Why Italy

What are the easiest languages to learn?

I find Italian fairly easy. French was more difficult but not horrible. I also understand that English and Spanish are very easy, what else? Not from the perspective of speaking any, single language but from a middle ground. Taking into account the complexity of grammar, spelling, pronunciation, reading and writing.

Public Comments

1. silence is a good language not spoken much anymore, but its real easy to learn.
2. I don't know about easiest, but English is known as the hardest language because of all of the rules of grammar and because various words are pronounced the same way but have extremely different definitions
3. Japanese
4. The hardest languages to read are Japanese, and all the Chinese languages. The easiest to read are French, Italian, and Spanish. The hardest to speak is German. The easiest are French and Spanish.
5. "By far the easiest language to learn chosen was Spanish by a three to one margin over French. Italian (which had been at the bottom) is now a fairly strong third. German and Dutch follow up." http://www.language-learning-advisor.com/easiest-language-to-learn-survey.html I hope it helps.
6. Pronunciation for Japanese is really simple. There are no strange rules like in English where a "p" is silent like in "psychology", and you skip out on letter such as the "g" in light. It's really straight forward. Reading and spelling are both very easy, with the words being spelled just as they sound. Writing seems like the most intimidating part because of the foreign characters. It doesn't take too long to learn them and once you've got that down it's relatively easy from there. Sentence structure is easy too. Though it seems strange at first, making a sentence turns out to be really straightforward. The hardest part about the language would be reading when you get to the kanji, the "alphabet" where a character can have multiple pronunciations and meanings, but those aren't necessary to learn, and there are often reading aids with the kanji for those of us who don't want to learn to read them. There are 3 "alphabets". Katakana - like an alphabet where a character stands for 2 or 3 letters. Most often used for foriegn words. http://www.learn-japanese.info/katakana.html Hiragana - Very similar to Hiragana, where a character stands for usually 2 or 3 letters. It's used for words native to the language. http://www.learn-japanese.info/hiragana.html And Kanji - the writing where the words can have multiple meanings, and can be aided by the help of hiragana and katakana. When put over Kanji so you can see how to pronounce them, they are known as "furigana". English is supposed to be one of the hardest languages to learn because of all the rulse. Spanish can also be hard when it comes to grammar because of all the homonyms there are (words that sound the same but are spelled differently). There's mesa, meza, casa, caza, casar and a lot of stuff like that. Then there's the accents. If you put the accent on the wrong letter then the whole word's meaning can be changed. Just because languages like English and Spanish are very common doesn't mean they're easy. Though I speak them both as my native languages, at times they both seem more tedious to me than other languages. I found learning French was a lot harder than Japanese. I'm not sure if it was my enthusiasm that caused this, or because Japanese really is simpler, but that's just how I felt. The French accent was also a lot harder, and there were so many things involved that eventually I gave up on it. Japanese was way easier.
7. I think I would vote for Spanish and Italian first. However, if you set aside the special characters and work solely in roman letters (or even hira-gana), Japanese would have to be the easiest of any of the languages I have studied, especially for computer programmers. Other than verb conjugation, the syntax is basically a reverse-polish notation, and extremely consistant. While verb conjugation appears complex it actually just entails almost unlimited concatenation of several simple and again extremely consistant rules. Pronunciation (or spelling) is almost totally consistant and similar to Spanish. Intonation is about as simple as any language. Word compounding is straightforward and similar to other languages. As with most (all?) languages, intonation and vocabulary must be learned by memorization and practice. From everything I have heard, Finnish is the most difficult, with English among the most difficult.
8. Before I answer the question what language is easier I'll start with ways that can make learning a new language a little less painful. Here are some ideas many second language learners don't normally realize. FIRST: Completely eliminate idioms when you speak. We use a LOT of phrases that are not understood in other countries, and they use ones we don't understand. Examples: Get to first base. Flip the switch. Hitch a ride. Hit the road. Put yourself in the place of a new learner of English and ask yourself if you would really understand the meaning of 'hit the road' when you heard it, or would you wonder why somebody is asking you to strike the pavement? Even between England and North America, for example 'knock someone up'. In North America it means get someone pregnant. In England it means knock on their door. So you can see how embarrassing it might be should you stumble on an idiom that means something else. SECOND: Realize that it is not ALWAYS a one-for-one word exchange when translating. Some languages can express an idea in as little as one word compared to a few, and vice-versa. Hand in hand with this, understanding that the idea being expressed is what's important, not the way it's said. Just because the sentence wasn't constructed the way we would have said it doesn't make it wrong. THIRD: Pronunciation can be improved by reciting the names of things you see as you walk about, and holding conversations with yourself in the absence of friends to practice with. (Warning! Don't do this in the vacinity of mental institutions.) Not to understate it of course, but listen to and read as much as you possibly can, whenever you can. Immersion, immersion, IMMERSION! LAST: I cheated. I learnt the worlds easiest language first and now I find I understand English better (my native tongue) and I'm in a better position to learn more languages. I've provided a link below to better explain this. That language was ESPERANTO. It is designed such that you MUST understand sentence structure, which helps to understand other languages. Plus you end up with a multitude of Esperanto friends; oh the burdens we bear. Now let's take a closer look at Esperanto. I frequently make this statement and I live by it. 'If you can't learn Esperanto, you can't learn any language.' It's completely regular and phonetic. It has only 16 gramatical rules and no exceptions. (That's right, you read that correctly, NO EXCEPTIONS!) You only need to learn the respective rules and know that it won't change on you out of the blue. Believe it or not, Esperanto represents the best chance for the survival of the multitude of dying languages since it's purpose is to provide an alternative to any one National tongue to the disadvantage of others. Consider if you will, Esperanto is an easily learnt AUXILIARY language. This means that myself and that German, Japanese or Korean fellow over there needn't sink a lot of time and effort into learning each others mother tongues if they don't wish, where whose ever tongue we settle to communicate in will hold the advantage in any discussions; since the likelihood of having a mastery of the second language will be remote at best. Each partner has exerted a similar effort in order to communicate; a linguisticly neutral hand shake if you will. Yet we are still free to talk in our mother tongues when and where we choose. Further, I am now in a position to visit just about every country in the world and with the help of my new found Esperanto speaking friend (2 million plus) learn of his / her culture and language. This second facet is possible because in learning Esperanto I now have a firmer grip on linguistic principles. Again, that link is provided below on the benefits of learning tertiary languages after Esperanto. However, if it is Culture you desire, then you've no need to look much further than the Internet. In music there are Folk, Jazz, Opera, Rock, Hip Hop, Rap, childrens' songs, etc. In literature there is multinational translations plus original works. The yearly Esperanto Congresses are a play ground for young and old alike for interaction. It's use is expanding exponentially. The last educated guess puts the number of functionally fluent speakers at 2 million plus and another 2,000 native speakers (those that were born to an Esperanto household; yes they exist). In a recent reprint of the Unua Libro (first book), editor Gene Keyes said that when he first started the project in 2000, he did a search for Esperanto on Google and it yielded over 1 million hits. At the completion of his task in February of 2007, the same search yielded over 34 million hits. Out of curiosity, after I had read that I did the same search and it yielded over 39.2 million hits. That's up over 5 million in two months. So it's growing. Slowly (or maybe not so slowly!) Further, Wikipedia hosts around 250 different languages. Esperanto ranks 15th in the most numerous articles category. More than these languages to name a few. 16 Turkish 17 Slovak 18 Czech Even Arabic, one of the six official languages of the UN, only rates at 34th. Check for yourself. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias Yet many feel threatened by it because they feel it is atempting to be the ONLY language spoken, which is NOT the case. It is simply a tool to allow those that might otherwise struggle to learn a new language, the option of expanding their horizons. Finally, there is currently $600 million plus a year being spent on translation services at the UN, and a similar amount in the EU, because no one nationality wants to loose the prestige of owning one of the 'working' languages in each of those institutions. This a huge waste of resources that might otherwise go to feeding and housing those less fortunate. A single working language, easily learnt (less than a year to become fluent) would certainly go along way towards that goal. The Universal Esperanto Asociation (UEA) currently holds observer status (class B) at the UN and UNESCO. So there is some movement towards this goal. When you hear it's not useful, those are people who haven't taken the time to research their response. My kids and I use it, every day, with people all over the world. You do have to look for them, but that gets easier every day. Research and draw your own conclusions. Ĝis!
9. Given your apparent background, Esperanto would not represent any difficulty for you.