Which language is easier French or German or Italian?
French is often considered one of the easiest languages for English speakers to learn. This is likely because French uses the same grammatical structure as English, and has fewer gendered articles. Although German isn't considered one of the easiest languages to learn, it isn't one of the hardest, either.
Ethnologue came up with lexical similarity coefficients for each of the Romance languages, or quantifiable percentages that tell you how similar they are. According to this metric, French and Italian are 89 percent similar, which makes them as similar as Spanish and Portuguese.
French is very close to other Romance languages such as Spanish, Portuguese and especially Italian. If you know one of these four languages, you can learn the other one in 6 months of intensive study (I did it). All Romance languages share a very similar vocabulary derived from Latin and a similar conjugation system.
Spanish and Italian are more similar to each other than to French due to their shared Latin roots and the cultural exchange that occurred during the Renaissance. Portuguese shares many similarities with Spanish, Italian, and French, but it also has unique features that set it apart from the other languages.
German was Shocked by Pronunciation of German Brands All Around the World! (US, China, Japan, Spain)
Is French closer to Spanish or Italian?
In terms of grammar it is more similar to french and in terms of vocabulary it's similar to both. The southern dialects of Italian share more similarities to Spanish. It makes sense that Italian shares a lot in common with both Spanish and French given the history of the Roman Empire and Latin Language.
According to Ethnologue, lexical similarity is 89% with French, 87% with Catalan, 85% with Sardinian, 82% with Spanish, 80% with Portuguese, 78% with Ladin, 77% with Romanian. Estimates may differ according to sources.
There are three separate dialects of the language, and it's only spoken at the southern fringes of the North Sea in the Netherlands and Germany. However, the closest major language to English, is Dutch.
The short answer: German. However, English is basically a Creole Language of Old French and Old English. The basic elements and grammar of English is more closely related to German than French and most of our verbs are German.
Yes, it is much easier to learn Italian if you already speak French. Italian is not a difficult language to learn anyway, but it is made even more accessible by speaking French, which is also Latin-based. You can even study Italian in French, which is a technique known as language laddering.
One that you can get with relatively small effort? Then Italian might be your best choice. However, if you're looking for a challenging language that will give you access to both strong and emerging economies, you should definitely go for a French course.
When it comes to pronunciation, Italian is clearly the easier language, as it contains fewer and more consistent rules. Words are pretty much pronounced the way they are written, and the main trick is to master the intonation. By comparison, French pronunciation is not so straightforward and demands more practice.
The grammar of French and Italian is close to being equal, but Italian might be a little more regular. In terms of vocabulary, an English speaker might find French easier because of the many loan-words in English, but this advantage applies to Italian words too, because they're close to French.
Meanwhile, German is primarily spoken in central Europe, in countries like Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Belgium. If “useful” is about the sheer number of people you'll be able to converse with, French beats German easily. There are 267 million French speakers in the world, compared to 155 million German speakers.
The Dutch refer to their own language as “Nederlands”, with the standard language being split into hundreds of various dialects. Of all West Germanic languages, English, Dutch (and Frisian) are considered to be most similar.
Dutch or Deutsch? These two words, although similar in sound, have decidedly different meanings, and come from two different languages, namely English and German. Many people, unfamiliar with the German language, often confuse these words due to their similarity.
Dutch is very much in between English and German. As a native Dutch speaker, I find English easier than French, and French easier than German. German is of course easier to understand for us (if we practice), but it is hard to speak and write because the grammar is on a completely different level.
However, saying that Dutch is mix between German, English and French is quite wrong (disclaimer: I am not Dutch). English, Dutch and German are all classified as western germanic languages, meaning they probably derived from a single ancestor language some time ago.
For English-speakers with no background in either language, Dutch will be easier to learn than French. Because Dutch has Germanic roots, like English, it will come easier to English speakers. That said, if you have background in a romance language (like Spanish or Italian), French may actually be easier to learn.
Italian and French both derive from Latin, and are therefore Neo-latin or Romance languages. But our top language scientist confirmed that this doesn't make them romantic partners 💔 Lexical cognates are words that descend from a common ancestor, and are therefore similar across different languages.
One 2011 study from the Université de Lyon looked at 7 languages, which reported the order as Japanese (7.84 syllables per second), Spanish (7.82), French (7.18), Italian (6.99), English (6.19), German (5.97) and Mandarin (5.18).
