What is the easiest language to learn?

Question

If you already speak English, which I have heard is the hardest language to learn, what second language would you like to learn or what one in your opinion would be the easiest to learn?

Answer 1

When I was in High School, I wanted to take a foreign language course, and I had to choose between Spanish and French. I chose Spanish, but for various reasons, I failed it. For the next 24 years I was under the impression that I couldn't learn a second language.

Then when my daughter was taking Spanish in High School, I found that I still remembered quite a bit of it, and began to rethink my impression about my linguistic ability.

One day I read that Esperanto was the easiest language on earth to learn. I began learning it as an experiment to see if I really could learn a foreign language. Now I'm fluent at it, and have gone on to learn Spanish (I finished the 3 Pimsleur's Spanish courses in 1 year), and moved on to German. Later I learned a little Polish (to take a business trip to Poland) and studied Mandarin Chinese (just because a friend told me about the free course work on chinesepod.com).

Knowing Esperanto first, helped greatly in my other linguistic experiences, but the thing that surprised me the most was that there is a culture around Esperanto that is alive and vibrant, with Music and Literature (both translated and original). Esperanto is my favorite of all the languages, and the easiest to learn of all my language experiences.

Answer 2

It all really depends on many factors. English has a Germanic origin so learning one such as German is an option. There are many similarities between the two languages such as nouns but unfortunately the nouns have declensions (which is also found in Latin), and that could be a bit fishy for English speakers because we don't have the equivalence in our language.

As for Latin-based languages (Romance languages), you won't necessarily run into the world of declensions, unless your studying Romanian. Spanish, French, and Portugese don't. Of those three I believe Spanish to be the easiest and partly due to the influences upon the American culture from Spanish-speaking people's living here. There are a handful of cognates that are useful while learning the language

But of course learning a new language is a daunting task. The only real way to learn it is to go out and practicing it among others who use the language. Look into your community and see what influences have come there. If you're in Luisianna, maybe French will be better. It all depends.

Answer 3

I find japanese to be quite easy, at least the roman script.
I started to read some stuff about the language online and was surprised how easy it is. I heard their entire grammar fits 11 A4 pages, but this is not checked.
Anyway I speak serbian (and the variants of it) and english fluently, a bit of spanish, italian and the above mentioned japanese as well. I've been also learning french in school for 8 years and i'm still on a very basic level... i don't why though... that language has just too many irregular verbs and past tenses.
would like to learn arabic, german and chinese and maybe some easy-to-learn african language
These languages i consider to be something like a complete set of languages you should know if you want to be a man of the world
...except serbian you dont really need it for anything

Answer 4

The easiest language to learn is the one spoken around you when you are born. The second easiest one is the next one spoken around you, and so on. If you are young enough for your language formation to be on-going while you are exposed to a different language, you will learn it in a more integrated way than when you struggle with vocabulary, grammer and verb forms later in life.

Spanish, German and Italian aren't too hard. French has a different quality for some vowels
but there are plenty of French words used in English. When I've heard Dutch, it seems close to English to me.

Answer 5

I have often heard that the easiest foreign language for native English speakers to learn is Spanish.

Answer 6

Italian is easy to learn. Same for Spanish. French will be a bit difficult but, it's a nice language. German, I've hear that it's a bit hard.

Answer 7

It depends on what languages you already know. Closely related languages to the languages you already know are always the easiest to learn.

Answer 8

english is the easiest language to learn, because there is not too much vocabulary and grammar is damn easy. to those who suggest german: it is really hard, i've been living in germany since i was born and i still don't understand every word.. german has declination of nouns which is to me very easy, but for native english speakers it could be hard. the verbs are conjugated which can be easy with some words but all the exceptions (and we have many of them) are hard to learn. plus, german uses ä,ö,ü and ß which are hard to pronounce for americans (we had one at our school and five years passed, he still couldn't say ü. so i think english is easiest language

Answer 9

I have to agree with mlaheji.. The malay language is so easy to learn... and the words are pronounce as it is spelt..

Answer 10

Arabic n Persian