What are the easiest (and difficult) languages to learn for native English speakers?

(CNN) - Many have considered the idea of expanding our horizons.Learning a language is an obvious option.It is an alternative that I would personally support.My individual circumstances were such that, at age 12, I already knew how to speak German, Greek and English, so languages became my passion and my hobby.

My advice is that you learn a language because you are also interested in culture and the country.

If you like Tolstoi and Dostoevski, learn Russian.If you are going to live in Bangkok, learn Thai.If your partner is Mexican, learn Spanish.

And remember: although you can fix them as a tourist in, possibly, weeks, dominating a language is a long -term commitment that has not been for years, no months.

Language and diplomacy

After World War II, the United States extended its influence worldwide by training the staff of its embassies in the local languages of the countries in which they were.

Fortunately for today's language students, the books and language tapes of the United States External Service Institute (FSI) can be found online.They are the best free courses that are available, although something of the cold war can still be detected in the study program ("Where is the state clothing store?").

Best of all, the FSI has done a great service by classifying languages by degrees of difficulty for Anglopartlantes.

These are some examples, ordered from least to greatest with respect to the number of hours that an average student needs to dominate them.

The easiest languages (approximately 600 hours of study)

With about 600 hours of study you will have no problem making you understand in Paris.Credit: Philippe Lopez/AFP/AFP Via Getty Images

Together with the Dutch and the Norwegian, the most popular Latin languages ––aliano, French, Spanish and Portuguese– - require about 600 hours of study to achieve a "general professional competence" in reading and oral expression.

Of these, Spanish and Italian are the easiest to learn for English natives, followed by Portuguese and, finally, French.

These languages share many words with English, but it is that common vocabulary that creates "false friends".These are words in different languages that are seen or sound like, but whose meanings are different because they have varied over time.For example, in Spanish, a "pregnant" woman is pregnant, while in French "loving" is not something that is added to food, but a condom or condom.

While French and Italian are quite standardized, you have to choose between learning Latin American Spanish or "Spanish", spoken in Spain.These differ as much as American and British English.

The choice is even more striking with the Portuguese.I have opted for Brazil for a long time and today I still don't understand Portugal speakers well.

German (750 hours)

Do you want to read the "Wild West" series of Karl May in your original language?First you will have to dedicate 750 hours to dominate the German.(Credit: Sean Gallup/Getty Images Europe/Getty Images)

One of my German teachers used.

With male, female and neutral nouns, verbs that combine a lot and an extremely strict syntax, the German may seem insurmountable to the beginning.

On the other hand, pronunciation and spelling are simple.And when the rules are learned, which are many, it is already.

You will also understand why the Germans never interrupt you during a conversation: they are waiting to listen to the verb at the end to know what you were talking about.

Malay and Suajili (900 hours)

It is not surprising that the two simplest non -European languages.

The Malay is the frank language of several Southeast Asian countries and has been simplified by its use as a second language by non -native speakers.

For example, the Malays.

Similarly, Suajili evolved as a commercial language in East Africa and is described as an Arab vocabulary about an African grammar.

He has given us the safari, all the characters of El Rey León (Simba, Timón, Pumba) and the Afro -American party of Kwanzaa.

Hungarian (1.100 hours)

If you like challenges, try the Hungarian.It does not look like any other European language that you have heard, except perhaps the Basque.

I remember a conversation that I had once with a friend who insisted that "nouns decline but verbs are combined".Except that in Hungarian the nouns are declined and combined, sometimes together.

Possession is denoted (my garden, your garden, its garden, etc..) Putting verbal endings to the noun garden.

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Think in the "You Take" and "He takes" from Shakespeare: 'Thou Takest' and 'He Taketh', in English.In that case, "your garden" (Garden) would be "Gardenest" and "his garden" would be "Gardeneth".

You will surely wonder what happens to the double possessives (the flowers of my mother's garden) or the difference between the flowers of my parents 'garden (plural, singular, plural) and the flowers of my parents' gardens...But there I gave up.

Greek (1.100 hours)

Your next trip to Greece will make much more sense if you take the time to study a bit of Greek.(Courtesy of the National Tourism Organization of Greece).

Modern Greek is perhaps the easiest language to learn that uses a different alphabet.

There is an ironic book entitled "Learn Greek in 25 years", but you will be surprised how simple the alphabet is to learn: alpha males, beta launches and gamma rays have been in charge of this.

Because, yes, Greek is also a language that has contributed numerous words to English.

In fact, in 1957 Xenophon Zolotas, the then governor of the Bank of Greece, delivered two speeches before the International Monetary Fund that only contained Greek loan words, apart from the inevitable basic English.(Example: "Our policies should be based more on economic criteria and less on political criteria").

Russian (1.100 hours)

The great advantage of learning Russian is that, once you dominate it, you can understand other Slavic languages such as Czech, the Polish or the Bulgarian.

In addition, it is spoken and understood in all the ancient regions of the Soviet Union, from Armenia to Kyrguistan.

Hidden behind a cirilic veil of mystery, it is one of the most difficult languages to dominate, to the point that even many Russians speak it incorrectly.

But any literature fan, music and ballet or aspiring astronaut (Russian is a mandatory subject in NASA) should study a language with more than 500.000 words (some of up to 38 characters), in which the letter "e" sounds like e u o and the nouns are "alive" or "dead".

Arab (2.200)

A native English speaker takes an average of 2.200 hours to dominate Arabic.(Credit: Giuseppe Cacace/AFP/AFP via getty images)

There is an urban myth about a pharmacist that was promoting an analgesic pill with three nonverbal images for international consumption.

The image on the left showed a woman with a headache.The middle showed her by ingesting the pill and the one on the right made her smile after the pain had decreased.

It worked everywhere except in the Arab world, which read it from right to left.

The direction of italics reading and writing, which may or may not include vowels, are the two main obstacles to Arabic students.

Classic Arabic, the language of the Quran, will make you understand you everywhere, but colloquial Arabic can be more useful, because as soon as the locals begin to talk between them, you will lose the thread.

But who can resist a language with 11 words to refer to love, five degrees of words and about 100 words to describe a camel?

Japanese (2.200)

Japan, a country that has enriched the world with sushi, karaoke and manga, has many devotees, especially among video game fans and geeks.

But they face an extremely challenging language that uses imported Chinese characters (Kanji) disconnected from its original meaning, as well as two syllabaries: Hiragana and Katakana (you have to learn when to use each).

Counting objects depends on whether they are long and fine (roads), small and round (apples), fine and planes (sheets of paper), wide and plans (carpets) and hundreds of more varieties.

The Japanese spoken also depends on the genre.There is a "rough" language for men and another "feminine" for women, but you must understand both.

Of course, you can start a Japanese course at home, but if you want to progress at all, dedicate a month of intensive practice in the country.

Cantonese / Mandarin (2.200 hours, each)

One of the challenges to learn Mandarin is to recognize all characters.(Credit: AFP Contributor/AFP/AFP Via Getty Images)

Each Chinese dialect is, in fact, another language.But, Mandarin (Putonghua in Chinese, which means common language) is considered the official language of modern China.All share (approximately) an evolving writing system, called 書面語 (or written language) invented to administer a large and diverse empire.

To further complicate the matter, there are two main types of Chinese characters under the same writing system: the traditional Chinese used in Hong Kong and Taiwan and the simplified Chinese in continental China (standardized and simplified in the 1950s to increase theliteracy in the country).

For example, fly is written as 飛 in traditional Chinese and 飞 in simplified Chinese.Basically, they are the same written character in two different ways, but they are pronounced differently when talking in a different dialect.

Are you already confused?

Each word written when it is pronounced is mutually incomprehensible between a Mandarin speaker in Beijing and a cantonés speaker in Hong Kong.If you think it's strange, think of our numerical system: the "9" symbol is universally recognized, but "nine" is pronounced in English "in Slovenian.

You have to memorize each word separately, since you cannot guess its pronunciation from writing, but the same could be said of English if the words "Plouch", "Dough" and "Tough" are considered.

Meanwhile, dictionaries list words according to the number of strokes.

These go to more than 60 strokes.The archaic character zhé, which, properly, means "verbiage", has 64 strokes.

And then there are pronunciation challenges.

During the British Empire, if they sent you to Hong Kong as an official, you had to pass a musical test first, because all Chinese languages are tonal.

In the Mandarin there are four tones: the acute (for example, the sun on a musical scale), the ascendant (like from the sun), the descending (from sun to do) and the descending and then the ascendant (from do aYes sun)...And if you think that is difficult, in Cantonese there are nine tones.

In Mandarin, there is a whole poem, "the devouring poet of lions in the stone den", with only the syllable "shi" repeated 107 times in several intonations.

That is, if you have no ear to the tones, it is better that you give up now.