Knowledge base

Second most popular language in the world, one of the official languages of international political and economic organisations, and the number of its learners is constantly rising – today we are going to take a look at Spanish.   According to the common belief, Spanish is easy to learn (at least, at a level which allows for free communication) and speaking this language opens up many new possibilities. But what does it mean in practice? Is Spanish really so versatile? Let’s check where you can make use of the language of fiesta, siesta and tequila.   Spanish-speaking countries The list of Spanish-speaking countries is quite impressive. If we focus on the countries where Spanish is the official language, we are still left with a pretty big piece of the globe. Apart from the obvious position, which is Spain itself, these are: – Argentina – Bolivia – Chile – Dominican Republic – Ecuador – Guatemala – Equatorial Guinea – Honduras – Colombia – Costa Rica – Cuba – Mexico – Nicaragua – Panama – Paraguay – Peru – El Salvador – Uruguay – Venezuela   The above list covers a major part of South and Central America, but there is even a small bit of Africa: Equatorial Guinea. Spanish is also an official language in Puerto Rico, a U.S. dependent territory.   Why is Spanish spoken in these countries? The reason behind the presence of this language in numerous parts of the world is the same as in the case of English, French or Portuguese: the age of European colonialism initiated in the 15th century. The success of the voyage of Christopher Columbus, financed by the monarchs of Spain, allowed for further expansion of Spanish conquistadors in Central, South and North America, as well as in the South-East Asia and Africa. At the peak of its power, the Spanish empire was rightly called “the empire on which the sun never sets”.   In the 19th century, the weakened empire lost most…

It’s hard to compare languages to one another: they are divided into numerous categories and are characterised by numerous characteristics. Difficulty level is definitely one of them.   Does it mean “easy” languages are somehow worse than those perceived as “difficult”? Not really – every single one of over 7000 languages present in the world has years of history, tradition, and cultural identity behind it. Moreover, each of them has easier and more challenging aspects: a language with relatively simple grammar can come with tricky pronunciation. What are the most difficult languages in the world – and what is so challenging about them? If we look deeper into this issue, we will immediately realise that various lists of world’s most difficult languages do not differ much. No wonder – the criteria allowing us to assess a language’s difficulty remain strongly subjective. Usually, a language with complicated grammatical structure, extensive lexicon or complicated alphabet is deemed to be demanding. It may also be characterised by complex pronunciation rules. Another way to assess the difficulty of a language is to check the number of hours needed to master it. As we can see, the above-mentioned criteria aren’t precise, which doesn’t make it any easier to unanimously arrange the languages by difficulty level. Languages of chilly north – Finnish and Icelandic Inventing Quenya, one of the languages of the Middle Earth, J.R.R. Tolkien took inspiration from, i.e., Finnish. Indeed, this language – which belongs to the Finno-Ugric language group – has a nice, melodic sound. At that, it comes with a relatively complicated grammatical structure (15 cases) and a challenging lexical pattern (Finnish is an agglutinative language, which can be easily noticed with words such as kaksikymmentäyksi). Icelandic alphabet, on the other hand, features characters that we are unlikely to see in other writing systems (ð, Þ i æ). The language itself has complex grammar and unique lexicon, which is a result of the country’s long-term isolation from external influences and linguistic purism…