What language is the easiest to learn?

Answer 1

The easiest language to learn is the one that is spoken to and around you while you are an infant. You learn that one without consciously trying.

Once you are older, the easiest languages to learn are those that are closely related to the first language you learned as an infant.

After your first language there is no such thing as an "easiest language to learn". It depends entirely on the person. Major factors include the persons's first language compared to the target language, familiarity with the culture of the target language, and motivation.

Read the following answers with caution. They are just opinions, and not based on linguistic facts and often based on narrow assumptions.

Answer:

"English is not the easiest language to learn, even though I speak it. Spanish is the easiest language to learn because of how you say it and how the letters look. For Japanese people it might not be easy but, I think Japanese, Chinese,Korean, Russian and English are the hardest Languages to learn."

Again, easiest to whom? Thanks for deleting my relevant point about Cantonese speakers having no trouble with Mandarin but a hard time with Spanish. Yes, this is the internet, and yes this is purely anecdotal, but I do have an acquaintance from Hong Kong who studied the IB in Britain and thought Spanish was a ridiculous language to learn because it inflected so much, whereas Chinese languages do not.

Answer:

The easiest language to learn is the one with the most similarities to your individual mother tongue. [note: this statement is not necessarily true. A recent survey found that most Americans found Spanish to be easier than Dutch, even though Dutch is more closely related to English.]

Answer:

Undoubtedly the easiest language for an English speaker to learn is Scots. In fact, you could probably understand most of a newspaper article in Scots just with your knowledge of English. Scots should not be confused with Scottish Gaelic which, like all other languages, is not nearly as easy to learn. Scots is easier to learn than French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, and even Esperanto. Look at the Scots language links below.

Answer 2

I think Spanish is the easiest language to learn. Just go onto the net and they will give you some pretty easy free lessons. Of course, if you're really into it, you can just buy a disc to learn a lot more, but the basic letters, numbers and colors are real easy to learn.