What is the Easiest Language to Learn?
 

1) Spanish: It is one of the romance languages, covering 22 countries with a minimum of four hundred million speakers worldwide. By many standards, it is very easy to learn as the vocabulary is simple and straightforward. It is also easy to write, as it is entirely based on phonetics, meaning that words are written exactly as they are pronounced. It is as popular as the English language.

2) English: It is admittedly a very easy language, spoken by millions of people worldwide. The fact that it is readily available everywhere you go has helped in making it one of the most sought after languages. There are at least 600 million people who speak English as a first language and many more who speak it as a second language. It has generally straightforward and forgiving syntax, although phonemes may be difficult to master, creating some spelling speaking and spelling difficulty.

3) French: You really don’t have to live in France to speak French, as there are many countries that use French as a first language. If you are one who travels a lot, this is a language worth learning. At least seventy five million people speak French natively, and an additional fifty million who use it in communicating.


I want to hear your toughs. What are 3 easiest language to learn in your opinion?

I don't think it can be generalized as such. It depends a lot on your native tongue for one and on your previous experience. If your first language is Mandarin, I doubt Spanish is super easy. If you're fluent in one Romance language it's probably easier to pick up another. I also think the first foreign language is the hardest, it gets easier with practice. But in my opinion no language is easy and they all take a lot of practice and dedication.

I think the list focuses on the native English speakers. Otherwise it'd be wrong for others.

To be honest if I was to try and learn French I'd probably find it as easy/difficult as Spanish. It depends on the person trying to learn it I think. Someone more organised and less of a daydreamer than me (haha) will probably find it easier, but someone with less determination than me will probably find it harder.

Having studied English grammar for 24+ years, I would have to say that I have found learning the grammar rules in other languages to be much more straight forward. I have heard that English is one of the harder languages to learn because everything is so irregular in terms of grammar and pronunciation.

For anglophones, I would say that German is probably the easiest language to learn, because it is so incredibly similar to English. I studied it for awhile and I still remember just about everything I learned. German and English are from the same family of languages, if I am not mistaken.

Ich lerne ein bissen di deutsche, und ich kann sprach, aber nicht so gut.
I learn a little of German and I can Speak, but not so good.

Right now I am also studying Russian. I am just in the infancy stages in learning the language. While it is a tough language, I am finding the grammar to be (thankfully) not too difficult to grasp conceptually. The hard part for me currently is getting the case of the noun correct...

I have never even tried to learn Arabic or Mandarin, but I would imagine those would be incredibly difficult for an Anglophone or hispanoparlante.

There is a massive wealth of media easily available in english. I remember my first videogame was in english, the first movie I saw was in english, and when I was young, the only TV shows we had were in english with subtitles. You can't dismiss something as important as this when considering the difficulty of languages.
Beyond that, of course, it's all about language families. As a native Romance language speaker, I can understand a little of any other Romance language if it is spoken slowly and clearly enunciated, and if it is written, I'd say confidently that I'd easily be able to understand a third of the words, specially if given context. I was very happy to find out that even Romanian is somewhat understandable.
I have heard that this also applies to the proto-germanic language family, with native speakers of languages such as German and Dutch being able to understand a few words between them. It'd be nice to hear if anyone has had such experiences with their native language.

Most of the old instruction manuals of electronic products weren't translated in German, only in Dutch English, French etc. My English wasn't as good by then so I had to read it in Dutch, which was oddly very easy to understand.
My aunt in-law is Slovakian but I can't understand a word she's saying in her native tongue, although she has a good friend who is also Slovakian but I can pretty much figure it out by the context what she says. And vice versa they understand Serbian almost perfectly, just like Czech and Polish.

I heard that German-speaking can learn Dutch within a few weeks because grammar and vocabulary are so similar.

You're great! ;)

:thumbsup:

With all the slang terms and differences in the English language I would argue that it would be one of the most difficult for a foreigner. I mean the grammar itself will give you a headache.

Grammar in any language will give you a headache, but it will help you communicate better in your own language. If you learn it well and apply what you learn to how you speak and write, you will sound smart. In fact, using grammar well may be a sign of intelligence. Grammar knowlege is even more important to know when you learn a second language.

Simple English is easy to learn. Most verbs are regular, and the pronoun lets you know the person. If you dig deeper, it becomes increasingly difficult.

English is my first foreign language that I've learned. I didn't find it difficult, of course every beginning is hard but it's much easier than Spanish for me.

The amount of vocabulary drives me nuts. :)

Spanish is much easier to spell than say Russian or Japanese because Spanish uses the familiar Roman alphabet. The fact that a language like Russian uses an unfamiliar alphabet causes the average language-learner to place it automatically in the category of a difficult language. Perhaps Russian is really more difficult for English speakers to learn than Spanish, but this writing difference is only a superficial and temporary obstacle, having little to do with the real difficulties.

I would think simple English would be the easiest. Easier conjugation of verbs, no gender, etc... However, English is VERY nuanced with tons of words that all mean similar things with slight tweaks.

I personally find Spanish easier than French, so I would vote Spanish as the 2nd. I actually found Italian to not be too bad either, but still found Spanish as the easiest of the 3, but I was biased since French and Italian came later in life.

1. German
It's great you don't even have to think about it.
2. Italian
I had classes before in Latin, Spanish and French, thus it's like learning the differences rather than the actual language. But nevertheless to understand so much so quickly is just rewarding and encouraging.
3. Latin
No talking involved. Purely textual work. Loved it!

The most difficult language of all (my limited) times is Portuguese.
While travelling through the vast echoes of its authors from around the world, its pronunciation is killing me. I don't understand a word been said and my tongue is incapable of producing any.

Spanish has less complicated grammar than Italian.
Spanish for just one example has only two contractions
al and del. a+el=al, de+el=del.

Now look at all the contractions in Italian.

il lo l' la i gli le

a at, to al allo all' alla ai agli alle

da from, by dal dallo dall' dalla dai dagli dalle

di of del dello dell' della dei degli delle

in in nel nello nell' nella nei negli nelle

su on sul sullo sull' sulla sui sugli sulle

con with col collo coll' colla coi cogli colle

Depends on the language you know (mother tongue) and those who are in use - foreign languages - you know.

If you know English very well you should find languages with the same roots as English. Or very high similarity in words like Spanish. Possible, posible, impossible, imposible,... From that you can start learning every romanic language you'd like because they are similarities in French, Portuguese (Brazilian and Portugal), Italian, Romanic, Latinamerican Spanish. If you're German and know English you could start with Dutch (both languages influenced the Dutch language), but also start learning Romanic languages as well.

I am just curious and I really don't know if I'll ever manage to learn all the language but I'd like to learn (at least the basic) with maybe a A2 level (European framework for languages) in:
Spanish / latinamerican, too
Portuguese / Brazilian
French
Italian

Just for the fun of it and to keep my brain working I'd like to check in at:
Polish
Russian
Japanese (I already checked but it was weird... a weird and hard time for me, too... will check later again...)

For people with good English knowledge I'd recommend the app Duolingo, which is completely free and awesome. You can learn German, Spanish, French, Italian,... more languages are coming sooner or later.

http://www.enemieslist.net/japanese/

:D:D:D

Haha, awesome, but wrong.
With the right technique every language could be easier to learn. Which means not easy at all, but easier than with the wrong techniques. ;-) Get the right technique attached to your brain, then be ready to learn. :-D

German humour? :)
It's a satire and therefore not to be taken seriously. Of course some or more things are not true but that's not the meaning of this.
To be honest I don't believe there's the "best" technique to learn a language. You just have to look for the technique that works best for you.

I guess Spanish is hard and easy at the same time. Does English or Spanish have more vocabulary?

@Premium
No, I was serious about this. They are really good techniques that should be used in school, but instead we are - or better say the teachers - use boring, old-fashioned techniques. In fact, I think we should learn reading the way we do until 5th or 6th grade, from this grade we should learn fast reading techniques. Since I discovered those techniques I am really angry about my teachers (fast reading isn't that new and was already discovered with good techniques when I attended school). How much I have missed and how many things I could easily understand now. In fact I doubled my speed and understand more of nearly every text I am reading. Even English articles are easier now. But as always it depends on the topic and words used. If this about a scientific topic, I will read slow. If this is a novel, I will read as fast as I can with a higher comprehention.

It doesn't particularly address Spanish, because that's the thing with every language.
English has definitely a bigger vocabulary.

I don't know any other school system than the one in Austria.
Pretty much nobody learns a language if you only have 2 hours English or any other foreign language per week in school. Compared to other countries Germany and Austria actually do well. It would even be better if movies aren't dubbed like in the Netherlands or Sweden, where the percentage of English-speakers are considerably higher.
I don't really think any technique would change that when you only have 2 hours per week.

Yes I agree with Premium. 2h a week in a classroom setting is not going to make you fluent. Another factor is that the teachers are not native speakers either. I do remember my English teacher especially, he knew every grammar rule under the sun but barely spoke himself so we didnt speak English in class...

I had three English teachers and one of them was from Florida. :)
Each of them taught it differently, one of my teacher preferred only to learn new words and completely neglect grammar. My other teacher was Austrian but spoke only English in class.
To teach your native language you really need to study it.

School is in my opinion a demotivating place and now even more than during my time.
All techniques need to acknowledged. Then anything will be faster. Except for the techniques used at school. Those are lame, boring, demotivating, senseless. I'd never write and speak English they way I do now, if didn't read books in English, fortunately I had the possibilities to do many things not many people have the chance to do so.

Why do you blame the school and not the teacher? It's the teachers job to make the class as productive and amusing as possible.
You can have a Harvard alumnus but the class won't make much of it if he's like a sleeping pill.

Because we still use the wrong and unamusing learning techniques. And as far as I know it's not a teacher's decision to change them. It would be more fun, if we chose the right techniques but we are still using the same old boring unamusing ones.

Hola Liquinn. Veo que nadie has answered your question.

Both Spanish and English are continuing to add words — English primarily through the addition of technology-related words and words related to popular culture, while Spanish expands primarily through the adoption of English words.:rolleyes:It is generally stated (although authorities differ) that English has around 250,000 to 300,000 words when obsolete words (which still exist in some unabridged dictionaries) aren't counted. There is one count that puts the English vocabulary at about 1 million words — but that count presumably includes words such as Latin species names, prefixed and suffixed words, jargon, foreign words of extremely limited English use, technical acronyms and the like, making the count as much of a gimmick as anything else.
All that said, it is probably fair to say that English has about twice as many words as does Spanish.:eek: Large college-level English dictionaries typically include around 200,000 words. Comparable Spanish dictionaries, on the other hand, typically have around 100,000 words. Of course, many of those words are seldom used. Estimates I have seen indicate that Americans typically have a speaking vocabulary of around 20,000 words, although in a typical day they actually use far fewer. I've been unable to find reliable estimates on the everyday vocabulary of Spanish speakers, but I'd guess that the number of words used by educated speakers in a typical day would be about the same in either language. In either language, it is possible to communicate reasonably well with fewer than 1,000 words.
One reason that English has a larger vocabulary is that it is a language with Germanic origins but a tremendous Latin influence, an influence so great that sometimes written English seems more like French and even Spanish than it does like Danish, another Germanic language. For example any word that ends in "tor" is the same in Spanish. Example: "actor", The merging of two streams of language into English is one reason why we have both the words "late" and "tardy," words often interchangeable, while Spanish (at least as an adverb) has only tarde. The most similar influence that happened to Spanish was an infusion of Arabic vocabulary, but the influence of Arabic on Spanish isn't close to the influence of Latin on English. English vocabulary from Latin is as high as 60%. (That's why I like to say that English is a semi-Latin language or at least English vocabulary is semi-latino.)

The fewer number of words in Spanish, however, doesn't mean that it can't be just as expressive as English; sometimes it is more so. One feature that Spanish has when compared to English is a flexible word order. Thus the distinction that is made in English between "dark night" and "gloomy night" might be made in Spanish by saying noche oscura and oscura noche, respectively. Spanish also has two verbs that are the rough equivalent of the English "to be," and the choice of verb can change the meaning (as perceived by English speakers) of other words in the sentence. Thus estoy enferma ("I am sick") is not the same as soy enferma ("I am sickly"). Spanish also has verb forms, including a much-used subjunctive mood, that can provide nuances of meaning sometimes absent in English. Finally, Spanish speakers frequently use suffixes to provide shades of meaning.
All living languages seem to have the ability to express what needs expressing; where a word doesn't exist, speakers find a way to come up with one — whether by coining one, adapting an older word to a new use or importing one from another language. That's no less true of Spanish than of English, so Spanish's smaller vocabulary shouldn't be seen as a sign of inferiority. Al contrario, amigo. ;)

Para resumir, amigo:

El menor número de palabras en español, no significa que no puede ser tan expresivo como inglés, porque a veces, el español es más expresivo que el inglés.

Muchas gracias por tu opinión, Villa.