Furniture lovers, perhaps Swedish is the language for you. Business Insider has broken down IKEA’s unique naming system in this article. The popular, minimalistic Lack tables are named after the Swedish word for “varnish.” And the Stockholm rugs, of course, get their name from Sweden’s capital. English speakers around the world have been exposed to a number of Swedish words while simply shopping for furniture (and chowing down on some meatballs, I presume). And thanks to IKEA, Swedish has something else working in its favor: exposure. Like Norwegian, Swedish also has relatively simple grammar rules and similar word order to English. For instance, “grass” is gräs in Swedish - a clear cognate. One reason Swedish is one of the easiest languages for English speakers to learn is the large number of cognates the two languages share (cognates are words in different languages that stem from the same ancestral language and look and/or sound very similar to one another). Our second easiest language to learn also comes from Scandinavia and the Germanic family of languages. Sound appealing? Lace up your snow boots and give Norwegian a try! 2. That’s because there are a vast array of different accents in Norway and, therefore, more than one “correct way” to pronounce words. For example, “Can you help me?” translates to Kan du hjelpe meg? - the words are in the same order in both languages, so mastering sentence structure is a breeze!įinally, you’ll have a lot more leeway with pronunciation when learning Norwegian. And the word order closely mimics English.

Norwegian is a member of the Germanic family of languages - just like English! This means the languages share quite a bit of vocabulary, such as the seasons vinter and sommer (we’ll let you figure out those translations).Īnother selling point for Norwegian: the grammar is pretty straightforward, with only one form of each verb per tense. This may come as a surprise, but we have ranked Norwegian as the easiest language to learn for English speakers.

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