Easiest/Hardest languages to learn...?

Question

Anyone who provides the most inclusive list of languages listed from hardest to easiest/easiest to hardest gets 10 points.

Please give sources.

Thanks a lot!

also include everything u can that's in between

Answer 1

That is an impossible question to answer, as that list would be highly subjective, and depends on the linguistic strength of each person. The easiness with which you become fluent in a language also depends greatly on how frequently you can exposed to that language, and whether you practice regularly.

For a French-speaker, for example, it is easy to learn basics of Spanish, easier than English, because both languages have the same roots. On some aspects, however, English is easier in that it has no gender and no verb conjugations (except to be) to learn by heart.

Also, once you learn one foreign language, learning other languages become easier, as you have more than one language to compare to. Speaking French first, having learned English as a second language and having taken some Latin, learning German became easy for me, because it draws elements from all the other languages I already know. To someone who never studied Latin, German is more difficult, because they have to learn about declinations.

Finally, from a purely linguistic point of view, there is no such thing as an easy or difficult language to learn. Each language has different aspects. Some are easy in one language, others are difficult. What is easy in one may very well be difficult in another.

Answer 2

Hard for who to learn? For English speakers, I've heard that the Romance languages, especially Spanish and Italian, are not too difficult to learn. I studied Italian and it wasn't too bad. These languages are very phonetic and have few irregular verbs. Dutch is also not bad since it is very similar to English, although it is very irregular. It's just irregular in the same way English is.

Any language that has declensions will be very difficult for an English speaker to master. Among European languages, Finnish is one of the hardest to learn since it has 26 (!) declensions. Plus it isn't Indo-European so it won't have many cognates with English like Spanish or German would.

People I know who have tried to learn character-based languages like Japanese and Chinese think those types are the hardest for English speakers to learn since the writing system is so completely different; it's not even an alphabet. Plus Chinese is tonal, which makes it super difficult for English speakers. Vietnamese is also tonal, but at least it uses a Roman alphabet like English.

However, Korean is apparently not too hard to learn because it actually is an alphabet. It looks like it has characters like Chinese, but it's just the way Koreans arrange letters into words. Also Korean is not a tonal language, which makes it a bit easier.

So my guess (sorry I have no citations, just personal experience with a lot of people who've studied other languages) is that Chinese is the hardest language for an English speaker to learn. Among Asian languages, Korean isn't too tough to learn. Among European languages, Finnish is the hardest to learn, and Spanish, Italian, or Dutch probably the easiest.

Answer 3

Actually Basque is supposed to be the most complicated.

Barely behind it are oriental languages (such as Chinese, Japanese, etc.) and some exotic languages.

Then there are the strange European languages like Bulgarian and Norwegian. English is also about equal to these.

The simpler ones include French, Spanish, German, and Russian.

The easiest language, of course, is Esperanto.

Answer 4

We've said this five million times if it's been said once. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS HARDEST AND EASIEST LANGUAGE. EVERYTHING depends on what you already know. Languages are more or less similar to what you already know.

Answer 5

For me Nippongo(japanese language) is the hardest language.The easiest language to learn is English.

Answer 6

i think french is the easiest..just a guess, cuz i cant speak it, but there are a lot less words in the french language than english. then right after it would be english, because it's pretty self explanitory and common.
i can't believe i'm saying this, but in a third, it would be spanish. the way things are spelled are so similar to how they are pronounced.
In fourth, i would have to say is scots, it's so similar to english, so its easy to learn.
Fifth, italian?
And then the hardest would be chinese, because i speak it, and lemme tell you, it's harder than it seems, and reading it is...........a total hassle, since you have to memorize all the words. then theres all the african dialects and i guess korean

Answer 7

Dutch, Russian, Turkish, Hebrew, Greek, Assyrian, French, German, Japanese, Chinese.

(That is from an English speaker's point of view)

Answer 8

easiest: spanish , french, italian, english

hardest: yiddish, and the rest with a different alphabet, cause then u have to learn the alphabet and then learn the language.

Answer 9

English must be the hardest...and I say spanish is the easiest.

Answer 10

I think, English is the easiest one. It is not so difficult. Asian languages are more difficult than others. They are very old and more complicated.