The world is becoming increasingly multilingual. The future belongs to the polyglots and monolinguals are decreasing in number. Even in the UK we have had a surge of language learning – maybe the word surge is a little strong, but something is happening.
But why do people learn languages? Do they want to become more employable? Is it because they like the sound or simply to travel?
You need to ask these questions to yourself before you embark on the titanic quest of learning a new language. You should know how difficult it is and how much the language(s) you already know will help you with conquering the next one.
It’s a widely acknowledged fact that speaking more than one language increases your employability, as well as being a hugely rewarding. If you are one such polyglot, then take a look at our language profiles below to help you make that important decision.
With language learning on the up, so is the range of language learning resources available. Here you can find the free online language learning resources, along with language learning courses abroad. Participating in a language course abroad is a great way to immerse yourself in a new culture and learn a language directly from the locals.
The six categories we include are:
- Employability: using the percentage of job offers with a specific language and measuring it against the percentage of our candidates who speak that language, we can arrive at an employability status.
- Attractiveness: using a survey from the website thetoptens.com we have given the languages ratings of attractiveness.
- Difficulty: with information from infographics created by thecultureist.com we have given rough indications of the ease with which each language can be learnt.
- European ranking: this is the number of native speakers of the language in Europe.
- Number of countries: the number of countries where the language is an official language in Europe.
- Offers on ELJ: this is the number of active offers we currently have listed on the Europe Language Jobs website.
Which is the one for you?
Are you looking to increase your employability? Or are you trying to make yourself a more attractive person – as if that was possible! Or maybe you just fancy being able to say that you are multilingual without too much effort and are therefore looking for an easy option. Whatever your motivation, these awesome infographics should help you decide...
If you’re looking for a job then German is the language for you…
Ze language of love.
Simple and sexy - is Spanish the one for you?
Fancy a challenge and being a little different?
Remember, you don’t have to mess about with masculine and feminine in Swedish
A surprisingly large amount of Europe speaks Polish.
Very employable and not as tough as German...sounds good to me!
Everyone is “Russian” to learn this language.
Some big names may be missing from the selection but we wanted to choose an accurate cross-section of the main languages of Europe, covering the main strands of Slavic, Germanic and Romantic.
The great thing about the world we live in is that we have access to quality content of all types for free to help us learn new skills from the comfort of our own home. Sites like YouTube and apps such as Duolingo have totally rewritten the self-teaching rulebook. So if you’ve been inspired to learn Swedish, because it’s actually much easier than you thought and they have pretty people there, why not get started today?
Do you want to learn any of these languages? ESL provides high quality language study courses abroad in over 40 different countries. Their service should help you find the perfect course to perfect your language skills - a wide range of superb destinations ensures you can find the right environment to study in total language immersion, according to your wishes and priorities.
Karla Sedlářová1y ago
Oh, poor Germanic languages with their low attractiveness, it is so sad. As a native speaker of Czech language I cannot consider other Slavic languages as difficult. I can even say that with every language you know (does not matter which one) the next one is easier. Haha, not always. Even I know some Spanish; it is still easier for me to learn French from English than from Spanish. Currently I can learn only completely different languages, so I am focusing on improving of Spanish (Romance) and Polish (Slavic), and newly Hindi (Indo-European) just because of its beautiful alphabet. I like languages from very simple reason; I like to talk to other people, to know languages opens you whole new world.
Oh, poor Germanic languages with their low attractiveness, it is so sad. As a native speaker of Czech language I cannot consider other Slavic languages as difficult. I can even say that with every language you know (does not matter which one) the next one is easier. Haha, not always. Even I know some Spanish; it is still easier for me to learn French from English than from Spanish. Currently I can learn only completely different languages, so I am focusing on improving of Spanish (Romance) and Polish (Slavic), and newly Hindi (Indo-European) just because of its beautiful alphabet. I like languages from very simple reason; I like to talk to other people, to know languages opens you whole new world.