Easiest language to learn

>>My experience is only that once you learn a very, very hard language (subjective, yes, but...), then some other "hard" languages don't seem so difficult anymore.

It must be English!!!

<<so do you think that english is an english language to learn for latin speakers? >>

Absolutely -- if your a native romance langauge speaker, learning english should be a peice of cake (except for spelling, of coarse).

My POV is different. English is easy if you speak Dutch or Swedish, but if you speak a Romance language it is very difficult.

I'm tired of this, Spanish is the world's easiest language, only after Esperanto, accept it, there have been presented various articles stating so in the past, but still some people just won't admit it.

<<My POV is different. English is easy if you speak Dutch or Swedish, but if you speak a Romance language it is very difficult. >>

Right here on the Antimoon forums, I've heard Romance language native speakers claim that English is so simple that it's really just a French pidgin. How difficult can it be to learn pidgin French, if you're alerady a native French speaker.

I'm waiting for these threads to surface.

"How many languages can you name? One language per thread."

"Name your favourite EU language. It must be in Western Europe only."

"How many languages with the letter "L" can you speak?"

"Difficult Language"

(Hello. I have never studied a foreign language. I want to learn the most difficult one. Which one is it?)

"Brother-in-law's language"

(My sister married a hairy guy from overseas. Can you tell me some words in his language so I can cuss him out when he visits)

"Brother-in-law II"

(If my sister has a kid with this guy. What language will the kid speak?)

<<I'm tired of this, Spanish is the world's easiest language, only after Esperanto, accept it, there have been presented various articles stating so in the past, but still some people just won't admit it. >>

No less an authority than Winston Churchill once proclaimed that any speaker of a European language could master the fundamentals of English in a few weeks of diligent study. I suppose speaking well enough to be mistaken for a native (i.e. no accent) might take a bit longer, though.

Was Churchil a linguist? He even had Englis as his mother tongue so I don't think that his opinion about the easiness of English is valid.

My POV is different. English is easy if you speak Dutch or Swedish, but if you speak a Romance language it is very difficult.

No it's the contrary becuase English vocabulary is 70%/80% latinized while Dutch and Swedish not. I cannot see how dutch ans swedish can learn it easily

<<No it's the contrary becuase English vocabulary is 70%/80% latinized while Dutch and Swedish not. I cannot see how dutch ans swedish can learn it easily >>

Long ago, someone from Netherlands, who already knew German and English, tried studying French. Every so often, he'd complain about how tough French was, compared to German and English. (just anecdotal, of course).

>>>Long ago, someone from Netherlands, who already knew German and English, tried studying French. Every so often, he'd complain about how tough French was, compared to German and English. (just anecdotal, of course).

I don't know. But generally I find that the less phonetic a script is the harder it is to learn. I shall be glad with a hardly phonetic native script, but... I'm sorry to say languages that are spelt and orthographically challenged are very hard to learn. I can get everything right with enough exposure....except spelling. I'm not dyslexic, but orthographically challenged words have always been nightmares... yeah, I tell you, English words are harder than declensions or genders or characters and so on...

I think, though, normally orthographically challenged words are not more than some 1000 in any given language (yeah, like ENGLISH). When I listen enough, they wouldn't be a problem...

>>I let you imagine how much is a piece of cake for Romance speakers to learn english or the germanic languages<<

I imagine not a piece of cake at all judging from the terrible construction of your sentence.

>>I don't know. But generally I find that the less phonetic a script is the harder it is to learn. I shall be glad with a hardly phonetic native script, but... I'm sorry to say languages that are spelt and orthographically challenged are very hard to learn. I can get everything right with enough exposure....except spelling. I'm not dyslexic, but orthographically challenged words have always been nightmares... yeah, I tell you, English words are harder than declensions or genders or characters and so on...

I think, though, normally orthographically challenged words are not more than some 1000 in any given language (yeah, like ENGLISH). When I listen enough, they wouldn't be a problem...<<

One matter though is that the nonphonemicness of English orthography is in some ways a good thing because it does not really favor any particular standard or dialect because it is already quite far from what is actually pronounced to begin with. This is unlike many languages with more phonemic orthographies, such as German, where the orthography clearly favors the established standard variety of said language.

Travis,

I see your point. I never thought about this much, but this is a good answer for people who complain about spelling.