Guest article provided by: hillslearning.com
Written by Jon, Director at Hills Learning, a language learning center that has been teaching languages since 2009.
Learning any new language is a daunting endeavor for anyone interested. There are new grammar rules, pronunciation, vocabulary, and just ways of expressing yourself that is not as familiar as your native language. Amplify this by having a disability, and things can seem daunting or almost impossible.
Fear not! This article is designed to help encourage students even with a disability to attempt a foreign language.
Which language is best to learn with a disability?
If you’re an English native speaker, the level of difficulty of languages is measured on a scale developed by the US government. https://www.ausa.org/articles/dlis-language-guidelines There are certain categories where languages become more difficult, for example, the Spanish language is a Category 1 language. A category 1 means the language is similar to English, there are a lot of cognates, similar grammatical structures and vocabulary, and an alphabet that is familiar.
Comparatively, a Category IV language (example Japanese or Arabic) is written using characters or script that are not recognizable to English speakers. Grammatical structures, pronunciation, and vocabulary are also quite different in a Category IV language.
Furthermore, depending on your disability, you might think that learning one language would be easier than another. For example, if you are blind, then having a language that is easier to pronounce could be easier to master.
Anyways, long story short the easiest language to learn with a disability is…the language that you want to learn. This might seem like an easy answer, however, there is a lot of wisdom in this statement. To learn a language fluently, you will need to immerse yourself in cultural mediums, music, movies, and books. You’ll need to travel to the country and speak with many native speakers. And of course, you’ll need to spend hours studying the culture and language. It truly takes a love of language to learn it, so, consider the reasons why you’d like to study a language first before pursuing it. If those reasons involve immersing yourself in the culture, then, this is the language choice for you. If you want to “build your resume”, then, you might consider spending time elsewhere.
Do you have any tips for language learning?
Yes of course! If you read the previous section you’re all set to go here, if you didn’t, then please read this first. In particular, what we’re going to be doing is giving you hints to learn all Category III and Category IV languages, in other words, the most difficult languages for native English speakers to learn.
Japanese
Class listings (Online or NYC)
Japanese is a difficult language to learn for language learners who have difficulty remembering characters, pictographs, or other types of images. Japanese is the only language on this list with three alphabets: Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji. While it has this barrier of entry in terms of the alphabet, the language is surprisingly easy to pronounce. It only has 5 vowel sounds total, and the vowels sound identical to Spanish. Japan a country is also very accommodating to foreigners and tourists, and you’ll find many people go out of their way to help you when visiting.
Korean
Class listings (Online or NYC)
Korean of all the languages on this list has the easiest alphabet to learn. So if you’re concerned about memorizing characters, there’s only 24 characters total and then you’re done with learning Korean. Of course, the combinations of characters and ways they are placed take time, but, we have had some students learn the alphabet Hangeul in 2 days. It’s also a phonetic alphabet like Japanese, but it does have a few more subtle vowel sounds than Japanese does.
Chinese
Class listings (Online or NYC)
It is good that we listed Japanese and Korean first, because, they are phonetic languages and easy to pronounce with basically a flat tone. Enter Chinese, which if you’re reading this you might already know that Mandarin Chinese has 4 tones and a “neutral” tone. So if you seem to be musical and can remember the pitch of songs, in other words, you have good tonal memory, then Mandarin might be for you. It also has standardized romanization called “pinyin” which makes things easier to remember.
Cantonese
Class listings (Online or NYC)
If you’ve read about Mandarin Chinese and you think it shouldn’t be too difficult to learn, then, you might want to consider learning Cantonese. Well let me rephrase that, if you’re considering learning Chinese at all, first check to see what the community you’re a part of is speaking. They could be speaking Cantonese, and not Mandarin. Cantonese has jyupting, among other romanization systems, that makes it easier to start learning. Watch out though, tones should definitely be your thing! Cantonese has 9.
Thai
Class listings (Online or NYC)
Thai is a beautiful language with a lovely culture and people that are very welcoming to people coming to visit. It should be a part of your consideration of learning languages, but, it is also a tonal language and the tones are a bit more subtle than the standard 4 tones of Mandarin. Also the Thai language is based on Sanskrit, which makes learning the script a bit more difficult for English natives (ie, rules, etc). Nevertheless you can speak Thai fairly quickly and use basic grammar structures (compared to Japanese and Korean).
Vietnamese
Class listings (Online or NYC)
Vietnamese is one of the easiest languages in this list to learn, and you should consider it. Why? Because it does not have its own script that is different than a romance language, like English, Spanish or French. There are no characters or scripts to learn. So if you’re considering a language and just don’t feel like you can learn a separate alphabet, Vietnamese is your choice. Just be careful though, it is a tonal language too!
Arabic
Class listings (Online or NYC)
Arabic is a great language to learn that is spoken and understood by a wide variety of countries and cultures throughout the Middle East, North Africa and around the world. So if you’re interested in these parts of the world you should definitely consider Arabic. Arabic has a lot of sounds that are unfamiliar to English native speakers, so, if you’re considering this make sure to be OK with learning different sounds and shapes your mouth needs to make. There is also a script, but it’s easier than most languages on this list.
In Closing – What type of class should I take?
While there are many services for language learning online and many options out there, to simplify live instruction, there are really only two types. One is a “group” type, where you learn with other students who have also found the class schedule and registered into the class. Group classes don’t really take into account specific learning needs, or individual methods of learning.
A second is a “private” type, where it is just you and the instructor and you’re free to change the pace, materials, and methods for which you’re trying to learn the language. In our past experiences, most students with IEPs did take the private 1 on 1 lessons and had some successes.
So please consider this when selecting language courses and good luck! And for any specific languages above, please remember our basic tips. We hope they are helpful.