The easiest language to learn
Easiest language
English- no cases, no gender, no word agreement, arguably no grammar. The language is everywhere and can be heard, absorbed and used anywhere. Short words, verbs change only in the third person. Native speakers are very forgiving of mistakes as so many people speak it as a second language. This makes English the easiest foreign language to learn.
Easy to learn
Italian-No cases, easy clear pronunciation, vocabulary of derivative of Latin, therefore the vocabulary has congruencies through out the Indo-European Latin influenced world.
Spanish – similar to Italian in that the grammar and pronunciation is easy, also ubiquitous, everywhere, but Spanish people talk fast and you can get lost when trying to understand.
German- logical grammar but does have cases and long words as word building is important.
French – sixteen tenses and some grammar twist and a specific pronunciation that makes it a little harder the Spanish.
Esperanto – Although I respect the people who created this, I do not consider this a living language and should not be considered when ranking the Easiest language to learn.
This is in contrast to the hardest language to learn
Tags: easiest-language, easiest-language-to-learn
75 responses to Easiest language to learn
I am so glad that Aunt Meme finally brought to everyone’s attention that English solely appears as the easiest language to learn because so many people USE it. Actually in the US, citizens abuse the English language daily with their grammatical errors, mispronunciations & utilizing the wrong words.
English isn’t the easiest language in the world to learn. Even native speakers confuse words that sound similar or have similar meanings.
English is the easiest language to learn anywhere. I grew up and just knew it. I didn’t take any special clases like these other people. When I started school they just taught me how to speak it better and then how to spell properly. Gee, whats so hard. Listen to Mommy and you will master it. Whats wrong with the rest of the world, why didn’t your mom’s teach you English?
Yes, I’m kidding.
Are you kidding me, our language makes no sense to anybody but us. We do everything backwards and we put letters in we don’t use. Our vocabulary is so big we had to repeat sounds because we ran out of words. At 44 years old, with a college degree, I still misspell words. I’ll bet we are the biggest user of “spellcheck”. The rest of the world probably laughs because they can’t understand why we can’t friggen spell
Well, they laugh until they realize they have to learn this bizzare language to make any money, then we just say, it’s so easy. Thank god I learned it in diapers, because like most Americans I try to learn other languages, but have never really mastered one. If I had to learn English from another native language, I’d be screwed.
I’m engaged to wonderful woman from Ukraine. She speaks Russian and English as well as her own Ukrainian. How she did that boggles my mind and everytime I do something manstupid, I have to remind her that, honey, you speak 3 languages, I can barely use my own. Yes you are smarter than me. I think she is starting to realize I’m just an idiot, but thats ok as long as loves me. I can run a business and somehow make a decent living during a recession and keep 30 people employed, but ask me to communicate with her mother in Ukrainian and holy gee wiz, I’m lost.
Cute and smart, I like that about her
Can you imagine trying to teacher her such things as “Whatever” or add the F word in the middle and even with her superb soviet education, she gives me the strangest puzzled look. I say things to my friends like, “Come on shortbus get a clue and stop being a retard”. I am speaking English, which she teaches as ESL by the way, and she still finds things we say so bizzare. I was thinking of letting her listen to some of the Ebonics spoken by our bothers of african descent, but I think she would just look at me and say “What the …, is that English?”. “Yo cuz youz hooptie is dope”. How about my favorite, “I Axed him to give me the s%&T” Talk about making a grown woman lose it. Not only have we (English speakers) completely bastardized basic human communication, but we decided that wasn’t good enough, we even bastardized it more and added slang that makes no sense. Growing up a surfer I’m still afraid to tell her about words like Gnarly, kewl, Wussup and duuude. Good thing she didn’t meet me when I was 22. Poor girl would have either given up right then, or be calling surfer terms with an eastern European accent (that could be kinda cute though).
Just my humble opinion.
I totally disagree with this. English is nowhere near the easiest language to learn in the world? What we lack in difficult grammatical structures we make up for in cultural variations and dialects. Ebonics for instance is incomprenhensible to great deals of English speakers and most of the time people from the north struggle with people from the south just to understand simple pronunciation. We have one of the largest vocabularies of any civilized language on Earth and our slang is almost beyond the realm of being able to be learned. There is just so much it would take an entire lifetime to touch the surface. Much like learning Chinese characters.
I’m not so sure about English, I can see your point when talking about the grammatical gender, the gender aspect of *some* other languages is probably the most ridiculous aspect of those languages. The availability of learning material may be an important factor, but English is still a very difficult language. Also, Brevlo is much much easier to learn than Esperanto (just a side note, even if you don’t consider them “living” languages).
English is very easy. You just cant speak another language and deny someone else’s opinion. English is logical , there aren’t many exceptions and if they are they are easy to remember. I reccomend you to learn polish for example – there are more exeptions than rules. ” Polish-Seven Cases, Seven Genders and very difficult pronunciation. Average English speaker is fluent at about the age 12; the average Polish speaker is fluent in their language not until age 16. ” They are also sounds which only poles can say like “ch” “sz” “ż” .
If anybody compare english with other language he or she understands that english is very easy than another language. english is my second language and I learn it in just 16 months . If you want to learn my native language I think you must trying more than 5 years to learn as I learn your language. in addition english is available in anywhere but my language not found you.
best wishes
For me English was the easiest language learn. I’m from Germany and English is my second langugage but I also learned Dutch,French, Italian,Spanish and I also know some Latin(I never needed it tho)
My grandparents live Amsterdam so I learned dutch pretty fast, I just spended some weeks there last summer, never took classes or something. But I find its basiclly a mix of English and German so it was easy to me.
I learned English in school, since grade five and found it very easy. I spended a year in Canada and many people asked if English was hard to learn because someone had told them it was the hardest language to learn. I really don’t know who told them this, but for me and for a lot of other people English was way easier than all the other languages. It might be something diffrentt If you’re from China or Russia or something
I was really having a hard time with French. Spanish and Italian have a lot in common and were easier to learn.The biggest trouble was Latin, huge vocabulary, lots of cases and grammar that does not make a whole lot of sense and of course its dead
I think which language is easy to learn depends a lot on your native language: If you’re italian it will be easier for you to learn Spanish, If you’re Russian you might find polish a lot easier or maybe if you’re chinese you’ll have a lot less trouble with japanese.I think tho that English might not be easiest language to learn but definetly an easy one, I mean there actually is a reason why the whole world speaks English
I agree! English is pretty easy, but I don’t think it’s the EASIEST language out there, I mean we’ve added so many new words. Slang, we added it to the English language, imagine greeting a foreigner with ‘What’s up home dog?”. They’d be a little side headed and would probably take it as an insult, you know? & All in all, none of that is even in our dictionary for them to learn. You’d learn all the ‘proper’ words & such, but we have so many words not in the dictionary. It really just depends on how you can roll your tongue and remembering long difficult words, with different meanings.
Not to mention that English people really never pronounce things correctly, so new comers that are trying to master our language, would be a little confused.
I’m 18 years of age & i’m pretty sure that English is still iffy for even me, a person who grew up surrounded by it! I’ve heard that Spanish is the easiest to learn, & I’ve done research & forums confirm that it is. I was thinking maybe since i’m Italian/Irish/American/Indian, it would be easier to learn than Spanish, don’t you think? If so, comment back on your reason & why!(:
~New Zealand.
That Italian would be easier than Spanish*
I am an English speaking Canadian, I have chosen to learn Spanish and while many say it is easy to learn, It seems to take allot to learn it well. I believe that learning any language is a big commitment. I chose Spanish for many reasons.. accesibility similar characters in alphabet and usefulness among other reasons. While allot of words are similar to english.. this actually makes it more difficult as I have habits which don’t actually translate across.
Some have mentioned slangs in english, but you will find these in any language. There are also differences from one spnaish speaking country to another. Personally, If I went to England, I would be lost for a couple days. It is that much different.
I know allot of people who speak english as a seccond language. We accept allot of what I call broken gramar here as well. It does take a bit to become accustomed to. Kind of funny when you hear someon from Asia speaking broken english with someone from India or Russia, etc.
Differences in proper english like who and whom while taught in school are barely even recognised by almost anyone with the exception of teachers who think that we are stupid for not speaking proper english. I do know the difference and could use them if I wanted..but It would seem anal for me to be that picky.
After I learn Spanish, I may try French however French Canadian is very different from French from France I suppose I would have to learn both.
I have a german background, but am not likely to learn the language as it has been lost to me and is not likely to be as usefull. There are very few german speaking people her any more. At one time It may have been a logical choice, but now almost any other language is more common here. Hindi, Chinese, or Vietnamese are all more common now. Of course there are variations on all these languages as well such as mandarin and cantonese.
To me, Arabic looks to be a difficult language, difficult for me to learn to write and the words seem to blur togeather.
I think any language that you have oportunity to use will be easier to learn as it becomes more than academic. Start simple and build on what you can.
English is very hard to learn. I grew up speaking french and am now fluent in six languages. Others than Arabic, English was the most difficult. Swahili is actually the easiest language to learn, as I hear. I also caught onto Norwegian pretty easily.
Because I am fluent at speaking 5 different languages, I am sure English is the easiest language in the planet. I am sure that the one who thinks or claims that English is a difficult language has not even tried to learn a different one. Once they do, they will understand that the same difficulties that they find with spelling are very common to almost all languages. The good point is that the easier the English Language is to learn, more and more people will likely adopt it as a second language or will likely confirm and reconfirm its important role as a “Lingua franca” from time to time. Who cares if a language is known for being hard to learn and no ones speaks it or will likely learn it as a way to communicate to others??!! Yes! The English Language is the easiest… and wherever I want to travel to, English is the language I will surely use…not the other difficult ones no one understands.
English?? In my opinion is actually a very hard language. i mean with all of your teenage slang and new cuss words here and there. it may seem easy to use but not the exchange students that come to my schools. And German you got to be kidding me!
Spanish is very easy, along with french!!
other then Arabic, Japanese, and Chinese.
But I’ve actually learned Chinese years ago and its not that hard if you start at a young age…
I am an English speaker, and can understand how the language can be plainly easy or difficult. The language is EVERYWHERE, and we have very simple conjugations. However, pronunciation I would think would be a problem, as well as odd verb tenses…for instance, we use what is called a “present participle” more than the regular present tense (i.e. “I am going to the store” vs. “I go to the store”). I would think English is simple to begin to speak, but many native speakers do not learn proper English (especially in the USA!). I have learned French as a second language, and found it relatively easy. I am natural with languages, and the only big struggles I found was the vague use of pronouns, as well as mixing up syntax (sometimes it is like English, sometimes it is very different!). Pronunciation is very difficult for MANY English speakers-I have a good ear and still get things wrong, though usually I don’t have a big problem. I also have learned some Italian and German. Italian was extremely natural to me. After studying french, it was just common sense mixed with learning some vocab and cadence, pronunciation is very manageable-never had any problems. After knowing some Italian, Spanish now looks remarkably approachable. I have almost no experience with the language, but I can tell that it’s probably the easiest for an English speaker…and knowing Italian I can pretty much read the language and know what it means. I have just started with German, which has been fun. There is a lot of vocab transfer, but I have heard and can tell the grammar is difficult! I don’t know enough about it to make a solid judgment, but as an English speaker, I would rank these 4 easiest to hardest: Spanish, Italian, French, German. (I’ve also played around with Russian-difficult!)
English is by far the most basic and simplistic language out there. Dialects don’t count because ALL languages have dialects and nobody will take courses in dialects, you speak it if you live in a region with a certain dialect.
As far for English having quirks, join the rest. All languages have quirks but they also have hard grammar etc. The fact that some native speakers can’t spell correctly only speaks for their stupidity.
Thanks for this discussion and all the perspectives. Is English the easiest language to learn? Why not look at Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary under the “Guide to Pronunciation (Tenth Edition, p.31a)?” It says, “For some languages, such as Spanish, Swahili, and Serbo-Croatian, the correspondence between orthography [the way a language is written] and pronunciation is so close that a dictionary need only spell a word correctly to indicate its pronunciation. Modern English, however, displays no such consistency in sound and spelling, and so a dictionary of English must devote considerable attention to the pronunciation of the language…For the trained observer the vagaries of English orthography contain a wealth of linguistic history; for most others, however, this disparity between sound and spelling is just a continual nuisance at school or work” So there are other languages that are easier to spell and pronounce.
It goes on to say, “Among such speakers [educated speakers of English] one hears much variation in pronunciation.”
If we are going to ask others to learn our language as their second language, shouldn’t we be willing to learn theirs? I think if we both would do this, then the world would be a better place.
As for grammar, doesn’t that depend a lot on what your first language is?
English is my first language so would I really know if it the easiest to learn?
It looks like from this discussion that Spanish is the easiest language to learn, and English is not the easiest language to learn.
Obviously Spanish people can understand themselves. Perhaps if we studied Spanish better or earlier in life, we would be able to understand it too.
What is the reason you started this discussion?
Good luck with everything everybody.
English has 1 word for “you”…what about spanish? Is it tu, ti, te, usted, ustedes, vos, or vosotros? Of course, it is ALL of the above!
Here’s another one – in engish we have 2 commands – affirmative + negative. How would you translate “ask me for it” and “don’t ask me for it”? In Spanish there are a wopping 16 possible ways to say it! (I won’t bore you with all the responses).
Here’s something to ponder: A soccer coach in Madrid, a native of England, has lived there for over 10 years and he STILL hasn’t mastered the spanish grammer (just listen to him when he gives interviews). Like most foreigners to spanish he has the most problems with the “subjuntivo” tense.
English has dumbed down their grammer over the years (in a good way)…1 way to say “the” (lo, la las los). 1 verb “to be” (ser,estar). 1 verb for “for” (por, para). 1 verb “to know” (saber, conocer),etc.
Just translate a random verb in english and spanish and look how in english it barely changes: I SWIM, you SWIM, he SWIMS, we SWIM, they SWIM…wow, that was hard!
English, the easiest language? That is too funny. English is the hardest language to learn period. the reason people may think it is easy is because YES it is everywhere, and most of the world learns it at a young age where the brain is like a sponge…but just because English is everywhere doesn’t mean it is easy to learn it just means that it’s everywhere and convenient to learn…what is English wasn’t everywhere, would it be easy then? what if most of the world population didn’t start learning English under the age of 10 would it be easy? NO so everyone needs to get over it b/c English is an extremely difficult language
‘Textbook’ English is very easy to learn, but students of that language will have a very hard time understanding living spoken English. Compare the ‘textbook’ “How do you do Charles? It is such a pleasure to see you again” with “Yo! Charlie-dude! Wassup man, I haven’t seen your hairy — since forever!”
Pues, el español es mi lengua materna, y estoy aprendiendo ingles. no estoy de acuerdo en que el ingles sea el mas facil, tampoco sabria decir si el español es el mas facil, pero de español a ingles para mi el español es mas facil, aunque no creo que el ingles sea tan dificil que digamos. pero si bien el ingles tiene sus puntos relativamente faciles respecto al español como: la poca inflexion de los verbos, lo cual es total en español, al punto que el verbo “ir” es totalmente diferente a la raiz al ser conjugado, el uso de pocas palabras para expresar una idea, etc.
Pero tenemos que recordar que el español es una lengua transparente, es decir; que siempre se corresponde de manera directa y unívoca la escritura con la pronunciación. de tal modo, podriamos escribir mal las palabras en español y aun asi serian comprensibles, como por ejemplo: ola-hola(anque son dos palabras diferentes, una es ola del mar y la otra un saludo, al leerlas dependiendo del contexto, el uso de una u otra seria irrelevante para comprender la idea. (a lo mejor he escrito muchas palabras mal y/o sin acento, y aun asi esta claramente comprensible)
por lo tanto, podemos decir que en español tenemos 5 vocales con un unico sonido cada una. en ingles las vocales tienen varios sonidos y los diptongos tambien, hasta las consonantes tienen su tajada en la fonetica. en conclusion, la fonetica inglesa es muy amplia y un poco complicada (al menos para las perosnas de habla española) y la española yo diria demasiado simple. aunque la verdad es que tu lengua materna es determinante para que un idioma te sea mas facil o dificil que otro.
Andy Koehler, do not forget that English have some similar issue that the ones you are pointing out about spanish.
for example.
in English you have the verbs to say and to tell, in spanish the idea of those verbs, is actually the same, you translate those verbs into Spanish the same way “Decir” or “contar” for to tell, but generally you just say “decir”. but in English each one have it particular use.
in English you have the verbs to see, to watch, to look at. these verb translate generally “ver”, “mirar”. in spanish “ver” and “mirar” are practically the same, but in English these verbs have their particular use. etc. etc.
in English you have the verbs to Speak and to talk, these verbs translate generally the spanish “hablar” or “conversar” for to talk, but “hablar” is the general way you use in spanish. and like the others, these verbs have their particular use in english.
and………..
It is very interesting to read that most of the reflections on how easy a language English seems to be, come from people either whose mother tongue is of Anglo-Saxon origin, or are somehow related geographically to an english-speaking country.
Man, being an animal of custom (or by custom an animal) as we say in Chile, will learn to speak a language much faster if
1. one lives in a foreign country and has to speak an alien language on a daily basis
2. one has some exposure to foreign languages at younger ages
By these standards, English does seem a very hard language to learn to speak for those students whose national language is not english and who do not enjoy daily use of what they have learnt. Why? would you ask. Well, because English has no fixed rules for pronunciation: two words may be written alike, but may be pronounced differently.
Just take the case of ROUGH, DOUGH, and THOUGH. Same ending, and just that.
Do not get me wrong, English does seem to be a very easy language to learn TO READ. To speak it fluently is something else.
Very funny. My friends that have studied English for like 15 years can not understand me and my other native speaking friend when we are talking to each other.
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