Almost all languages are related. Spanish and Portugese, German and Dutch, Polish and Russian, to name a few european languages.
Learning one will give you an advantage on the other, advantages that you won’t have when learning mandarin from english for example.
Some languages are also easier to learn because people actively use them. English and Spanish can be picked up easier than for example Swiss and Greek, or perhaps one of the proto languages, because those languages are easier to practice in today’s life and media.
The task at hand:
You have to learn the official language(s) of every country in the world. There is no time restraint, but you have to do it faster than other contenders.
You start off by knowing no language at all, so there is no advantage in the starting point.
I would start by learning lots about linguistics—details like cases, gender, moods, IPA etc. so that would be easier to understand the differences in others.
I would start with languages in Latin script (i.e., Polish rather than Ukranian), so I can use my verbal working memory more easily.
If I had no experience with learning any other language (except English), I’d start with an easy one to practise—maybe Spanish or Dutch—to help me plan future language learning.
And I wouldn’t start with Swiss—I’d probably learn Belgian before that
The strategy might also depend on what I have to do with these languages. Have a conversation on a random topic in each? Pass a written exam? Follow some instructions given in the language? Do I have to speak it proficiently, or just enough to be understood? [Not asking for clarification—just identifying that these questions would be important if this were somehow real]
Assuming I was starting from ground zero, I would try to learn in order, prioritizing 3 factors:
Availability of practice opportunities and training material,
Relatedness to any languages I am already familiar with, and
Ease of grammar and vocabulary
I think these 3 rules would do a lot to minimize the worst difficulties, but there are obviously going to be situations where they are of little help–such as when learning a language isolate.
Since English is my native language, a language like Norwegian would offer a rather natural feeling grammar, but French would be a better starting point because I have way more opportunities to practice and tons of training material.
From French, it would be possible to efficiently branch out to other Romance languages. One I had done that, I would focus on the Germanic languages, starting with Norwegian. But then I would quickly add Swedish and Danish. Immediately after I would do Dutch, Afrikaans, Friesian, then German. At that point I would Yiddish would incorporate.
I would likely jump to Greek and then Persian before tackling any Slavic languages. Greek because of the familiar vocabulary elements, Persian because the grammar is simple enough for an English speaker–and a bit of the vocabulary is familiar.
Then I would focus on the Slavic languages, using the criteria above.
After mastering those languages, I shall be old. so I would give up and instead try to pass the challenge to some enthusiastic young person.
Nice, that’s a new approach. In that case I’d like to be born in Belgium so that I can be raised bilingually French and German. So, that’ll be my bi-lingual starting point…
My first L2 would be English, fairly simple to accomplish because because movie theaters show a lot of VO with subtitles and the same can be done with Netflix, etc.
Also, English is a Germanic language with lots of Romance vocabulary. It’s number 1 on the list above and thus far I got 59 countries with English, 29 countries with French, and 6 countries with German. Granted German isn’t that impressive with only 6 countries, but it’s probably the hardest Germanic language as far as grammar is concerned, having maintained 3 genders and 4 cases. As far as the grammar goes, it’s probably closer to Latin than French is.
Very good point, so the first Romance L2 with be Italian just because it’s closer to French than Spanish or Portuguese are. Also it’s pretty easy again to learn Romanian from Italian and their vocabulary is influenced by Slavic languages as much as Spanish and Portugues is by Arabic. So that’s a good starting off point into either Arabic or one of the Slavic languages.
Italian is not only closer than the other two but it is also a pro-drop language, a feature that French doesn’t have but Spanish and Portuguese do… and that’ll be the next two to learn. I’d learn them at the same time actually; because unlike French/Italian which is more similar written than spoken, Spanish/Portuguese are also pretty similar when spoken.
Up to this point:
Started with: French/German
Learned: English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
That covers basically North America and South America in terms of continents; I’d call that a first milestone.
I’d make the same point, so that next one would be Norwegian, Danish, and then Swedish followed by Dutch. And, I’d like to call Western European countries the second milestone.
With the exception of the Frisian language family, Catalan, Occitan, and a few other minority Romance and Germanic languages, I’m pretty much done at this point. Let’s call the above 2+4+4 the low hanging fruits if your native languages are French and German.
Yes, Spanish/Portuguese vocabulary will help a little with Arabic and so will Romanian with the Slavic languages, but the same is true for Dutch as far as Indonesian, I mean it’s really not that big a deal anymore. I could argue that Chinese is SVO order, so it’s easier to learn than Japanese SOV but they’re not super advantages anymore.
According to this source…
"There are over 6900 languages currently spoken in the world. These languages belong to 94 different language families, that is, groups of languages whose share their origins.
Indo-European languages are the most widely spoken languages: 44% of the world population, or 2.5 billion people, speak a language in the Indo-European family.
Over 96% of the earth’s inhabitants or 5.5 billion people speak a language in the top 10 language families, meaning that the languages in the remaining 84 groups are spoken by only 4% of the world population!"
I’m an 80/20 kinda guy when it comes to tasks like the one you’ve described, so for me it’d be Chinese, Japanese, and Korean next. Then consider the world map under the above link and let’s see what’s still missing and fill up from there.
I don’t think that any proto language is an official language in any country… but as far as school is concerned, I’d make sure to learn Latin and Ancient Greek for this task. Sanskrit too, but that would require a student exchange program as that’s not usually taught in Europe.
The benefit here is that school is pretty much useless when it comes to living languages. The hours of input you get per week is the same as watching a half hour of your favorite sitcom on Netflix. Let’s say, you watch a movie a day in your target language, you’ll be at the end of the month where you’d be after two semesters of whatever textbook approach your school has in that language… but let’s not mock formal schooling…
For this, schools are great… so yeah… Latin, Ancient Greek, Sanskrit… or put differently, rather than sleeping in your bed, reading the IKEA instructions and building your bed yourself. With dead languages it comes in handy that school treat them like sciences when they teach them.
So yeah, that’s it from my point of view… Romance then Germanic then go to Asia (different scripts but unrelated languages), come back and do the Slavic and finally the rest of the IE languages. After that, see what’s left and do that…
…also a good point to check with @Mayarra if you actually mean learn close to 7,000 languages or at least ONE of the official languages in a particular country… if it’s the latter, I’m probably almost done at this point.
I love this little oasis on the internet where @Mayarra asks an absolutely bananas hypothetical and @bjoern.gumboldt provides a detailed answer and asks clarifying questions.
I would start with Latin myself. Since most of the Romance languages have heavy roots there. I might then move on to some of the other languages like Arabic, Mandarin, or Russian.
I would start with the language that has the most resources for learning other languages. Of course, in the current era this would be English. In my opinion learning related languages first wouldn’t matter as much as it seems because you will need to learn all languages anyways. So even if you save time learning related ones first, learning the unrelated ones down the line will negate that effect (in contrast to the real world where you don’t have to learn unrelated languages later on).
Then I would continue down the list of languages with the most resources for learning other languages (translated sentences, books etc…). Much of language learning is just pattern recognition so the more resources you have, the easier time you will have going forward.
It seems to me that the language families and which languages are easier to learn are geographically near each other. Since we’ve discounted aging, I’m going to also open everyone’s borders; they don’t have to like you, but they’ll let you live there. (If there are any cannibalistic tribes left, they also don’t find you to be appetizing.) That way we don’t have to worry about source material too much (or being eaten). Language groups that have lived next to each other naturally or by transplant do a lot of blending usually and so I’m thinking that there will already be linguistic bridges built to ease into the next language that has native speakers nearby. Maybe the pacific islands should come last because of how spread out the island nations are there. By then you’d be really good at learning languages and it would go quicker.
Of course the internet provides a lot of access to resources. So maybe try to start a global company and heavily campaign for everyone to get online and teach their language? Wouldn’t have to worry about open borders at that point (or getting eaten). Seems like we’re in a competition, though, so that’s the worst idea ever for competing (maybe lay traps for your competitors to get covered in BBQ sauce). So memorization of online content and online meetups with native speakers would be important. Friends scouring the globe to put people online for you to learn from would cut how much you’d have to travel, too.
Some cultures are nicer about tolerating the mistakes of new language learners, so I’d try to identify the least friendly ones and do them last just to have as many language learning tricks up my sleeve to be able to learn quicker and with less help. I’d carefully manage my schedule and my health, too. Though without aging, health concerns get massively easier.
Another strategy could be, when I’m new to a region, the kind of work I’d look to do would be service work like looking after the elderly or just being really helpful, but with simple work so there wouldn’t have to be a lot of instructions given. That would also help endear you to the locals and you’d get more help, hopefully. Do we think little kids would be nicer? Maybe teacher’s assistant; get a nice introductory to the language because of the simplified language skills of the children. Though, the more skilled you are, this might actually slow you down in some cases.
Every stat I remember seeing on how hard Chinese is to learn, I’d choose to be born there. And then learning as much as possible about linguistics to really refine the plan before traveling. Then I’d know how hard it is for the Chinese to learn other languages. Maybe that’s the worst place to start and I’m wrong to kind of assume that every other language is sort of a downhill battle for them. Maybe it’s way too different and it’s actually harder to learn most other languages after that… If we find we picked wrong, how many resets do we get?
