Last week I did some travelling in Quebec. I had a great time reconnecting with relatives outside of Montreal and practicing my French — a language I haven’t used much in years. Even though I felt like I’d butchered the language, I was told I spoke well. I managed to get by.
According to Ethnologue.com, there are more than 7,000 known languages around the world. Even though English is a common language spoken by native and non native speakers, Mandarin Chinese leads as the language most spoken in the world by native speakers because of the significant population of China.
Canada has two official languages — English and French. French is predominately spoken in Quebec and smaller communities on the East Coast.
Although I didn’t grow up in Quebec, French was spoken in my home. However, I was raised speaking English and went to English language schools. My Quebec relatives, however, speak very little English.
In the United States, English is sometimes stated as an official language, although the U.S. government doesn’t specifically call out English as the official language because of the multitude of languages spoken. Source: https://www.usa.gov/official-language-of-us. However, because of the number of Spanish-speaking residents in the U.S., Spanish is a predominant language and sometimes seen as an alternate for English.
So what’s the hardest language to learn?
Learning a second or even third language depends on your background and the language you’re starting with. I thought French was hard to learn with all its noun genders. It also requires way more words to say the same thing in English. I remember writing copy in my role as a communications specialist. We would expect to need 20 per cent more space in designed brochures to fit the same French copy.
My friends in Quebec thought English was one of the hardest to learn. I’ve also heard from French language teachers that French is easier to learn if you understand Spanish first.
According to Babbel.com Mandarine Chinese is the hardest partially because of the number of special characters you’re required to learn. Another hard one is Arabic, a language that’s listed as one of the top five spoken languages in the world.
My broken French got me by in Quebec. And, now that I’m back home in Ontario, I have a renewed commitment to practicing and learning new words.
Do you have a second language you’re learning or want to learn? How hard is that?
Writing for you. 