<p>Spanish and French are in different language families than English and German, so no, those 2 wouldn't be quite as easy.</p>
<p>That English might have more vocabulary in common with German than Spanish or any other language does not imply that German is necessarily easier for an English speaker.</p>
<p>I have studied German, Spanish, and Russian seriously and have read extensively on what makes other languages difficult, and I can tell you, all other factors being equal, Spanish is going to be by far the easiest real language to learn if you're an English-speaking American. Not only is it objectively easy in that its vocabulary, pronunciation, orthograph, and grammar are considerably simpler than those of most other languages, but you'll find a plethora of Spanish learning resources and hear the language everywhere you go. </p>
<p>A lot of other factors come into play though, the primary one being motivation. So, ultimately the ease of a language comes down to the individual, but in general, I would say Spanish is easiest.</p>
<p>And another thing on cognates: in my case, I've found that they're more of a hindrance to learning a language than a help. I'm hesitant to use cognates as I just feel like I'm speaking a sort of Deuglisch or Spanglish or whatever hybrid. I much prefer authentic-sounding words.</p>
<p>french is not bad either</p>
<p>TRY MALAY. It aint not bad neither</p>
<p>I think French is easiest. It's alot like English s it's pretty easy to learn. But the down side is that it really hurt my spelling because all the words are the same.</p>
<p>i was born knowing spanish and english.. and i think they are two of the easiest languages to know. next i think is italian (spanish helps) and now im learning french (:</p>
<p>Learn a language because you WANT to know it...not because it is the easiest to learn. There's no point on learning it if you don't plan to use it. Any FOREIGN language is going to be difficult to learn...</p>
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i was born knowing spanish and english..
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<p>Wow. You came out of the womb speaking? Not even JS Mill managed that! :p</p>
<p>spanish is supposed to be pretty easy..</p>
<p>For Chinese ,germany seems be very hard .</p>
<p>French is pretty easy. People are intimidated because of the vowel pronunciation. Reading French is definitely easy. In French III I could read something like the Stranger in French and get a good idea of what, say, one paragraph was about. I couldn't read it perfectly, but I could comprehend it. </p>
<p>And why are Hebrew and Arabic in two different categories? They're both semitic languages...</p>
<p>Have all these people who have said German actually studied it? Yes, there are a lot of cognates - so what? To a lot of English speakers, the grammar is nearly impossible. There are people in my AP class who still don't understand that the verb goes to the end of the clause after "dass" (this really ****es me off, gah). Like another poster said, German is highly inflected and there is little freedom allowed with word order! Now, I'm naturally good at languages (don't ask me why!), so I love German, but I would NOT recommend it for the average high school student. A lot of A/B average students in regular classes generally get C's and D's in our German classes, and our teacher's very lenient. </p>
<p>The easiest language to learn for a native English speaker would be one in the same alphabet with little inflection, a lot of cognates, no drastically different pronunciation, and similar word order. French and Spanish tend to meet these requirements (can anyone think of a language like these that doesn't reverse adjective-noun order? that would be even easier!) - why do you think they're the most popular in our high schools? </p>
<p>Also, we need to keep in mind that the American system of language learning is ludicrous - fluency is nearly impossible when we start learning a new language in late junior high or early high school!</p>
<p>Btw, I've studied Spanish, Latin and a bit of French. Spanish is by far the easiest language I've ever encountered, with French being a close second. Latin's difficult because very few Latin teachers actually engage students in interactive activities - a lot of people who can read Latin fairly well have nonexistent speaking/listening skills! I liked Latin, but I've forgotten nearly all of it.</p>
<p>Arabic is really hard.</p>
<p>Hebrew is very easy to understand and communicate with but the essay writing can get kinda of difficult.</p>
<p>I second Latin, most english words are quite similar to latin words.</p>
<p>As someone who speaks Spanish, Chinese, Hebrew, and German, I agree with sous. German is HARD. Not only is it highly gendered, but there are four cases (i.e. four different ways to essentially express relationships between nouns), and adjective endings, but once you get into word order and subjunctive? Forget about it. I remember one class talking to our German teacher about why "nicht" (not) was in a certain place when the rule usually goes otherwise, and he just shrugged and said, "Wow, I'm glad I just grew up knowing these. I'd hate to have to learn it from scratch."</p>
<p>Although English is a germanic language it was also highly influenced by French so the a lot of the standards for romance languages apply. French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese are all pretty easy.</p>
<p>My native language is Georgian (it is extremely hard for English speakers) for me the hardest language to study was Russian, the easiest German, because it is very close to English. For Georgians every language is somehow hard to study because Georgian is totally different from other language groups.</p>
<p>My mother mother tongue is chinese .I am learning French now .Its pronunciation is easy ,but it's difficult for me to distinguish f</p>
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<p>okaayyy....
spanish is very easy if you're good at memorizing vocab, b/c most schools teach conversational-style...</p>
<p>if you're more of a grammarian, take Latin...it'll help your English, other languages, and is generally useful in life. the declension concept is a bit tricky at first but once you catch on it really flows.</p>
<p>as for teaching yourself languages, the best way is to get a book that suits you (pictoral, textual, etc), and find out your weaknesses. study those a lot. it sounds dumb to say but most ppl really do study what they're good at. i taught myself latin 1 and spanish 4 so i guess i should be able to tell you...just pace yourself...a little bit every day sticks much better than trying to learn it all in a week. you can find very good practice tests on the internet, so take advantage!</p>
<p>and ecce romani is a ridiculous latin book. seriously. "in pictura est puella..." how many of you recognize that?!?</p>
<p>my mother toungue is Urdu, which I think would actually be pretty tough for a native English speaker. A lot of the words have a heavy Arabic pronunciation, and you say everything in a really roundabout way. But it's a really flowerly language, and Urdu poetry is supposed to be pretty famous (at least in South Asia :P)</p>