7 Languages You Can Learn FAST
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Learning a new language doesn’t have to take up your entire life. If you pick the right language (and use the right method), you’ll be fluent faster than you could imagine. In today’s video, I’m going to show you 7 languages that are surprisingly easy to learn. If you get started now, you could be conversational before the new year!
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⏱ TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 You can learn a language FASTER
0:35 Swedish
3:17 Indonesian
6:05 Swahili
9:37 Dutch
11:59 Italian
15:18 Spanish
18:40 Esperanto
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Olly you can play Interlingua on Closemaster
Why didn’t you add Toki Pona as a bonus easy language?
Bahasa melayu/Indonesia is the easiest.
When I click on the link to claim the prize and enter my name and email address, I keep getting a message saying “Sorry, there was an error. Please try again later.” I have tried with different browsers and devices.
The closest language to English is SCOTS.
Thanks for this epic video Ollie!
Glad you liked it!
Hey Olly, thanks for your videos! They are very good. What languages do you speak currently?
Indonesian is my choice as I am dabbling in it everyday.
Even closer to English than Dutch is Frisian. Definitely not as useful (Dutch isn’t very useful on its own though)
There are 3 countries that speak it (+ some Caribean islands) and you can easily communicate with Afrikaans speakers in South Africa and Namibia with it.
Also is a good gateway to learning German afterwards.
@@kimashitawa8113All of those countries speak a much more common language aswell. Dutch is beautiful but unless one is marrying into, has deep love for the culture, plans to work, wants to become a dutch citizen; theres not a whole lot of “usage” for the languge. But i personally dont think there needs to be one for someone to want to learn.
Regardless how close and easier Frisian is to English, the lack of resources make it extremely difficult to learn.
@@Dylan-oy3ch That’s still at least 2 countries (Dutch is spoken by more people in Belgium than French)
I’m still pretty sure it’s 3 because isn’t Dutch also the biggest language in Suriname?
There are several cities near me (in the Midwest) where Dutch and Friesian are widely spoken and most people there learn them as their first language.
John McWhorter(linguist) suggested that colloquial Indonesian would be an ideal universal language of the world.
yup. Bahasa melayu/Indonesia is the easiest language to learn and master.
@@nsevv colloquial malay is so much more complicated than colloquial indonesian.
I knew that either Indonesian or Malaysian would be on here. Super simple!
2:56 She’s speaking Danish, the guy’s speaking Swedish
Just for reference..the dude singing 2:28 – 2:32 did not pronounce a single swedish word…that was international jibberish in my swedish ears. Update: OK, he might have gotten the first word “Hej” right, after that it was all “nothingness” as a swede. The attempt was “Hej tomtegubbar, slå i glasen och låt oss lustiga vara! “…he got “Hej” right. I could down more then a liter of vodka and still make more sense then that.
lmao I’m glad to hear that confirmation of what I was thinking- I lived in Sweden for a few years – didn’t have too much time to seriously study the language but I learned a semi-decent amount and certainly HEARD it every day, mostly on the bus or the local ICA- and to me it was jibberish and sounded VERY American, not at all Swedish. I guess I at least got to a point where bad, American-sounding “Swedlish” is obvious as being that even to me!
Esperanto also helps learning other languages in general. The most difficult language a person learns is their 1st 2nd language. Esperanto helps in that, since it is easier. Although you still have to put work in. In time you should have developed good study habits.
Esperanto additionally helps in learning Agglutinative languages, since word formation is done similarly.
Free Word Order as well, you can switch it up to get used to languages that have a different word order.
Still waiting for your “Short Stories in Indonesian” and “Short Stories in Afrikaans” Olly. 😉
Yes, although a good chunk of that is that it’s dead simple if you speak any of the languages that were used to create it. But, the bigger benefit is that you can skip the step where it sound weird hearing foreign words coming out of your mouth and establish that it’s possible to learn a new language so you stop fighting it.
Bahasa melayu/Indonesia is the easiest.
Esperanto is the fastest to learn & builds motivation, concept of multilingual benefits, & good structure to link the other languages that are less logical (eg English, 1 of the most illogical spelling & idioms 😉 my 5th & best language (not counting the split from Serbocroatian to 4 different & similar – Slovenian, Bulgarian, Slovak…)
I’m wanting to get back into language learning, I’m thinking this is the way I’ll go.
Be realistic my friend , learning any language is not easy , because there are also different levels of understanding and especially speaking ,in all languages . Ok , it is easy in all languages to learn simple things like ‘ can I have ´ , ‘ I like this ‘ etc etc , but when it comes to giving your opinion and speaking with real native speakers ,that is another question !
I speak as an English person who speaks French fluently , and who has a good knowledge of German and Arabic . NONE OF THE MAJOR USEFUL WORLD LANGUAGES ARE EASY , and each one needs hours of patient learning , listening , reading and speaking ! So let’s be realistic and not give simplistic , media friendly solutions to complex learning situations !
And something else : There are many different language families in the world , and your learning capacity will be effected by which language family you come from and in which language family is the language you want to learn .
Tourist friendly short dialogues are easily learnt but really mastering a foreign language takes time and full immersions. When I write “really mastering” I mean having a spoken and written vocabulary almost as rich as the one you have in your mother tongue
Absolutely, regardless whether the language is considered “easy” for English speakers for example, the hard part about language learning is definitely understanding natives, getting used to a foreign sound system, learning vocabulary. Related languages make it easier to use specific grammar constructions because of their similarities, but you still need a high number of hours spent with the language, regardless of its lexical similarity with your own language
Very true. I am a native Dutch speaker and I speak English, Indonesian , French , Spanish and German. I always hear people talking about how easy Indoneisan is and I guess that’s kind of true if you’re talking survival level and informal conversation. But most foreign speakers of Indonesian make many mistakes but they’ll never realize it until they try something like a formal letter or an academic or literary text. Indonesian are usually too polite to point out errors anyway. Several things said about the language in the video are misleading. Purely phonetic? No, for instance Indonesian has two phonemes represented by the letter e, it also has digraphs, it has a word-initial velar nasal which many people can’t pronounce properly, it has a glottal stop represented by k in some words but not in others… Doubling a word for the plural form does exist but is not appropriate in every context (“two houses” is NOT dua rumah-rumah). There is a considerable difference between the formal and informal register in vocabulary but also in the use of grammatical prefixes and suffixes. I see videos with titles like “guy amazes locals by speaking perfect Indonesian” only to see them address older people with the informal pronoun “kamu” which is kinda rude, no Indonesian would address a person of authority like that, but Indonesians will generally tolerate it in everyday interactions with foreigners. However wouldn’t recommend it if you are talking to a government official in order to get some kind of permit. Try explaining something technical or legal in formal Indonesian, with lots of relative clauses for example, and the “simple suffixes” suddenly aren’t so simple anymore.
You may notice he did not say “Easy languages to learn”. He said “Languages you can learn fast”. Not the same thing
Besides ease is relative. Maybe all of those languages were hard for you and as a native English speaker even Spanish gave me some trouble but a friend I went to high school with found it super easy. And given that Olly’s audience is primarily native English speakers I don’t think he needs to clarify
You may also notice he literally listed the hours on his category chart. Like category 2 takes supposedly 900 hours – I don’t think anyone would define that as easy unless we’re talking in comparison to other languages. Which he is. So I can’t even figure out what your problem is
Like you came and wrote this whole paragraph but I can’t even figure out what your specific complaint or proposed solution is
Being realistic doesn’t sell.
Afrikaans is easy to. I recognize some of it and recognize that it was some Dutch words. A lady was talking on the phone while I was cashiering and I said are you speaking Dutch? I don’t understand actually what you’re saying by kinda understand the words not to be nosy just curious, she was like wow it’s Afrikaans. It has some another person was speaking German to her daughter and I said are you speaking German? She was like everybody asked me if I’m speaking Spanish.😂😂😂 I’m like no that’s definitely German. I may not know these languages. I don’t speak anything but English, but because so much of other languages is in English and English in other languages I generally can get a vibe probably enough to say I know German in Spanish, but it’s very basic
you need to look into Indonesia/malay. Bahasa melayu/Indonesia is the easiest language to learn. no tenses, easy plurals, no gender and etc. same alphabet as english.
Hi Olly. Interesting video. Have you thought about a video on Irish/Scots Gaelic? Would love to see one please. 👍
🙏🙏🙏
Great video Olly! Thanks to your content I found a way to learn French. After roughly 10 months I am at a lower B1 level. All thanks to your story learning method!
I just wanted to make a comment to your point at 3:10.
While it is true that many Scandinavians understand the other two languages, we must remember that this requires extremely good listening skills, and an English person learning Swedish will probably not pick up Norwegian and Danish as easy as it might sound. Go out on the streets of Norway or Sweden and ask random natives if they understand spoken Danish. Most people will actually say no. The Scandinavians who immerse a lot in the other two languages mostly have no issues, but a lot of native Scandinavians really struggle with understanding the other two languages. Due to our many dialects a lot of Scandinavians struggle to also understand some people from the same country!
I am a native Norwegian in a relationship with a Swede. We understand each other just fine. But whenever we visit her family in Sweden, I have to adjust my Norwegian to a middle road language called “Svorsk” (Swedish with a thick Norwegian accent). Because if I speak to her family in my west Norwegian dialect, they understand nothing.
For a person learning Swedish, understanding Norwegian and Danish as well is going to take a lot of time. In order to comprehend Norwegian and Danish, your Swedish listening skills must be superb, close to native level. And for this reason, your target when learning Swedish should be to learn Swedish, and not Norwegian and Danish. However, if you move to Sweden and learn Swedish, and then move to Norway for some reason, you will pick up Norwegian to a good level in no time. Probably less than six months. But if you learn Swedish and expect to understand Norwegian and Danish as well, you might be disappointed.
I think we can compare it to Spanish and Catalan. A person from Catalonia can probably understand Spanish just fine. A Spanish person can maybe get by in Catalonia. However if I, a native Norwegian, were to learn Spanish to a B2 level. Would I also understand Catalan? Definitely no. But if I were to move to Barcelona I could probably pick it up easier than a person who speaks no Spanish.
My channel is fairly new, but I have already made a video about this exact subject. Check it out if you are interested.
As always, thanks for your videos Olly. I’m a huge fan of your content and also the story learning method.
Thanks for the explanation!
To be fair, Olly only says “you can also understand Norwegian and Danish too”.
He doesn’t say “spoken Norwegian and Danish”.
İ for one find it not that difficult understanding written Danish and Norwegian. Even though İ sometimes don’t understand a thing when Danes and Norwegians talk.
Especially Danish is super difficult to follow.
İn fact, this happened to İ several times: İ thought a bunch of people were talking Cantonese or Vietnamese. İ only hear they at first, then İ see those people and they’re blond. After listening more closely İ realize that they’re Danes. 🙆🏽♀️
The last time this happened is actually less than a month ago.
The easiest language for you is the one you are passionate about.
Nein,Nein,Nein!
But necessarily. I speak, to varying levels, 8 languages. I’m very passionate about Georgia and the Georgian language but the grammar, especially for verbs, is extremely difficult.
So true
i agree
Indonesia mentioned rrraaahhh 🇮🇩 🦅🗣️🔥
Thanks for Esperanto – Modern Intercontinental or interplanetary. The astronaut Mark Shuttleworth (South African entrepreneur) flew aboard the Russian Soyuz mission in 2002.
While onboard, he communicated in Esperanto as part of his outreach to international audiences. Shuttleworth’s use of Esperanto helped raise awareness of the language in unique & high-profile setting.
Esperanto is inter cultural language to understand the world.
Esperanto was taught in schools in 1905 in China, Macedonia, Samos… Esperanto gained traction in Japan, especially among intellectuals & students during early 1900s.
French schools started teaching Esperanto in 1900s as part of broader movement to promote international communication.
Educational institutions in Germany included Esperanto in their curricula during early XX century. Herzberg am Harz, Esperanto Urbo became popular, & flourished economically.
No toki pona?
He probably doesn’t know about toki pona. He should watch the RobWords video about it.
4:42 Here is my explanation as an Indonesian speaker. While it is true that we express plurality by repeating words, that is not always the case. This may be confusing for English speakers, but in Indonesian we do not need to change a noun just because it is singular or plural.
Usually we just add a number in front of the noun to express quantity. For example, “two bicycles” is simply “dua sepeda”, never “dua sepeda-sepeda”. That is why we are not confused by words like “kupu-kupu”, which is already a reduplication, because we never need to say “dua kupu-kupu kupu-kupu”.
Moreover, according to the Indonesian dictionary, “kupu” already means “butterfly”, even without the reduplication. So, technically, you can express sentences like “butterflies are flying around” by simply saying “kupu beterbangan” and leave it at that, since the verb “beterbangan” itself already indicates that there are many butterflies involved.
02:16 No way Georgian and the Uralic languages are not level 5. No matter what the FS says. The grammar is incredibly difficult. For instance, Russian is MUCH easier to lean than Georgian. I speak both, and there’s no comparison. I’ve also worked in Georgia with many FS officers, and I’ve never heard one who could actually speak Georgian to any meaningful level.