Spanish. Learned in bed with someone you love.
I think this simplifies the situation too much. Russian and Welsh, being Indo-European and having more-or-less phonetic alphabets, would be two orders of magnitude easier than Mandarin or Japanese. Finnish and Arabic would fall in the middle.
Of the Indo-European languages, I’d say the easiest would be French (common vocabulary) and German (common grammatical structure). Dutch would be similar to German, but in practical terms be much harder to find classes and materials for.
Having learned both Russian and Spanish, I will say that Spanish was WAAAAAY easier to learn; it’s much more similar to English, both in terms of grammar and structure. The alphabet wasn’t at all the hard part of learning Russian, though; once you get past the 30-some characters, some of which will be familiar either because of their similarity to English letters or because they look like the Greek letters you remember from high school math, you’re home free.
Squish, yes, the lack of articles is handy, but then you have three genders and six cases, which more than make up for the lack of articles. And let’s not even talk about those verbs of motion, because after 15 years of learning Rusian, sometimes they still give me a headache. Guess I didn’t spend enough time in bed with someone I loved; silly me, trying to hit the books instead.
I’ve been learning French since I was a kid, and it’s pretty hard, I find.
However, I took an Intro to Latin class this semester, and with my knowledge of French and English, the vocab was a snap. In two months, I can now read simple texts, and write simple sentences. Not bad, considering I’m terrible at languages.
I vote for Spanish…American speakers often know many Spanish words without knowing it, the pronunciation and spelling are simple, instructional materials (and native speakers) are readily available, and the grammar is very close to English (closer than German, IMHO–German is more similar on a surface level, but vastly more complicated as you go further; Spanish, OTOH, starts out tricky with verb conjugation, but then almost exactly matches English as you proceed).
Arabic is a pain–I tried it once. Semitic roots are WEIRD. At least to this speaker, they are.
Japanese is tough not simply because of the writing system, but the whole syntax and semantics of the language. We’re all human on this planet, but man, different countries sure think and express things in vastly different ways. Once you puzzle through literal translations of Japanese for awhile, you start to follow, but it’s still always different. (Add the fact that it’s incredibly easy to embarrass yourself culturally in front of Japanese speakers–whew!)
In short: It depends on the person.
Yes learning Esperanto will really broaden your horizons. Then you can read all that wonderful literature in the original language. 
The grammar of American sign language is apparently based on French. From what I’ve been told it drops a lot of tense changes(context becomes more important).
I would suggest German(closer grammar structure) or Spanish/French(lots of recognizable words). German counting is dead match for english but its got masculine,feminine and neutral nouns!
As mentioned above you should choose one you actually want to use. Real desire/need seems to be key in learning a language.
Carnal:
Evidently you’re unaware that there actually is original literature in Esperanto.
Out of idle curiosity, do you speak ASL? Esperanto?
Canadian is very similar to US English, more so than Australian or British or Welsh, for example.
Do you mean Canadian English? Or Canadian French?
What is ‘British’?
You do know English is a different language from Welsh? (and from Irish Gaelic, Scots, Cornish, and Manx)
Well, here’s my take on German:
The grammar is more complex than English, but it’s not always as daunting as some people make it out to be. The vocabulary is relatively easy, as follows: Colors- blau, braun, gruen, weiss, rose, orange, and rot translating as: blue, brown, green, white, pink, orange and red.
Some other words that are easy for English speakers:
hallo- hello
und- and
du- you
gut- good
hund- dog (think hound)
katz- cat
maus- mouse
sommer- summer
winter- winter
machen- to make
schreiben- to write (think scribe)
kuchen- to cook
haben- to have
kann- can
komm- come
hier- here
etc. etc.
However, from what I’ve read, the easiest non constructed language for a native English speaker to learn would be Frisian. On the other hand, Frisian is spoken only by about 400,000 people in once vicinity in the Netherlands, so resources on it as well as reasons to learn it are rather sparse.
What’s so difficult about Welsh? I learned passable Welsh in about 2 months. It’s a very simple and straightforward tongue. Only 4 irregular verbs. I’m surprized anyone would find it difficult.
Dutch is also easy (kinda like an Anglicized German in some ways) Spanish–easy, so is Italian. Mandarin is tough (mostly the writing and tones)
Learn Scots. Take you all of an afternoon–there are books on it (also called Lallans, Inglis, or Doric). Put it down on my College Admission form and they accepted me!
Frisian may be the closest genetic relation to English (besides Scots), but it neglects 1000 years of History (i.e. Norman Conquest.) IOW, it ain’t that close.
With the exception of Esparanto, which was designed to be somewhat easy to learn for many students, whether a language is “easy to learn” is a matter of opinion, so I’ll shoot this off to IMHO.
Male, female and neutral–same as in many other languages, yes? Many people think Russian is intimidating because of the alphabet, but it’s easy to learn and the sounds are dependable (there aren’t a half-dozen ways to pronounce a vowel, as there is in English).
Eeek, you’re right there!
I still get a kick out of being able to say “book on table” rather than “the book is on the table,” though.
I can’t believe this (idea) hasn’t been posted yet:
Fortran 77 or BASIC
Monty, I don’t speak esperanto or ASL. The asl-french grammar thing I was told by hearing-deaf tranlsator and this article speaks of its French origins, if not grammar.
I am surprised that there is actual Esperanto literature, in fact looking into it I’m surprised how much I find. This site says "… the use of Esperanto has spread and [has] its own speaker community. … The amount of families using Esperanto as their home language has increased. ". Is this true? and Why?
just for fun, IMHO --a partial list of foreign languages listed from easiest to hardest to learn. (for American native English speakers)
- Esperanto
- Dutch
- Frisian
- German
- Italian
- Spanish
- French
- Portugese
- ---- from here on it gets murkier, i think
I am assuming a “perfect vacuum” here-- that is, no more exposure to one foreign language than any other – ( “I grew up in L.A. and EVERYONE spoke Spanish there.” is NOT a reason to put Spanish at the top of my list.)
esperanto was designed to be easy to learn-- it borrows from different language roots and has simple grammar.
dutch, like frisian, german (and english) is a germanic language. so for english speakers, these languages have a lot in common.
dutch is the simplest and most regular of these three.
frisian has been called the language most similar to english-- strictly speaking this may be true-- but it doesn’t seem to be as regular in its spelling and grammar as dutch. it’s closer to middle english, and i find modern dutch easier to understand than old or middle english.
german is one of the more exact languages-- their super-compound words leave little to misunderstand. however, they have a whole bunch of genders and pronouns and tenses which get real confusing real fast. as someone else pointed out, geman has lots o’ words that sound and look like english words-- but the dutch have even more words and they are easier to pronounce and decipher.
the romance languages come next-- if you have a good knowlege of Latin then these might be the easiest… but again, I’m assuming “a perfect vacuum” here.
Italian-- all the words seem to make sense-- they sound like they look-- and the grammar seems stable too. So i put it at the top of the romantics. quickly followed by spanish and french.
portugese seems more like a patois-- a difficult to grasp mixture of spanish, italian and regional dialects. yep, they say it’s like spanish, but most spanish speakers i know can’t understand much, if any of it.
DISCLAIMER-- this is all wholly IMveryHO, based on my travels-- IANAL (linguist) and i don’t even play one on TV.
finally, you asked specifically what language would be the easiest to learn. But if you were to ask which might be the BEST one to learn, i would say spanish (if you are american-- plus you already have learned some.)
Of the 5 languages I’ve studied (not counting English), Spanish was the easiest. Squish, I’ve got to vote against Russian. The only language which was tougher for me to learn was Japanese. Having 2 sets of verbs which look alike but conjugate differently is what did it for me.
CJ
Aren’t you guys ever going to give up?
According to a program I saw on PBS quite a while back, universal english, as used in business the world over, is very easy. Of course you already speak english, so that’s of no help to you.
I agree that spanish and german are pretty easy. German, as mentioned above, sounds very familiar to the english speaker. To me, anyway.
Peace,
mangeorge
Mutations?
-fh