<p>Alright, I saw the thread about which language would be the best to learn, but what I want to know is what would be the easiest to learn.
I have tried Spanish and French and not really liked them, so what others are easy for someone who knows English?</p>
<p>English! :)</p>
<p>German is probably easiest. English is a Germanic language, so anything in that family is best.</p>
<p>i took german, it was sooooo easy. half the words are the same in english, and if they aren't, they're still really close</p>
<p>examples:</p>
<p>joggen = jogging
jeans = jeans
cat = die Katze
computer = der Computer</p>
<p>if it's a word that wasn't in the language a long time ago, it's generally just the english word, especially if something was invented in America</p>
<p>I think for Anglophones, Spanish and French should be the easiest.</p>
<p>spanish is not easy.
I hate spanish.
I'm failing spanish.
I'm never taking spanish again.</p>
<p>If all you can speak is English right now, then no language is going to be easy. The "least hard" would be Spanish. Then Italian. French and German are not easy, but I guess they'd be next. I would recommend considering which other languages you would like to learn afterward, because depending on your second language, learning your third, fourth, and fifth languages could be <em>far</em> easier.</p>
<p>For example:</p>
<p>If you know French, then you can learn Italian and Spanish quite easily. </p>
<p>If you know German, then you can learn Dutch, Flemish, Norwegian, Swedish and Afrikaans fairly easily.</p>
<p>If you know Bosnian, then you can learn Croatian, Slovenian and a bunch of other languages from the region without much trouble. If you know Mongolian it is fairly easy to learn Hungarian. (strange but true) And if you know Finnish it is relatively easy to learn Estonian.</p>
<p>The list goes on.</p>
<p>That's why someone who speaks English, Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese isn't nearly as impressive as someone who speaks English, Russian and Arabic.</p>
<p>^</p>
<p>I agree. Once you grasp one language, I think a floodgate opens. It's not uncommon to see young people with a grasp on languages, especially Romance ones. But it's extremely rare to see people with fluency in multiple non-related languages.</p>
<p>No one's mentioned Latin! Albeit a dead language, if you are doing this for recreation (versus a trip to somewhere), then Latin is the best for you! It's amazingly easy to learn, and the conjugations are more straight-forward and to the point than any other language I've studied. You can impress your friends by reading inscriptions in artwork and do other fun things like play certamen!</p>
<p>A language that you are intersted in.</p>
<p>If you already know a language in Category III and are an exceptional English student, consider yourself very fortunate.</p>
<p>Has anyone her ever tried to teach themselves a language, and if so what is the best way to do so? I know they have software, books, etc., but what would be the best?</p>
<p>Hebrew level II? psh.</p>
<p>I've been taking Hebrew since I was four. I'm nowhere near fluent. I can read perfectly and understand a good amount, but speaking? No way. Hebrew is crazy hard.</p>
<p>I'm telling you, German!<br>
So easy :)</p>
<p>There are cognates in French, English and Spanish, but from what I hear, German has the most. So I think in terms of easiness, German might be your best bet.</p>
<p>When I started languages, I did French first. I started Spanish last year and I personally think Spanish was easier to learn, but liked French better.</p>
<p>That's because French IS better. :)</p>
<p>I take both French and German.</p>
<p>German vocab is definetely easier - like what everyone else said there are lots of cognates. It's also more fun and easier to speak, pronounciation-wise, in my opinion. The grammar is a pain in the butt though, and I think French grammar is easier. Then again, I started learning French at a much younger age, so it may have just come more naturally to me.</p>
<p>spanish ...............</p>
<p>maybe it depends on what you mean by easiest to learn: </p>
<p>It will take a lot longer to be able to speak German with even moderate fluency than one of the romance languages because its sentence structure is quite different than English and it's more highly inflected (lots of changes in noun declensions, adjective endings, article forms, etc.)</p>
<p>But German is also rule-bound, which maybe makes it no harder to do well in if you measure progress by weekly quizzes and tests that are typical in a HS course.</p>