# easiest second language for Anglophones to pick up? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 8, 2010, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/easiest-second-language-for-anglophones-to-pick-up/531750 "2010-03-08T18:58:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2010, 8:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/easiest-second-language-for-anglophones-to-pick-up/531750/41 "2010-03-10T08:50:36Z")
> [@Giles](#): > > Yes, from what I know of it, Bahasa Indonesia or Bahasa Melayu is an easy language, because it was intended to be a lingua franca. The main problem for an English speaker is a new vocabulary with few words cognate to English words. And it’s useful in several countries, including Indonesia and Malaysia. That’s why it’s one of the languages taught in Australian schools. I was going to suggest Malay (Bahasa Melayu), as it’s got a _lot_ of English loanwords (Indonesian loanwords tend to have Dutch origins apparently), and it’s not a particularly “complicated” language. It follows the same English rules of punctuation and capitalisation, and it’s spoken at a moderate rate so it’s not too difficult to follow and differentiate the individual words, even if you don’t understand them. ---
**Author:** ![CairoCarol](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cairocarol/32/3825_2.png) [@CairoCarol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CairoCarol)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2010, 9:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/easiest-second-language-for-anglophones-to-pick-up/531750/42 "2010-03-10T09:46:47Z")
In the pedantic tradition of a true Straight Doper, I have to step in and say there is a bit of misinformation about Indonesian in this thread. First, Indonesian is all about inflection, inasmuch as root words take various affixes and the function of the word (noun, verb, nuance of meaning, etc.) changes according to the affix. Only by limiting your definition of “inflection” to changes of tense, case and gender can you say Indonesian is uninflected - and if I correctly understand what linguists mean when they talk about inflection, it means much more than that. Take the root “ada,” which is more or less the same as the verb “exist” in English (Indonesian has no copulas, however). mengadakan = to put on (as in hold a meeting) keadaan = condition seadanya = whatever there is (potluck) pengadaan = supplies, inventory I could give a million more examples; that is only a tiny little taste. The entire language is based on taking root words and coming up with related meanings by adding various affixes. Also, “sayur” is the Indonesian word for “vegetable”, not “gado” (though I wouldn’t be surprised if gado means something in Javanese, a language I don’t speak, or another indigenous language such as Sundanese - possibly “mixure”, since the point of gado-gado is that it is a mixture of veggies). Gado doesn’t mean anything without doubling. (I just wrote and deleted 6 more paragraphs about plurals, word doubling, and the relative difficulty of Indonesian for native English speakers. Even I could see teh crazy shining through.)…And in conclusion, folks, Indonesian is a really fun - and yes, not TOO terribly hard - language to learn. ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2010, 10:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/easiest-second-language-for-anglophones-to-pick-up/531750/43 "2010-03-10T10:07:47Z")
What I found interesting is that in Malay, you’ve got got an “old-fashioned” Malay word and often a “Modern” word that’s basically a phoenic transliteration of an English word. For example, the “traditional” Malay word for both “Railway” and “Train” is _Keretapi_ (The Malaysian State Railway company is _Keretapi Tanah Melayu_; “Malayan Railways”), but the “New” word for Train is “Tren”. If you ask _Di Manakah Stesen Keretapi?_ (“Where is the railway station?”) you’ll get directions to the _Antarabandar_ (Intercity) or _Komuter_ (Suburban Commuter Train) stations, but if you ask _Di Manakah Stesen Tren?_ (“Where is the train station?”) you’re likely to get directed to the LRT (Light Rail) station, even though the rolling stock on all three lines are referred to as “Trens”. Similarly, the Malay word _Negara_ can be translated as “National” or “State” or “Country”, depending on context (_Muzium Negara Malaysia_ is “Malaysian National Museum” or “Malaysian State Museum” depending on how you want to translate it), but the train that runs from Butterworth to Bangkok (Thailand) is the _Tren Antaranegara_; “International Train”). The “New” Malay word for National is “Nasional”, but “Antaranasional” isn’t a word in Malay (at least as far as I’m aware). Having said all that, it really isn’t an especially difficult language to pick up, IMHO- it’s hard to explain but the “rules” make sense in their own way and it is a “fun” language to learn. ---
**Author:** ![CairoCarol](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cairocarol/32/3825_2.png) [@CairoCarol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CairoCarol)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2010, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/easiest-second-language-for-anglophones-to-pick-up/531750/44 "2010-03-10T13:51:24Z")
> [@Martini\_Enfield](#): > > the “traditional” Malay word for both “Railway” and “Train” is _Keretapi_ (. The cool thing about Malaysian and Indonesian is that they are mutually intelligible (at least, I always understand Malaysian… do Malaysian speakers have equal facility with Indonesian?..I would assume so, although it may be a bit like Spanish and Portuguese, where Portuguese speakers easily understand Spanish but not so much the other way around. Indonesian definitely draws heavily on Javanese and Dutch in a way that Malaysian does not.) And yet, despite the fact that Malay and Indonesian are essentially the same language, these two variants are oh-so-very-different in almost every single choice of words. Go to the airport, and in Indonesia, the signs say “Kedatangan.” In Malaysia (or Singapore) they say “Ketibaan.” Completely mutually understandable, but at the same time, consistently different. Indonesians say “kereta api” (fire carriage) but never keretapi. ---
**Author:** ![elbows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2010, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/easiest-second-language-for-anglophones-to-pick-up/531750/45 "2010-03-10T15:30:53Z")
Another cool thing about Indonesian and Malay is that largely, the bleed over from Indonesian tends to be ‘high’ Malay. When it was explained to me, by a fluent Malay speaker, she said the carryover was the formal and honorific laced Malay, not so much the day to day street lingo. So if you’ve learned Indonesian, when you reach Malaysia you sound a little posh. Bonus! ---
**Author:** ![elbows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2010, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/easiest-second-language-for-anglophones-to-pick-up/531750/46 "2010-03-11T02:17:23Z")
…pagolins, pythons, rhinos and red apes, black beaches and black rice pudding… …the aroma of cloves, fresh cut pineapple and rain soaked jungles… …a country that dispels every stereotype of Muslim cultures… …“I’d go back there tomorrow, but for the work I’ve taken on…” \* ::::::sigh:::::\* ---
**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:** [March 11, 2010, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/easiest-second-language-for-anglophones-to-pick-up/531750/47 "2010-03-11T04:25:45Z")
> [@Martini\_Enfield](#): > > I was going to suggest Malay (Bahasa Melayu), as it’s got a _lot_ of English loanwords (Indonesian loanwords tend to have Dutch origins apparently) … I’ve heard it described that Malaysians and Indonesians are one people separated by history, and that seems to hold true for the language, too. I attended a conference in Indonesia one time that had attendees from both countries. As I recall, the Malaysians could understand the Indonesians pretty well when they spoke Indonesian, but the Indonesians could not follow the Malaysians very well when they spoke Malay. Or was it the other way around? ---
**Author:** ![put\_down\_the\_sabre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/da6949/32.png) [@put\_down\_the\_sabre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/put_down_the_sabre)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2010, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/easiest-second-language-for-anglophones-to-pick-up/531750/48 "2010-03-11T04:52:50Z")
To those who say Japanese is easy … it is easy, to sound like a foreigner who can sort of make herself understood. The sounds are all fairly easy to make for an Anglophone, and you can sorta easily express what you want and get lots of _nihongo jouzu_’s. But to really sound like a native is an order of magnitude harder: they use the shorter verb forms a lot more, and the keigo is an enormous hassle. I’m not even talking about the formal keigo, which may or may not be dying, but the words that people actually use everyday. When you get really good, like pass for a native good, the Japanese start saying ‘nihongo pera pera’ and expressing mild unease at your competence. pdts ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2010, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/easiest-second-language-for-anglophones-to-pick-up/531750/49 "2010-03-11T13:06:12Z")
Again, the only reason we’d mention Japanese is that in spite of its difficulty and dissimilarity from English, it’s surprisingly easy to pick up a bit of babytalk, and the natives will fawn over you for it. But it quickly becomes a ballbreaker when you move past the familiar present indicative or try to read any non-trivial text. I wonder if anyone suggesting Japanese as a “lazy man’s language” has ever studied it beyond the intro level. ---
**Author:** ![Duhkecco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/8491ac/32.png) [@Duhkecco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duhkecco)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2010, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/easiest-second-language-for-anglophones-to-pick-up/531750/50 "2010-03-11T14:08:31Z")
> [@tdn](#): > > Though I can’t speak it and don’t understand sentence structure, I’ve found Italian incredibly easy to pronounce. There are only 5 vowel sounds, and each vowel has only one pronunciation. Not quite: > [@](#): > > Italian has seven vowel phonemes: /a/, /e/, /ɛ/, /i/, /o/, /ɔ/, /u/, represented by five letters: “a, e, i, o, u”. The pairs /e/-/ɛ/, and /o/-/ɔ/ are seldom distinguished in writing and often confused, even though most varieties of Italian employ both phonemes consistently. > **[Italian language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_language#Vowels)** > > Italian (italiano, .mw-parser-output .IPA-label-small{font-size:85%}.mw-parser-output .references .IPA-label-small,.mw-parser-output .infobox .IPA-label-small,.mw-parser-output .navbox .IPA-label-small{font-size:100%}pronounced \[itaˈljaːno\] ⓘ, or lingua italiana, pronounced \[ˈliŋɡwa itaˈljaːna\]) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family. It evolved from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire and, together with Sardinian, is the least differentiated language from Latin. Curren It... Also, this: [Italian Pronunciation Basics](http://www.stanford.edu/~jrb/reference/italian.html) ---
**Author:** ![KlondikeGeoff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3e96dc/32.png) [@KlondikeGeoff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KlondikeGeoff)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2010, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/easiest-second-language-for-anglophones-to-pick-up/531750/51 "2010-03-11T20:18:02Z")
> [@Giles](#): > > Just some minor complications, like politeness levels affecting which verb form you use, and different male and female usages in particles and pronouns. But the native speakers will probably forgive an ignorant foreigner getting stuff like that wrong. True, but also you don’t have to struggle with words with genders. ---
**Author:** ![put\_down\_the\_sabre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/da6949/32.png) [@put\_down\_the\_sabre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/put_down_the_sabre)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2010, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/easiest-second-language-for-anglophones-to-pick-up/531750/52 "2010-03-11T22:15:17Z")
> [@KlondikeGeoff](#): > > True, but also you don’t have to struggle with words with genders. Things like (a reasonable number of) genders are a really minor impediment to language learning. Once you get past the beginner/lower-intermediate stage, you are generally way past a point where genders could make a difference. pdts ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2010, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/easiest-second-language-for-anglophones-to-pick-up/531750/53 "2010-03-11T23:58:41Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > I’ve heard it described that Malaysians and Indonesians are one people separated by history, and that seems to hold true for the language, too. I attended a conference in Indonesia one time that had attendees from both countries. As I recall, the Malaysians could understand the Indonesians pretty well when they spoke Indonesian, but the Indonesians could not follow the Malaysians very well when they spoke Malay. Or was it the other way around? They can both understand each other just fine, as I understand it- one of Mum’s friends spent years teaching in Jakarta and can speak fluent Indonesian and has no problems at all communicating with Malaysians, including with fairly involved stuff like bargaining and buying appliances etc. Also, whenever I saw someone in Indonesia on Malaysian TV being interviewed or whatever, there were no “Malay” subtitles- just English and maybe Chinese, depending on the channel. My Indonesian colleagues at University have all told me that as far as they’re concerned, Indonesian and Malay are the same language and they can read Malay newspapers, understand Malay speakers etc without any problems, and my Malay-speaking colleagues in Malaysia said the same thing _vis-a-vis_ Indonesian. Of course, you don’t dare say that Malay and Indonesian are the same language in Malaysia unless you want to get tarred and feathered… _Bahasa Malaysia_ (The Malaysian Language, which happens to be Malay, but a separate concept at the same time) is Serious Business there and it makes up part of the Malaysian national identity (such as it is). Interestingly, I read a study somewhere that even native French speakers often have no idea whether a particular noun is “masculine” or “feminine”… which does rather make one wonder why they haven’t just come up with a “gender-neutral” designation or decided to use “Le” for pretty much everything anyway… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/easiest-second-language-for-anglophones-to-pick-up/531750.md?page=2)