# As an American English speaker, what would be the easiest and hardest language to pick up? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 28, 2015, 6:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/as-an-american-english-speaker-what-would-be-the-easiest-and-hardest-language-to-pick-up/729145 "2015-08-28T06:04:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![russian\_heel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f05b48/32.png) [@russian\_heel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/russian_heel)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2015, 6:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/as-an-american-english-speaker-what-would-be-the-easiest-and-hardest-language-to-pick-up/729145/1 "2015-08-28T06:04:07Z")
I find French to be fairly easy to pick up and learn, I can even listen to some French and pick up words here and there. I took 4 years High School Spanish, and while I can speak it decently, I cannot for the life of me understand it. I hate to stereotype and say “they talk too fast”, but it seems like they do. That said Im under the impression Romance or Germanic languages are the easiest form most Anglophones to pick up. And then theres Chinese, which I tried to learn 10 years ago before a trip there, and its on a different planet. I’ve heard Greek, Basque, are among the hardest European languages to learn. Straight Dope: whats the easiest to learn, and the hardest? ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2015, 7:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/as-an-american-english-speaker-what-would-be-the-easiest-and-hardest-language-to-pick-up/729145/2 "2015-08-28T07:18:11Z")
1. Because of the Norman invasions. 2. Partially because your high school probably taught Spanish/Castilian Spanish, not Mexican Spanish. But also practice. 3. The Defense Language Institute of the US DoD in Monterey\*, CA [ranks language by difficulty category](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Language_Aptitude_Battery). Note that languages within the same category aren’t ranked. German is considered harder than the main Romance languages, despite English being a Germanic language (but see #1). \*Not in the dictionary? Come on, Firefox! It has the Mexican city at least. ---
**Author:** ![Stinky\_Pete](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bc79bd/32.png) [@Stinky\_Pete](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stinky_Pete)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2015, 7:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/as-an-american-english-speaker-what-would-be-the-easiest-and-hardest-language-to-pick-up/729145/3 "2015-08-28T07:24:58Z")
I have heard Vietnamese is about the toughest language to learn for a Westerner. That language has a lot of sounds we aren’t used to making and sounds that we wouldn’t recognize since they aren’t sounds used in speaking in the West. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2015, 8:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/as-an-american-english-speaker-what-would-be-the-easiest-and-hardest-language-to-pick-up/729145/4 "2015-08-28T08:18:02Z")
In my experience learning to speak Japanese really well and failing to learn Chinese, I think that this is going to be somewhat subjective. I know people who had a really difficult time picking up Japanese because the grammar is so different, but that never really bothered me. OTOH, I know others who have little problem with the tones in Chinese, but I really struggle. That said, I know a native English speaker who speaks Japanese and Chinese and says that Vietnamese is more difficult than either of them. ---
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2015, 8:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/as-an-american-english-speaker-what-would-be-the-easiest-and-hardest-language-to-pick-up/729145/5 "2015-08-28T08:50:38Z")
I’ve taken French, Spanish, German, and Chinese, and I’ve dithered in some Russian, Italian, and Esperanto. Thanks to Spanish some of those (and Portuguese) are fairly easy to read. These days, I’ll say my German is very rusty, but my Spanish is very fluent. Spanish is by far the easiest thing I’ve studied. Chinese: not so good. Four years of classes, Chinese friends, etc., and I just can grasp it. I can pick up things in conversation sometimes, and I can only read things like “Exit” and “Entrance.” I really thought that based on other languages I’d ace Chinese in six months, but I can barely manage to function with it. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2015, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/as-an-american-english-speaker-what-would-be-the-easiest-and-hardest-language-to-pick-up/729145/6 "2015-08-28T12:33:32Z")
I think Khoekhoen languages would be hard, as the notion of clicks as phonemes just doesn’t seem to gel with most non-speakers - people seem to have enough trouble with just the 3 clicks in Xhosa, the [20 distinct clicks in Nama](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khoekhoe_language#Clicks) would drive them mad. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2015, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/as-an-american-english-speaker-what-would-be-the-easiest-and-hardest-language-to-pick-up/729145/7 "2015-08-28T12:54:57Z")
The true answer to the hardest language would probably be some obscure language spoken by a tiny group somewhere. Almost nobody outside would have ever even tried to learn that language, and nobody would care about learning it in any ordinary circumstances. Consider Pirahã, spoken by less than 400 people: > **[Pirahã language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_language)** > > Pirahã (also spelled Pirahá, Pirahán), or Múra-Pirahã, is the indigenous language of the isolated Pirahã people of Amazonas, Brazil. The Pirahã live along the Maici River, a tributary of the Amazon River. > Pirahã is the only surviving dialect of the Mura language; all others having died out in the last few centuries as most groups of the Mura people have shifted to Portuguese. Suspected relatives, such as Matanawi, are also extinct. Pirahã is estimated to have between 250 and 380 speakers. It is ... The linguist who has written most about it claims that it violates some of the accepted rules about what all languages should be like. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2015, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/as-an-american-english-speaker-what-would-be-the-easiest-and-hardest-language-to-pick-up/729145/8 "2015-08-28T13:18:24Z")
> [@Balthisar](#): > > Chinese: not so good. Four years of classes, Chinese friends, etc., and I just can grasp it. I can pick up things in conversation sometimes, and I can only read things like “Exit” and “Entrance.” I really thought that based on other languages I’d ace Chinese in six months, but I can barely manage to function with it. This makes me feel better. Two years living in China and taking night classes, and I still feel I can understand more of a typical French conversation than a typical Chinese one (and I’ve never studied French). ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2015, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/as-an-american-english-speaker-what-would-be-the-easiest-and-hardest-language-to-pick-up/729145/9 "2015-08-28T15:03:48Z")
Since this is going to be a matter of opinion, let’s move this to IMHO. Colibri General Questions Moderator ---
**Author:** ![Knowed\_Out](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/knowed_out/32/7380_2.png) [@Knowed\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knowed_Out)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2015, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/as-an-american-english-speaker-what-would-be-the-easiest-and-hardest-language-to-pick-up/729145/10 "2015-08-28T15:05:07Z")
> [@thelurkinghorror](#): > > 1. The Defense Language Institute of the US DoD in Monterey\*, CA [ranks language by difficulty category](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Language_Aptitude_Battery). Note that languages within the same category aren’t ranked. German is considered harder than the main Romance languages, despite English being a Germanic language (but see #1). Wonder why [Indonesian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_language) is considered easier than the other Asian languages? I guess using the Latin alphabet is a big plus, but it otherwise has no similar origins to English. ---
**Author:** ![LavenderBlue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e95f7d/32.png) [@LavenderBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LavenderBlue)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2015, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/as-an-american-english-speaker-what-would-be-the-easiest-and-hardest-language-to-pick-up/729145/11 "2015-08-28T15:25:08Z")
Hebrew is meshuganah to an English speaker. Entirely different alphabet, written backwards, no cognates, gendered everything, plus the word for she is he. Oy. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2015, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/as-an-american-english-speaker-what-would-be-the-easiest-and-hardest-language-to-pick-up/729145/12 "2015-08-28T15:55:53Z")
I’ll say Italian is the easiest Romance language to learn. If you know a little latin vocabulary in English everything means what it seems to mean, no funny silent letters, no accent markers, just straightforward orthography and pronunciation. And if you get confused you can just speak English with an Italian accent and they’ll figure you’re speaking a different dialect. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2015, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/as-an-american-english-speaker-what-would-be-the-easiest-and-hardest-language-to-pick-up/729145/13 "2015-08-28T16:06:34Z")
> [@thelurkinghorror](#): > > German is considered harder than the main Romance languages, despite English being a Germanic language (but see #1). I speak Spanish fluently, French poorly, can read Portuguese, and took a year of German in college. Although German is grammatically related to English, it retains a lot of features that have been mostly lost in English such as gender. Word order, the method of forming plurals, and other features also differ. While I don’t know the language, I would guess that Afrikaans would probably be the easiest Germanic language for an English speaker to learn, because like English it has a simplified grammar compared to most others. What makes the Romance languages relatively easy is the very large number of cognates due to the Norman invasion. Difficulties for English speakers are mainly in word order, the complexity of verb forms, and gender. Having studied both, I think that Spanish is easier than French because of its relatively straightforward spelling and pronunciation. (French almost seems to go out of its way to make things complicated, with expressions like _qu’est-ce que c’est_ and numbers like quatre-vingt-dix-huit ;)) ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2015, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/as-an-american-english-speaker-what-would-be-the-easiest-and-hardest-language-to-pick-up/729145/14 "2015-08-28T17:13:55Z")
> [@Knowed\_Out](#): > > Wonder why [Indonesian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_language) is considered easier than the other Asian languages? I guess using the Latin alphabet is a big plus, but it otherwise has no similar origins to English. I don’t know enough about the language to say, although I just watched _[the Act of Killing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Act_of_Killing)_, and in it there were **a lot** of English loan words. Like enough to make me notice and to make it easier to understand. Unlike say, loanwords in Japanese, the pronunciation matched standard American English. Granted, the interviewees are probably speaking “street Indonesian.” > [@Lemur866](#): > > I’ll say Italian is the easiest Romance language to learn. If you know a little latin vocabulary in English everything means what it seems to mean, no funny silent letters, no accent markers, just straightforward orthography and pronunciation. And if you get confused you can just speak English with an Italian accent and they’ll figure you’re speaking a different dialect. Although note that getting by in a region of Italy may be harder, as they don’t teach the dialects in school. > [@Colibri](#): > > While I don’t know the language, I would guess that Afrikaans would probably be the easiest Germanic language for an English speaker to learn, because like English it has a simplified grammar compared to most others. Or Frisian, but it’s not a “big” language. > [@](#): > > (French almost seems to go out of its way to make things complicated, with expressions like _qu’est-ce que c’est_ Don’t forget: Qu’est-ce qui, Qui est-ce qui, and Qui est-ce que…! I actually found learning those rather easy, while most of the class struggled to wrap their heads around it (I found other things harder). > [@](#): > > numbers like quatre-vingt-dix-huit ;)) That’s only in France, note, and Switzerland, Belgium, etc. use more modern constructions. ---
**Author:** ![Drunky\_Smurf](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drunky_smurf/32/449_2.png) [@Drunky\_Smurf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drunky_Smurf)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2015, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/as-an-american-english-speaker-what-would-be-the-easiest-and-hardest-language-to-pick-up/729145/15 "2015-08-28T18:57:12Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > The true answer to the hardest language would probably be some obscure language spoken by a tiny group somewhere. Almost nobody outside would have ever even tried to learn that language, and nobody would care about learning it in any ordinary circumstances. I would thing the hardest language to learn would one that is dead. And that no one even knows existed. ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2015, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/as-an-american-english-speaker-what-would-be-the-easiest-and-hardest-language-to-pick-up/729145/16 "2015-08-29T01:26:26Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > This makes me feel better. > Two years living in China and taking night classes, and I still feel I can understand more of a typical French conversation than a typical Chinese one (and I’ve never studied French). In my esperience, Chinese requires brute force memorization and hardcore studying. I know only a handful of peoplethat “picked up” a reasonable level of conversational Chinese. And, you really can’t get very good unless you leave at least a few thousand characters. Chinese characters are kinda like lego’s, you need to just memorize a shitload, and then it kinda falls into place. Plus tones are a pain in the pass. On the flipside, grammar is laughably logical and simple ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2015, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/as-an-american-english-speaker-what-would-be-the-easiest-and-hardest-language-to-pick-up/729145/17 "2015-08-29T01:34:26Z")
> [@Stinky\_Pete](#): > > I have heard Vietnamese is about the toughest language to learn for a Westerner. That language has a lot of sounds we aren’t used to making and sounds that we wouldn’t recognize since they aren’t sounds used in speaking in the West. I graduated from the 47-week course in Vietnamese-Hanoi (the last few weeks consisted of learning to recognize the differences between Vietnamese-Hanoi and Vietnamese-Saigon). I didn’t find any of the sounds in Vietnamese to be particularly hard to make; however, the placement of one sound is certainly unusual for a native English speaker. [Ng] is not a syllable-initial sound in English but is rather common in that position in Vietnamese. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2015, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/as-an-american-english-speaker-what-would-be-the-easiest-and-hardest-language-to-pick-up/729145/18 "2015-08-29T01:37:04Z")
I’ve heard various westerners say Korean isn’t too hard to learn. ---
**Author:** ![Hello\_Again](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/85e7bf/32.png) [@Hello\_Again](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hello_Again)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2015, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/as-an-american-english-speaker-what-would-be-the-easiest-and-hardest-language-to-pick-up/729145/19 "2015-08-29T02:00:44Z")
> [@LavenderBlue](#): > > Hebrew is meshuganah to an English speaker. Entirely different alphabet, written backwards, no cognates, gendered everything, plus the word for she is he. Oy. Hebrew is _meshugge_. “Meshuggenah” is a person who is crazy, meshugge is the adjective “crazy,” and meshugais is the craziness. Yiddish, being a dialect of German and a great giver of loan-words to English, is relatively easier for the English speaker to grasp, but its hard to find native speakers for practice. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2015, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/as-an-american-english-speaker-what-would-be-the-easiest-and-hardest-language-to-pick-up/729145/20 "2015-08-29T02:08:09Z")
Hardest would be Canadian. Except for that, tonal languages are going to be difficult – for example, Thai. I have heard the Khmer language of Cambodia described as “the Dutch of Asia.” [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/as-an-american-english-speaker-what-would-be-the-easiest-and-hardest-language-to-pick-up/729145.md?page=2)