)
Arabic belongs to the so-called Semitic family of languages, which includes the Arabic subgroup languages such as Syriac and Chaldean (now a dead language). Arabic is the most spoken language in the Middle East and North Africa. It is official in 26 countries of the world. It is also spoken in Israel. In addition, in Europe, as in North America, there are a lot of people who speak Arabic. As you know, the holy book of all Muslims in the world, the Koran, was written in this language. To write Arabic, it uses the Arabic alphabet.
4. Hindi language (242 million people)
Hindi is a member of the Indo-European family of languages and belongs to the Indo-Aryan group (as does the Urdu language). This language has many dialects, but its official forms are the so-called Standard Hindi and Standard Urdu. However, these two forms can sometimes be quite difficult to distinguish from each other. Hindi is known to is the official language of India, while Urdu is the official language in Pakistan. Hindi and Urdu are spoken in parts of Europe and North America, where large numbers of people from India and Pakistan now live. To write in these languages, the Hindi alphabet and the Arabic alphabet are used (this fact indicates the influence that Islam had on Urdu).
3. English (328 million people)
English, like German, belongs to the West Germanic group of languages. The roots of this language are considered to be Anglo-Saxon (so-called Old English). Much of English was borrowed from Latin and French due to the Norman conquerors. Despite the fact that the birthplace of this language is the British Isles, the largest proportion of people who speak English currently lives in the United States of America(more than 309 million English-speaking citizens). English is spoken in 53 countries around the world, where it is one of the official languages. These countries include Canada, South Africa, Jamaica, New Zealand, Australia and, of course, the UK. English is also spoken in many countries in the Pacific region, and in India it is considered almost another official language.
2. Spanish (329 million people)
Spanish is a member of the Indo-European family of languages and belongs to the Romance group. This language has quite a lot in common with the Portuguese language. Spanish is one of the most widely spoken languages on our planet; it has been given the status of an official language in more than 20 countries of the world; Moreover, Spanish is considered official in almost every state of Latin America, excluding Brazil, Belize and so on. It is also known that a huge number of people whose native language is Spanish have moved to the United States of America. This is why Spanish is one of the most widely spoken languages in the American Southwest. Additionally, Spanish is one of the six official languages of the United Nations (along with English, Arabic, Chinese, Russian and French).
1. Mandarin (845 million people)
Essentially, it is Mandarin Chinese, although many people who do not know the nuances call this dialect Mandarin. In fact, it is just one of many dialects of the Chinese language, which also includes Cantonese and other dialects belonging to the so-called Sino-Tibetan family. Mandarin is the most widely spoken dialect in China. being at the same time the official language of the People's Republic of China and Taiwan. It is also one of the four official languages of Singapore (except English, Malay and Tamil). Large influxes of immigrants from China and Taiwan have resulted in Mandarin being spoken by many people in the United States and Europe. At the same time, the Mandarin dialect uses two writing systems - traditional Chinese and the so-called simplified Chinese.
We judge people's belonging to a particular nation primarily, although not exclusively, by their language. It is not for nothing that in the old days the word “languages” often denoted not only the speech of different peoples, but also these peoples themselves; back at the beginning of the 19th century. our great-great-grandfathers called the invasion of Napoleon’s multi-tribal armies into Russia “an invasion of twelve (i.e. twelve) languages.”
Each nation has its own specific language. But different peoples often speak the same language: for example, the British and Americans speak English, the Germans and Austrians speak German.
There are currently over 2,500 independent languages on the globe, and there are tens of thousands of dialects and dialects (local varieties of large languages). Among the independent languages, there are widespread ones, spoken by tens and hundreds of millions of people. But there are languages that are used only by a few thousand or even a few hundred people.
There are five languages in the world, each of which is spoken by more than 100 million people. These are Chinese, Russian, English, Spanish and Hindustani (Hindi and Urdu).
At least 500 million people speak Chinese. In terms of the number of speakers, it is the largest language on the globe.
Russian is the native language of 100 million people, and together with the closely related Ukrainian and Belarusian languages - for 140 million. Russian is the state language of the greatest power in the world - the Soviet Union. It is also widespread among the working people of people's democracies and all progressive humanity as the language of the new, socialist culture that blossomed in the Soviet Union. The total number of people who can speak Russian exceeds 250 million.
In addition to the British and Scots, English is spoken by most of the population of the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and part of the population of the Union of South Africa and Ireland - a total of 230 million people.
118 million people speak Spanish: these are Spaniards and residents of all countries of South and Central America, except Guiana, Brazil and Haiti.
Hindi is the official language of India; Urdu is the official language of Pakistan; they are very close to each other and have a common name - “Hindustani”. More than 100 million people speak Hindustani. The majority of the Indian population speaks other languages, of which the most common is Bengali (over 50 million people).
German is spoken by Germans, Austrians and most of the Swiss - a total of 92 million people.
Over 80 million Japanese speak Japanese.
Over 70 million people speak Malay. Portuguese is spoken by 66 million people, including 50 million in Brazil.
55 million people speak French: the French, half the population of Belgium (Walloons), part of the Swiss, part of the population of eastern Canada, residents of Haiti and some French colonies.
Arabic is spoken by 50 million people - in Saudi Arabia, the Iraqi Republic, Lebanon, Jordan, the United Arab Republic and the rest of North Africa, Zanzibar and the south-eastern regions of Iran,
In addition to those listed, there are several dozen more languages, each of which is spoken by millions of people, and several hundred languages of small nationalities and tribes.
LINGUISTIC RELATIONSHIP OF PEOPLES
Identical or similar languages are usually found among peoples related by kinship - common origin, long-term joint life in one state or close proximity, economic or cultural communication. Such peoples are clearly aware of their kinship and easily understand each other. Russians, for example, understand and love Ukrainian songs and easily learn to speak Ukrainian. After all, many words and expressions in the Ukrainian language are the same as in Russian, they are only pronounced slightly differently. Russian says: “land”, “bread”, “street”, “people”; in Ukrainian these words sound like this: “earth”, “bread”, “vulytsia”, “lyudy”. It is clear to both Russians and Ukrainians that their peoples are brothers in language.
Belarusians are just as close to Russians. It is no coincidence that the languages of these three East Slavic peoples - Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians - are so close to each other: their similarities reflect their origins from common ancestors, the long-term proximity and close friendship of these peoples. This is a living relationship of languages; it further strengthens the ties between the Eastern Slavs.
The speech of the Western and Southern Slavs (Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Bulgarians, etc.) is less understandable to Russian than Ukrainian, but understandable expressions are also found in it. The Pole will say: “Zen dobra, pshiyatselyu,” the Russian will answer: “Good afternoon, buddy,” and both will understand each other. These are peoples related in language. The degree of language relatedness varies among different peoples.
Sometimes the similarity of languages is found among peoples living far from each other and currently having no connection with each other.
For example, the language of the Hungarians (Magyars) and the languages of the small Soviet peoples Khanty and Mansi (Western Siberia) are similar; the language of the Finns (Suomi) and the languages of the Komi and Sami of the North, the Mordovians, Mari and Udmurts of the Volga region. Once upon a time, in the distant past, these peoples were connected by common origin or constant communication. Linguistic similarities remain from this past.
Now the similarity of these languages is weakening, since over a long period of time the languages of these peoples developed and changed independently of each other.
The kinship of languages among such peoples is discovered only by linguists who study and compare the languages of different peoples and study their origins.
In the friendly family of socialist nations of the Soviet Union, peoples whose languages are far from each other are drawing closer together. Peoples are united by a common goal - building a communist society.
Under the influence of cultural connections, languages are enriched with new common words.
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Few people know that in the modern world there are from 3 to 7 thousand languages. Many of them are considered endangered, as the number of speakers of these languages is becoming smaller every day. Hundreds of millions of people speak other languages and millions more study them as foreign languages. Language is the main way of communication between people and this article presents the most popular, widespread and in demand languages of the peoples of the world.
14 French
Even though this language is not among the ten most widespread languages in the world, in our short presentation it takes an honorable 14th place, opening our ranking. The French language, in addition to being one of the most widespread, is also one of the most beautiful languages in the world, which is very often called the language of love, just as the capital of France is called the city of love. This language is part of the Romance group of languages and has the status of an official language in 29 countries, in particular in Canada, Switzerland, Belgium, Monaco and, of course, France. It is one of the six official languages of the UN and is spoken in a number of African countries and former French colonies. According to some estimates, French is spoken by about 250 million people around the world, but 75 million speak it as a native language.
Many people learn French because of its beauty, others learn it because it is a fairly popular language in Europe and knowledge of such a language will be useful for work and travel. This language is not very difficult to learn as a foreign language. Of course, French will be easier for some, more difficult for others, but many agree that in terms of difficulty of learning it is somewhere between German and Spanish.
13 Korean
Korean is the native language of approximately 78 million people, is the official language of South Korea and the DPRK, and is partially spoken in China, Japan, the United States and Russia. This language is not very popular and not many people study it in other countries. However, in terms of the number of native speakers, it takes an honorable 13th place in our ranking of the most common languages on earth. Most researchers classify it as an isolated language, that is, a language that is not included in any known language family. However, some believe that the Korean language may be part of a hypothetical Altaic family. According to some linguists, the Korean language may have some degree of relatedness to the Japanese language.
Some people think Korean is easier to learn than Japanese and Chinese, but the grammar in Korean is still more difficult, in their opinion. Chinese and Japanese languages are studied mainly for romantic reasons, out of a desire to get closer to the culture of the East and learn about the centuries-old history of the region. Korean is taught mainly to earn money.
12 German
German is the most popular and in-demand language in Europe after English, and many people learn it not for cultural reasons or for travel, but for doing business and business negotiations. German is the official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein and Belgium. This language is native to 100 million people, and there are more than 120 million native speakers. The German language is part of the Germanic group, like English, but the German language is considered much more complex than English, like some other languages.
Beginners learning a language are frightened by words that are 2-3 times longer than their counterparts in other languages, many tenses, regular and irregular verbs conjugated differently, the presence of a definite and indefinite article, and genders of nouns that do not always match. However, the German language cannot be called one of the most difficult languages of the world, since with the right approach it can be studied without any problems, like any other European language.
11 Javanese
There are so many languages in the world, but not many of our citizens even know about the existence of this language, not to mention the fact that the Javanese language is one of the most widespread. The language is spoken by about 105 million people and is spoken mainly on the Indonesian island of Java and several neighboring islands. It is the largest Austronesian language in terms of speakers. This is a fairly developed language that has a rich literary tradition with different genres of poetry and prose, and many varieties of theatrical genres. Despite the fact that almost half of the Indonesian population actively uses the Javanese language in everyday life, it, like all other existing languages in the country, does not have official status.
10 Punjabi
This language belongs to the Indo-Aryan languages of the Indo-European language family and is one of the official languages of India. Punjabi is the language of the Punjabis and Jats, ethnic groups in India. The language is spoken in the eastern part of Pakistan, as well as in some parts of India. There are approximately 112 million Punjabi speakers in the world. There are approximately 105 million native speakers living in Pakistan and India. While the rest live in countries such as the UK, Canada, UAE, USA, etc. Among the features of the language, one can highlight the fact that it is a tonal language. In tonal languages, the height of a stressed syllable changes its meaning. In Punjabi, a stressed syllable can have three different pitches. This is very unusual for Indo-European languages.
9 Japanese
Ninth place in our list of the most common and popular languages in the world is occupied by another language from Asia. There are 130 million native speakers of this language. Japanese is studied mainly for two reasons. Firstly, the language is studied for doing business, since Japan is one of the strongest economies in the world. Secondly, Japan has a rich and interesting culture that attracts thousands of people and sooner or later makes them interested in the language of the country. Japanese is by no means an easy language. One of the main difficulties in learning this language is the hieroglyphs, which came from Chinese, but have changed slightly over time as the language developed.
In Japanese, almost all hieroglyphs have not one, but two or more sounds, depending on the words in which they are used. Today in Japan, about two and a half thousand hieroglyphs are the most commonly used, while in China at least 3,500 hieroglyphs are used. Japanese is a simpler language compared to Korean and Chinese, but Japanese grammar is very complex. There are no tones in Japanese, but there are two alphabets. The Hiragana alphabet is the basic alphabet, used for purely Japanese words, grammatical markings, and sentence endings. Katakana is another Japanese alphabet and is used for words of foreign origin and names.
8 Russian
Russia is one of the most important countries in the world, occupying a vast territory where many people live. Rich, vibrant and vibrant cultures and countries attract many foreigners who are also interested in the “mighty” Russian language. There are about 160 million people for whom Russian is their native language. In total, there are about 260 million Russian speakers. Russian is the official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. It is the most widespread Slavic language in the world and the most widespread language in Europe in terms of the number of native speakers. Russian is one of the working languages of the UN. It is quite difficult to learn, its grammar is complex but logical. Russian can be called one of the simple “complex” languages.
Many foreigners choose French or German because they are common in Europe. People choose Russian when they want to experience Russian culture, when they have Russian friends with whom they want to speak their language, when they move to live or work in Russia. Basically, people study Russian because they like it, like, in general, any other language. You cannot learn a language through force, it must interest and attract, there must be a desire to learn it.
7 Bengal
The language of Bengalis, one of the languages of the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family. It is widespread and is the official language in Bangladesh and India. There are about 190 million people for whom it is their native language and about 260 million people who speak it. Some aspects of the language are often different in India and Bangladesh. The letter in most cases fully matches the pronunciation. The written language is based on Sanskrit and does not always take into account the changes and mergers of sounds that have occurred in the language over time. The history of the Bengali language dates back at least a thousand years, as evidenced by both the dating of the first literary monuments and linguistic reconstruction data.
6 Portuguese
Portuguese is the mother tongue of approximately 230 million people, and the total number of speakers is approximately 260 million. It is the official language in Portugal, Brazil, Angola and some other countries. Most of the native speakers live in Brazil. The Portuguese language is comparable in difficulty to learning to Spanish, French and Italian, as it is in the same group of Romance languages. There are two main varieties of the language, European Portuguese and Brazilian, as well as a number of varieties in African and Asian countries, differing from each other at the level of phonetics, vocabulary, spelling and grammar. African countries use the European version of Portuguese with a large number of lexical borrowings from African languages.
5 Arabic
Arabic is spoken in 60 countries around the world, such as Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt and Libya, and is official in 26 of them. One of the working languages of the UN and belongs to the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic family of languages. The number of native speakers of the language exceeds 245 million people, and the total number of people speaking it is more than 350 million. Arabic is of great importance in the political and economic spheres, in the fields of energy and security. This is a very popular language and people who know it will always be able to find a good job. Arabic is one of the five most difficult languages in the world; there are many dialects of Arabic that differ significantly from each other.
4 Hindi
The language is one of the 23 official languages of India and is also spoken in Pakistan and Fiji. There are 260 million people who speak Hindi as their mother tongue, and the total number of Hindi speakers is approximately 400 million. At the colloquial level, Hindi is virtually indistinguishable from India's other official language, Urdu. The latter is distinguished by a large number of Arabic and Persian borrowings, as well as the fact that it uses the Arabic alphabet, while the traditional Hindi script is the Devanagari syllabary. English is one of the official languages of India, but, nevertheless, according to some sources, Hindi is quite a promising language and it can become one of the most popular languages by 2050.
3 English
The top three of our list of the most popular and widespread languages is opened by English, which is the most common language for learning as a foreign language. This language is native to 350 million people, and the total number of speakers is about 1.4 billion. English is one of the working languages of the UN, the official language of Australia, New Zealand, USA, England, Canada and some other countries. The English language in the modern world plays a huge role in many areas of life, from politics and business, to culture and travel. This is explained by the colonial policy of the British Empire in the 19th century and the global influence of the United States of America at the present time.
English is also considered one of the easiest languages to learn, if not the easiest. However, this language also has its difficulties. In many countries around the world, English is taught in schools almost from primary school as a foreign language.
2 Spanish
In second place is a very beautiful language, which is official in Spain, Mexico, Costa Rica, Cuba and most countries in South America. Spanish is very similar to Italian and Portuguese, as it is in the same Romance group with them. Approximately 420 million people speak Spanish as their native language, and there are about 500 million speakers around the world. It is the most widely spoken Romance language, with 9/10 of its speakers living primarily in the Western Hemisphere. It is a fairly easy language to learn, which, in addition to the Spanish culture and beauty of the language, adds to the desire of foreigners to learn Spanish.
There are several dialects of the Spanish language, but Castilian is considered the true, original Spanish language. Castilian, Catalan, Basque and Galician dialects are common in Spain, while in South America there are five main dialect groups. The first group is used primarily in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Panama, Colombia, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Mexico. The second is in Peru, Chile and Ecuador. The third is in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. The fourth group is the Argentine-Uruguayan-Paraguayan variant, which includes Eastern Bolivia. The fifth group is conventionally called Mountain Latin American Spanish. This language is spoken by the inhabitants of Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, the Andes of Colombia and Venezuela, Quito (the capital of Ecuador located at an altitude of 2800 m), the Peruvian mountain range and Bolivia.
1 Chinese
The Chinese language is a collection of very different dialects, and therefore is considered by most linguists as an independent language branch, consisting of separate, although related, language and dialect groups. In fact, Chinese is made up of many other languages. But at the same time, the hieroglyphs are the same. The writing of basic characters has become much simpler since the mid-20th century, after the reform in China. The unified Chinese language is called Mandarin or simply Mandarin, which is called Putonghua in China. The Chinese language has 10 dialect groups and seven main traditional dialects.
Many people consider Chinese to be the most difficult language to learn, more difficult than Japanese and Arabic. Mainly because it uses over 3,000 characters, which are noticeably more difficult to write than Japanese or Korean. The use of tones in a language also makes it difficult to learn. Despite all the difficulties of learning, Chinese remains one of the most promising and popular languages in the world. It is the mother tongue of 1.3 billion people and has more than 1.5 billion speakers. China is one of the strongest countries in many areas, one of the largest in terms of population. Nowadays, the Chinese language is very popular and interesting, both for doing business and for understanding the most ancient culture on the planet.
