Spanish the easiest language to learn after English?

reality   Tue Nov 03, 2009 9:49 pm GMT
coser, cocer, casar, cazar, etc.)

This occurs in American Spanish. Coser y cocer have different sounds in European Spanish
blanc   Tue Nov 03, 2009 9:51 pm GMT
French spelling is easier and more regular than the English one.
South Korean   Tue Nov 03, 2009 9:56 pm GMT
I was asking why the English language was considered the "easiest," not "easier" than Spanish. Since I know nothing about Spanish, I can't really comment on those facts. But some of the criteria seems to be biased towards English speakers. As much as those Spanish sounds you have listed are difficult for English speakers, so are many English pronunciations for non-English speakers. Grammatical gender may appear difficult for you because English is gender-neutral, but may not be so for other romance language speakers.

You do have a point in that English is better off when it comes to the simplicity of verb conjugations and being gender-neutral, but only when compared to other European languages. In many languages, grammatical gender is an unknown concept and verb conjugations are not a big issue.(Take Japanese for example, where there are only two irregular verbs - do and come.)
South Korean   Tue Nov 03, 2009 10:00 pm GMT
Wait, maybe Japanese is not a good example, for it is the "easiest among western languages" that is the issue here. My bad.
io   Tue Nov 03, 2009 10:02 pm GMT
In my view Swedish or Norwegian may be even simpler than English.
yut   Tue Nov 03, 2009 10:05 pm GMT
simplicity of verb conjugations

What about English tenses? They are not easy at all
Subjunctivitis   Tue Nov 03, 2009 10:22 pm GMT
<<What about English tenses? They are not easy at all >>

They're a whole heck of a lot easier than Spanish tenses. Perhaps they're also easier than those of Classical Greek, Sanskrit, Portuguese, and Latin?

Somewhere, I saw an article that said for every English verb form, there's a corresponding Spanish verb form although some forms aren't used much (or at all) in Spanish. Plus Spanish has lots of verb forms that don't exist at all in English.
Guest   Tue Nov 03, 2009 10:34 pm GMT
Spanish tenses are not that difficult. Only a a few tenses are really used, and simple present can be used to mean past, present and future with proper time expressions, pretty much like in Chinese. For example: Vienes maƱana a la fiesta?.
subjunctivitis   Wed Nov 04, 2009 12:58 am GMT
<<I was asking why the English language was considered the "easiest," not "easier" than Spanish.>>

Can someone name a major langauge, other than a pidgin, creole, artificial language, or other language designed to be easy, that's considerably easier than English. We're talking about learning English or the other language to a basic level that native speakers could decypher, not reaching native-like fluency.
anon   Wed Nov 04, 2009 1:09 am GMT
<<Can someone name a major langauge, other than a pidgin, creole, artificial language, or other language designed to be easy, that's considerably easier than English.>>

There is nothing unique about english....consider the closest relatives of english such as Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Dutch, Afrikans, that are all just as simplified if not more.
South Korean   Wed Nov 04, 2009 1:15 am GMT
"Can someone name a major langauge, other than a pidgin, creole, artificial language, or other language designed to be easy, that's considerably easier than English. We're talking about learning English or the other language to a basic level that native speakers could decypher, not reaching native-like fluency."

No language that I know of is considerably easier than English. Nor is English considerably easier than the others. As anon said, there's nothing unique about English. It is you who bear the burden of proving that English is especially easier than other major languages.
cnablis   Wed Nov 04, 2009 1:22 am GMT
<<There is nothing unique about english....consider the closest relatives of english such as Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Dutch, Afrikans, that are all just as simplified if not more. >>

- How many of these have done away with grammatical gender?

- How many of these have done away with subjunctive?

- Do any of these have a very small number of irregular verbs? (like 5 or 10, or maybe 0)

- Have any of these done away with (or almost done away with) irregular plurals?

- How many have done away with the personal verb endings?
subjunctivitis   Wed Nov 04, 2009 2:04 am GMT
<<It is you who bear the burden of proving that English is especially easier than other major languages. >>

All I really have to prove is:

"Perhaps I'm biased, but English seems to be an order of magnitude easier and more natural than other (foreign) languages."

It sure seems to be an order of magnitude simpler to me (but perhaps I'm biased). IIRC, learning English was as easy as falling off a log, but admittedly it did take a good while. [Disclaimer: I've never actually fallen off a floating log.]
Guest   Wed Nov 04, 2009 2:08 am GMT
Afrikaans has done all those things. It is more simple than English in several ways.
just me   Wed Nov 04, 2009 8:30 am GMT
How many of these have done away with subjunctive?
How many have done away with the personal verb endings

Danish, Norwegian and Swedish have done away with subjunctive and the personal verb endings, too. They do not have the third person singular S either.
Slavic language do not possess the subjunctive mood. In all balkanic languages (Romanian, Albanian, Greek) subjunctive is far more simplified than Portuguese, Spanish or Italian. Even French subjunctive is simplifed in contemporary French, it has fewer tenses and its use is more and more restricted.
As for Spanish, I would like to say that verbs are quite complicated but plurals are a breeze. They are even easier and more regular than English. Spanish plurals are as easy as those of Esperanto, an artificial language.