The language spoken by a particular people is an integral part of its culture. It is a unique system that influences the consciousness of people who speak it. It is believed that every nation has key words that are used more often than others and reflect the worldview of people as a whole.
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There are many languages in the world - more than 7000. All linguistic diversity can be combined into four types:
- Amorphous languages, that is, formless.
The words here consist of one root, there are no suffixes, prefixes or endings. Most of them are short and monosyllabic. These languages include Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese and many other languages of Southeast Asia. - Agglutinating tongues.
Here the words are actively changing. Affixes are added one after another to the unchanged root. Moreover, each of them has only one meaning. Thus, words in this type of language resemble trains, the carriages of which are represented by numerous suffixes. This group includes all Turkic languages, as well as Japanese, Korean and Georgian. - Inflected languages.
There are many declensions and conjugations, and prefixes, suffixes and endings are actively used. Words almost never consist of one root; they are longer than in the first group, but shorter than in the second. These languages include Slavic, Romance, Germanic, and Finnish. - Polysynthetic languages.
In this case, the word often contains the meaning of an entire sentence, and it is not so easy to divide it into its component parts. Such languages are rare and quite difficult to learn. These include Chukchi-Kamchatka, Eskimo-Aleut, as well as many languages of the Indians of North America.
This division is quite arbitrary. Each language is unique in its own way. Also, people who speak it have their own characteristics. However, despite such a variety of languages, the majority of the population (66%) speaks only 40 of them. In turn, among them there are leaders in their prevalence.
We present to your attention the ranking of the 15 most common languages in the world. It is compiled according to the Ethnologue reference book for 2020. When compiling this rating, the total indicator of the number of speakers for whom the language in question is native and those for whom it is a second language was taken into account.
| Language | Number of media |
| 1. English | 1.268 billion speakers |
| 2. Chinese | 1.12 billion speakers |
| 3. Hindi | 637.3 million speakers |
| 4. Spanish | 537.9 million speakers |
| 5. French | 276.6 million speakers |
| 6. Arabic | 274 million speakers |
| 7. Bengali | 265.2 million speakers |
| 8. Russian | 258 million speakers |
| 9. Portuguese | 252.2 million speakers |
| 10. Indonesian | 199 million speakers |
| 11. Urdu | 170.6 million speakers |
| 12. German | 131.6 million speakers |
| 13. Japanese | 126.4 million speakers |
| 14. Swahili | 98.5 million speakers |
| 15. Marathi | 95.3 million speakers |
What languages are easiest for Russian people to learn?
They say that when learning a new language, the main key to success is motivation: any language will fly with it. However, many still wonder which languages are easier and faster to learn? It is impossible to answer this question unambiguously, because it all depends on what language the student is native to. Below we talk about the languages that are easiest for Russian speakers to learn.
Slavic group
Based on the fact that Russian is precisely part of this group, it is not surprising that the languages related to Russian are the easiest for Russians. Ukrainian and Belarusian will be the easiest to learn, since they have a lot of similarities both grammatically and lexically.
The easiest way for Russians to master Slavic languages
The languages of the South Slavic branch will be more complex. Languages like Croatian, Serbian or Bulgarian already have more complex constructions and rules that Russians simply have to learn. They also already exhibit specific sounds when speaking.
Russians have an ambiguous relationship with languages such as Czech and Polish. Thus, they are already significantly different from our native language, but are not as complex as, for example, the Asian language group. Many Russians claim that Czech is very easy for them due to its similarities with Russian. Others say that because of this same similarity, they cannot catch significant differences, they are constantly confused in vocabulary and grammar, so that for the latter, learning even Scandinavian languages can be easier than Slavic.
However, for some, the West Slavic group is difficult to learn
Romano-Germanic languages
Some European languages are considered among the easiest in the world, including international English. It received this status, in part, because of its simplicity in both grammar and pronunciation. Based on this, many Russians find it quite easy to learn this language.
The second most popular language in the international arena is Spanish, which is also not too complicated. In this language, pronunciation and spelling of words is not particularly difficult for Russians.
Russians are quickly mastering the Romano-Germanic group
You should also pay attention to the language of Italians and French, especially if you already speak a European language. Then studying this pair will not be difficult at all. Also, many people try not to lose sight of German, which was previously very popular. To date, it has, of course, lost its leading position, but it still remains in demand, although it is quite difficult to learn in comparison with other languages.
We also suggest reading about the most common languages in the world.
What foreign language do you know?
Constructed languages
Artificial languages, unlike natural ones, were created purposefully. Esperanto is considered the most famous artificial language.
Among the huge number of artificial languages, the following groups are distinguished:
- Programming languages and computer languages;
- Information languages;
- Formalized languages;
- Fictional languages.
Today, there are several programming languages, the most famous of which are Pascal, Java, C, C++ and Delphi. This type of language is used to write computer programs. Computer languages are a broader concept than programming languages. One example is the HTML markup language.
Information languages are used in various information processing systems. An example of this type of language is the knowledge representation language SC, SCP, SCL and the SQL database language.
Formalized languages are designed to record information and scientific facts in physics, mathematics, logic and other disciplines.
An example of a fictional language is the Elvish language, which was invented by J. Tolkien for his novel “The Lord of the Rings”.
What is language?
We can talk about language endlessly - it is such a complex and interesting system of signs. But today we will talk about how languages are on the verge of extinction and why some of them cross this line and become dead, forgotten, while others are revived through the efforts of their speakers.
Some languages are official, such as Russian: it is not only spoken in everyday life, it is used in business communication, for writing books, magazines, and newspapers. This is the language of power, law, and the media. If the state is multinational, then the language of the main nation (sometimes called the titular nation) is not only the state language, but also the language of interethnic communication for representatives of other nations.
Situations when the language of a national minority (small peoples) coexists with the language of the titular nation may differ in detail, but they always have a common feature: the language of a small people is forced to compete with the state one. Of course, it can be very difficult for the language of a small people to win in such an unequal struggle. But difficult does not mean impossible. I tried to understand how the situation in which our language found itself.
Extensibility and language predisposition
Each language has the potential to expand in order to name all the phenomena that surround now and will surround humanity in the future.
At the same time, new syntagmas fit into existing models. The famous modern linguist Tatyana Vladimirovna Chernigovskaya talks about this clearly:
In connection with non-heritability, the topic of the native language may be raised.
Some people think that a child is born with a genetic predisposition to his national dialect. However, it is not.
Yes, the baby, like a sponge, absorbs what he hears from his parents and other people who surround him. But it's still a study.
Numerous studies, inhumane experiences of the past, examples of Mowgli children and children adopted in infancy prove that genetics in this case is not important.
