Which Language is the Absolute Easiest to Learn?

Learning a language, any language, is a difficult endeavour requiring a great deal of patience and persistence. However, some languages require far more study than others to become proficient. While ultimately the level of passion you have for the language is what will carry you most far, learners may find themselves encouraged by an easier language due to the amount of familiarities they will encounter throughout their language-learning journey.

While language is complex and abstract at times, we can narrow down our hunt by developing sufficient criteria, so that we know what we are looking for.

• Relativity to English - A language with significant cultural and linguistic differences to English will naturally be harder to learn. Learning a language employs an entire way of thinking, and therefore if said way of thinking is closer to that of English, then concepts on how to form or produce the language will be quicker to adapt too.

  For example, take Chinese (any variant). Chinese Hanzi, the infamous characters that must be studied rigorously, is logographic in nature. This means that each character typically represents a different word, or idea, a concept that remains completely foreign to the English language. When learning Chinese, an Anglophone will have to greatly expand his preconceived concepts of language.

• Language Complexity - Some languages simply have much more complicated grammar and ridged sentence structure than others. The simpler the grammar, the faster the keen learner can begin to use the language herself. Malay/Indonesian is known to fall into this category, for example.
• Materials Available - have you ever sat down and thought "I'd like to learn Wymysorys today"? Probably not, but if you wanted to learn Wymysorys in order to keep this exceptionally rare Germanic language alive you would hit a major barrier when you find little material to help you (I was surprised to even find one website).[1] Most language are not in such a dire situation, but material is naturally easier to come across for the most major languages.
• Other Known Languages - If your native language is something other than English, or if you have learnt other languages, you will have to improvise your own list to an extent, based on said language.
• Opportunity - Lastly, this point is relative to your own experience, too. A language is much easier to learn if you have direct or indirect availability to it. This can mean both a local or nearby spoken language whose community you have access to, but also indirect availability in the form of the internet (some languages are more prevalent and have more content across the web).

---

The best place to start our hunt would be through examining languages closest to English. Despite my praise for Indonesian, the language is unrelated to English and learners will have to deal to challenges related to this despite the simplicity of Indonesian grammar.

English is descended from a single theorised language which split off thousands of years ago to form the world's largest language family.[2] There are still large differences between English and many other Indo-European languages in the likes of Hindi or Persian, so we can narrow our search further down to closer-related branches of the Indo-European family. English is more specifically a Germanic language, however due to its extensive contact with Romance languages, I will be considering them in our little hunt. Over half of English words are derived from Romance languages, although the most common English words are majority Germanic stock.[3]

---

Preparations are done, now we can begin our journey! First let us take a road trip through the Romance languages, as they are the lesser related of the two Indo-European branches that we are visiting.

We first encounter Romanian. As the name suggests, this is in fact a Romance languages and not by any means a Slavic one. However, Romanian is hardly a contender for the most familiar language to English speakers, for its grammar is complex and foreign to English in too many ways. Romanian has been isolated from the other Romance languages to an extent that it has preserved many features of the Latin language that have been lost elsewhere (Latin itself being a difficult tongue to master). Romanian includes three grammatical cases (a feature which doesn't exist in English whatsoever). Romanian includes not two, not four, but three different grammatical genders (male, female and neuter). Gender is going to be a common theme in the rest of the blog, just remember that two genders is enough to confuse English speakers while learning many European languages.

Back to grammatical cases, the evolution goes, băiat=boy, băiatul=the boy and băiatului=of/to the boy, as in 'I told the boy'. Mind you this is one case and there are more ways/rules to add this specific case. Cases are a tad complicated to explain further in this brief trip of ours, but you can always go back and visit should you desire a 'grammatical case holiday'.

---

Well, the first destination was a bust. It was lovely, (Romanian is one of the most beautiful Romance languages in my honest opinion), but not what we are looking for. While we stop for petrol and a bite to eat on the road, we can examine a couple unfortunate cases of wonderful Romance languages such as Romansh or Corsican, which would be easy to learn should more material and opportunity exist.

---

Onwards to Portuguese! Have you ever payed attention to your Isochrony when you talk? The answer is likely a hard no, however it may sound more familiar if I describe it as a rhythm in speech - such as the duration in which each syllable is pronounced. In most Romance languages, each syllable is pronounced with the exact same length, as they are termed 'syllable-timed' languages. This is sometimes known by the less glamourous term of 'machine-gun rhythm' and it can take time to get used to. However, European-Portuguese in particular is 'stress-timed' like English, in that syllables can last different lengths, but the intervals between consecutive stressed syllables is the same.[4] This could potentially mean that Portuguese is easier to understand in its spoken form for an English speaker, compared to other Romance languages.

Unfortunately Portuguese is made more difficult by its more extensive verb tenses. Portuguese also has mesoclitics (clitics exist in English, such as I'm or I've but mesoclitics are much more complex and attach to affixes)

---

After all that driving, we arrive at perhaps the three easiest Romance language for English speakers. These languages share much vocabulary with English, are very widespread with either global presence or large diaspora communities and they have a great number of resources available.

---

First we have Spanish. This is a textbook Romance language, with two genders, a fair amount of verb conjugations to master and adjectives which follow the nouns they describes. Spanish is by no means a difficult language, compared to the majority of the world's languages. The grammar can be difficult (and this is the case learning any Romance languages going from English), but the orthography is simple as the spellings are consistent with pronunciation. The syntax is confusingly fluid, while English is a much more ridged SVO language ('Tom ate the apple'), but other structures appear in Spanish (El libro lo escribió mi amigo - 'The book he wrote my friend').

---

Then comes Italian the language of love! (along with French, Spanish, Portuguese...) Italian orthography is a little different from, say Spanish, while still being predictable. You probably already know some of it through words like 'Spaghetti' (gh makes a hard G sound), or 'Lasagne' (gn makes a sound similar to 'ny_'). Besides a long list of articles and pronouns, what makes Italian a tad tricky is the common use of subjunctive verbs (used in scenarios of doubt), but it remains an easy language for English speakers to learn, and I might argue that it is easier than Spanish, although this can be debated.

---

Of all the (Romance) languages I have studied French has been the easiest. French has had a profound impact on the English language especially via Norman French (and also through a smaller number of more recent French words such as coup d'état). Perhaps the greatest challenge to learning French is the different between the written and the oral language, although I feel this is exaggerated in terms of the challenges it poses. Written and spoken language are best treated different when learning any language, and spelling is more consistent than English, with vowels and diphthongs clearly marked in writing. French grammar took me less time to get used to than Spanish, although like other Romance languages it does take time to build confidence and begin making your own sentences. Written French is also more difficult than spoken French, and if I were just comparing written languages I would say that Spanish/Italian were easier. The reason I bring my experience here, is to highlight potential bias in my otherwise totalitarian opinion :)

---

Here is a visualisation of all our progress so far, in the comparison of the languages we have talked about.

English: She always closes the window before dinner/supper.

French: Elle ferme toujours la fenêtre avant de dîner/souper.
Spanish: (Ella) siempre cierra la ventana antes de cenar.
Italian: (Lei) chiude sempre la finestra prima di cenare.
Portuguese: (Ela) fecha sempre a janela antes de jantar..
Romanian: Ea închide totdeauna fereastra înainte de cină.

If we want even easier languages to learn, we should travel onwards into the stunning and romanticised waves of the Germanic language, in our creaky wooden boat of knowledge.

---

Suddenly, a storm appears that is the German language. Four different grammatical cases threaten to capsize the boat in and of itself. Add to that three genders and suddenly this Germanic language becomes more challenging than any of the Romance languages. Again, clauses are perhaps a little much to describe here, but depending on which language you would like to learn they require thorough study. German also has V2 word order, like other Germanic languages, except for English (this 'except for English' is a common theme when we talk about Germanic languages, sadly). V2 word order means that the last verb in any clause/sentence comes after a single constituent which precedes it. "Tasman has New Zealand discovered" is what English might look like, should we adopt V2 word order.

---

With the ceasing of the German storm comes the rough waves of Icelandic come to endanger the little language boat. Icelandic is characterised for its 'archaic vocabulary' and 'complicated grammar' (running theme here with the grammar bit), with the language having stayed conservative enough that Icelanders can read old Norse sagas from a millennium ago. Icelandic has some similar features to German, both in V2 word order but also the pesky cases we continue to rediscover. I have seen some online journals claiming Icelandic to be 'one of the hardest' languages for English speakers, in between attempting to create somewhat legible content to monetise, but I find those arguments to be exaggerated at best. Icelandic is a difficult language (with fewer resources than most), but it is still related to English. It is far from our goal of finding the easiest language to learn, but I won't slam such claims upon poor Icelandic.

---

Have you lost faith in my claims about the Germanic languages being relatively easy? Maybe a Scandinavian holiday full of hygge(?) will cheer you up. The three official Scandinavian languages are mutually intelligible to some extent, but they each have their unique aspects too. Get your pickled herring ready because we will start with Danish.

Danish has no cases and inflicted nouns only for possession, as well as only a few simple verb tenses. Hurrah! I think we are making great progress in finding the easiest language to learn! Well, Danish is easy until people begin to speak it. There is a joke that the Danes sound like they have a potato in their mouths due to all 27 vowel sounds they use in addition to a phenomenon called stød, (if you have an interest in Danish, you will hear this 'joke' so often as a trivia piece, that I am not sure it can be called as such anymore). Stød refers to a sort of creaky voice or sometimes a glottal stop. This stød can be the only way to tell words with vastly different meanings apart, other than context.

---

Maybe the trick to finding this elusive language is Swedish. Keep in mind that these languages still have genders, which can be hard for an English speaker to grasp immediately, with both common and neuter genders. However, compared to Danish the Swedish language is significantly easier to pronounce, although there are still challenges in this regard. We are still dealing with V2 word order as well. Swedish spelling and vowel sounds are marginally harder than Norwegian, which I believe to be perhaps the easiest of the North Germanic languages.

---

Here is a comparison of the Germanic languages thus far, in the same vain as the last.

English: She always closes the window before dinner/supper.

Norwegian: Hun lukker alltid vinduet før middagen.
Swedish: Hon stänger alltid fönstret före middagen.
Danish: Hun lukker altid vinduet før middagen/aftensmad.
German: Sie schließt immer das Fenster vor dem Abendessen.
Icelandic: Hún lokar alltaf glugganum* fyrir kvöldmat.

*may contain additional grammatical elements

---

Well, if we want to find an even easier language than Norwegian, we may want to sail closer to home, well the home of the English language at least, Britain. If you look closely between Germany and Britain, you may be able to see a couple of windmills poking above the waves. I am, of course, referring to the Dutch. I have seen Dutch described in all sorts of ways, especially (from an English perspective) as a 'simplified German' or as a hybrid in-between the two languages. While perhaps not the most precise way to define the language, I believe it holds some truth in the fact that Dutch grammar is much simpler to its neighbour. Once again we do have V2 word order in the lovely language of the Low Countries, but grammatical genders (while existent) are less consequential than in other non-English Germanic languages. The hardest part about learning Dutch, is probably that there is a high English proficiency in the Netherlands and Belgium, so people might be more inclined to talk to you in English. Nevertheless, I believe that Dutch is the easiest language for English speakers to learn, due to its high similarity to English, it's somewhat simple grammar and the many resources available to learn Dutch.

---

But can we do better?

Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch and has lacks subject conjugation. For example, in Afrikaans you can say 'ons is' which translates in a literal meaning to 'us is'. From all that I can gather, Afrikaans is not a whole lot easier than Dutch, in other regards, and besides some simplified grammar, other features (such as V2 word order) remain largely the same. Afrikaans is also spoken by less people than Dutch, and it is unfortunately in decline in terms of usage, therefore making Afrikaans learning guides or programmes slightly more obscure.

Back to the Netherlands, the West Frisian language of Friesland belongs to the same Anglo-Frisian branch of the West Germanic languages along with English! Remember how I mentioned that Dutch is often considered to lie between English and German? West Frisian is sometimes said to lie between Dutch and English. West Frisian is a vulnerable language of around 470,000 speakers, which may either discourage or encourage you from learning it (depending on what kind of person you are). Despite its being closely related to English, West Frisian does not have mutual intelligibility with English. West Frisian also lacks the same number of language-learning books or programmes that larger languages come with, and for this reason alone I still believe Dutch to be the easier language overall.

---

Finally, I'd like to compare English to the 'easiest' language, Dutch, along with Afrikaans and West Frisian:

English: She always closes the window before dinner/supper.

Dutch: Ze sluit altijd het raam voor het eten.
Afrikaans: Sy maak altyd die venster voor aandete toe.
West Frisian: Sy altyd slút it finster foar it iten.

---

The U.S. Foreign Service Institute trains American diplomats in a large number of official languages, and is perhaps the closest we have to reliable data, regarding how long it takes to learn specific languages. The institute is responsible for training American diplomats to speak other languages prior to serving time abroad, and they have observed the average time taken for Americans to learn each (usually national) language, regardless of any external factors. All languages here are observed to take an average of 24 weeks to teach, except for French, which typically takes 30 weeks, German with 36 weeks and finally Icelandic with 44 weeks, all measurements being approximates. Also keep in mind that this training is demanding and difficult, according to both accounts which I have heard but also due to the fact that 25 hours a week are spent in classroom. This data is useful, but not absolute, for it is impossible to cover the abstract nature of language (and language acquisition) via a simple chart.[5]

Ultimately, despite all that we've covered, the easiest language to learn is the one that you have the passion for. If your heart's set on Finnish, then go for it, because forcing yourself to learn Dutch or Spanish just for the sake of speaking another language will simply be a tedious time. Learning any language takes patience, and most importantly, perseverance, so choose to study a language you enjoy and set realistic goals that you can achieve. Good luck and happy learning!

---

All images made via Pixabay or (public domain only) Wikimedia Commons content.