Easy To Learn?

Esperanto. 'Twas designed that way.

The one closest to your native language.
If you want to learn something totally different, Korean is considered one of the easiest written langauges to learn. It takes no more than 30 mintues to learn.

except for the words I suppose... that'll be extra hard if you don't recognise anything from your native language.

But 30 minutes... that makes me curious!

All languages are difficult in their own way and easy in their own way. I have found that French vocabulary is easy, but spelling it is hard. German vocabulary is hard, but spelling it is a snap. Italian spelling is molto facile, but the lack of pronouns is sometimes difficult for a native English speaker to pick up on.

I agree with ye110man: pick a language that's close to your own. In my experience, I was surprised that Swedish is closer to English than one might expect, and the verb forms are even easier than English (regular verbs are identical in all persons). I have little knowledge of Dutch, but that too is close to English.

Ultimately, whatever language you decide to study will be a good choice. Not only will you gain an understanding of foreign language and culture, but you'll probably learn a lot about English that you never knew before. Good luck.

I remember once teaching the Korean written language to a friend within a high school lunch period. He became proficient enough to write entire letters, though it was mearly English written in Korean.

The Korean alphabet was created entirely from scratch in 1446 by King Sejong who declared "Being of foreign origin, Chinese characters are incapable of capturing uniquely Korean meanings. Therefore, many common people have no way to express their thoughts and feelings. Out of my sympathy for their difficulties, I have created a set of 28 letters. The letters are very easy to learn, and it is my fervent hope that they improve the quality of life of all people." The alphabet later shrank to 24 letters.

The spoken language is much more difficult of course. Except for words introduced into the Korean vocabulary in the last 50 years or so (ie. computer, hamburger), it has nothing in common with European languages. Completely different grammatical structure and the rules for formal and informal speech are fairly complex.

For an English-speaking person, any of the Germanic and/or Romance languages are the easiest. Stay away from non-Indo-European languages if you want 'easy.' CdeK is also quite right about Esperanto, but that's a manufactured language which has little prospect of ever getting adopted as a useful medium in any major venue.

Thanks a lot for your help everyone, I'll keep all your advice in mind!

I think Japanese is the easiest language I've encountered so far. If only they'd been smart enough to pick up Hangeul along with all their Sino-Korean loan words...

Well, european languages may are close to my mother tongue, but they are full of irregularities! Some non-European langs are much more regular!

Of course, Aux Langs are the most easy ones. Esperanto provides regular grammar and you can express a lot without many words - hence it is very easy to learn - AND it has european vocabulary - hence, if you know a European language, you can learn it nearly automatically. And if you're searching, you can actually find people who speak it - they are just not concentrated on one single country.

However, I think most important is that you are interested in a language, and not how easy it is.^^

yeah I guess every language has it's easy and hard points.
In german the articles are very difficult, while in (egyptian) arabic it's always 'il', so very easy. On the other hand in arabic the plural form of substantives is very often irregular and at that point I think german is a lot easier.
I think Hel is right, the most important thing is how interested and motivated you are, and how much time you can put in learing the language.

German plural form is easy?? I never thought about that...^^ I wouldn't know which form to choose, if I'd been a foreigner. Is there a rule? I'll think hard about this tonight...^^

IMHO German is VERY hard to learn to speak correctly.. there are SO many grammatical rules - like the three different forms of nouns. Something that you must either memorize for each word or look up in order to speak correctly..

Ok, it was just from my point of view. Being dutch, there are quite a few grammatical things I can just guess with a good chance of guessing correctly. Like for example irregular verbs

I now found out that German plural depends on the article. Ha-ha! I never noticed that! But there are many exceptions though... much more than with English plural form.

Well, I think English pronunciation is sometimes a little bit difficult... You never know where the stress lies in a longer word (like aristócracy etc...)

@Doris, You're Dutch? Cool! It's very interesting to read the Dutch translation on food packages^^.

You might also consider sign language. It is the third most popular language in the world and can be valuable in many types of jobs. Many people are bilingual, but only in spoken language.

Many of the symbols cross language lines. It might not be practical for travel but you won't have to worry about pronounciation and it will open your world to the deaf population.

I've never taken it, but I always think of useful applications. There may be times when I am older or incapacitated that I may not be able to speak. I also know some people that teach very young children to sign before they can speak to more easily communicate.

Hahaha is it?? Any questions?

Where are you from?


Sugar, I love your avatar!

I'm from Germany, Doris - that's why I never noticed that there's a rule to build the plural!
I can guess the meaning of many Dutch words, but I think it would be more difficult to understand spoken dutch. I heard that Dutchmen can understand German more easily than Germans can understand Dutch. You think that's true?

I guess that would be because every dutch person has at one point german in school. 90% of the people say they really can't speak german and don't remember anything from what they learned in school, but of course that's never 100% true.
So that must help them with understanding german.

I see... I don't think there are any / many schools in Germany providing Dutch. What a stupid explanation for the communication thing...