Those who speak 2+ languages- what was the easiest language to learn?
August 1, 2024
Bilingual & Multilingual people – what was the easiest language to learn? Also what was the most difficult language to learn?
48 comments
English was the easiest one, Catalan was the hardest one to learn.
I’m native to Spanish, Catalan and Romanian.
Native English speaker here, learning Spanish and Polish. Y’all can derive which one is the easier one.
Estonian is harder than Russian, Ukrainian, Polish and English
I’m a native English speaker. I can speak English, French, German and Tamil.
English came naturally because most of my education from the start was in English.
Tamil came naturally because my foster parents wanted me to connect with my heritage and put me into a Tamil-language tuition.
French came somewhat naturally. I spent the first couple years of my life in Genève, Switzerland, but kept going back to the UK due to my parents moving around for work. Acquisition took a while.
German came the hardest. My dad got a job in Basel, Switzerland when I was 13. He often took me with him since him and mum were separated at the time. Had to learn and adapt to Swiss German as a teenager with very sporadic visits. I still struggle with German to this day.
English was the easiest one, the second was French and the worst was German.
English was easy, Spanish easy-ish, French fucked me up and Latin was a nightmare
English, but only because it’s the only language I didn’t grow up speaking of the four I know.
Spanish and Danish
English, because we hear it so much in popular media.
Hardest that I actually learned relatively well was ancient Greek I think, for the obvious reason that you don’t actually speak that language so it remains very theoretical in your brain. At least in mine. Also I think it’s probably the most different from Dutch.
TL;DR: Saying Spanish or Italian would almost be cheating, so I’ll say English. German was really, really difficult, but Dutch was even harder (and I never really grasped it, tbh, so I don’t think I’ll count it).
The long version:
1- Spanish – I picked it up as a child while watching cartoons and spending summers in Spain, so I don’t think it counts
2 – Italian – picked it up within a month of living there. It’s just louder funny Spanish (jk)
3 – English – pretty flat grammar, you need to learn very little vocab to be able to have a conversation, and we’re always surrounded by anglophone media, so quite easy to learn.
4 – French – all the ease of the familiarity of Romance languages, all the difficulty of grammar and spelling designed by drawing shit out of a spinning tombola.
5 – German – rules? Nah, just commit an entire language to memory! Do you like grammar? Here, have a neutral gender, more cases that you know what to do with, and inverse the composition of the sentence depending on what verbs you’re using. Fun.
6 – Dutch – German and English had angry drunk sex and birthed… this. Good luck and may the gods be on your side.
English is certainly easy. The verbs are easy to conjugate because the conjugations are all the same. At the same time, there are a lot of English language movies and series with subtitles that allow for a person to watch what they like and learn at the same time.
I’m Portuguese, I understand Spanish and Italian to decent levels without ever having studied them. So those should be fairly easy to learn for me.
I have trouble with French because words tend to be spoken more connected than I’m used to, so I don’t even know where words start and end.
I hear some type of Creole are easy but idk anything tbh.
English. Grew up in Belgium speaking Dutch and German, French is still an issue (I do well in writing and reading) and Irish is a whole other kettle of fish.
I do like learning Irish 🙂
German.. two-sided. Learning the words is quite easy. Norwegian is a germanic language, so many of our words originate from the same. Though the grammar being a big hassle. The case-declination that they use on nouns is non-existing in norwegian.. and their grammar has tons of exception and special cases. And even the gender of the words differ in many cases from what they are in norwegian.. So being gramatacially correct is a mess.. You can get the gender correct, but get it wrong by the cases.. or you can have gender wrong, but getting the case-declination correct.. both ending up with wrongs… on top of that german-teachers being the oldest and strictest at school.. often meaning the worst teachers.. and put on top of that..at the time.. only german-speaking influence you could get on tv then was Derrick..
I’m a native Latvian speaker and fluent in Russian, English, Portuguese, and German.
The easiest language for me was Portuguese, and the hardest was German.
Easiest was probably English, but I’ve understood/spoken English since childhood.
Of the languages I’ve learned as an adult:
Easiest: German. Germanic language like Swedish, which means a lot of vocabulary and some grammar in common. One semester of German at uni, a month-long intensive course in Germany + an exchange semester resulted in my language level being somewhere around C1/C2 (probably C1 now).
Hardest: Georgian. I’ve also studied French and Spanish, but those were easy as Indo-European languages, Georgian was a whole other story. Different language group, different alphabet and (to me) strange ways of constructing sentences. Still have nightmares about Georgian verbs. Took half a semester of Georgian: never again will I try. Lovely wine and food, though, and an amazing country.
I speak Icelandic (native), English, Danish, German and French.
English was easiest as it is pretty much learned unconsciously here. Second easiest was German for me. Danish and French grammar is easy but the pronounciation is crazy lol.
Native Spanish, English, French, Italian Arabic. Italian was like effortless I learnt it just living there a couple of weeks.
Easiest was English, hardest was German
English, because it’s everywhere.
Japanese, because while objectively complex, I found it easy because I was very passionate about it, and so yearned to constantly learn more.
It’s easier to learn 8 languages than it is to learn one or two. I’d like to phrase this in a way that doesn’t sound conceited or arrogant. But at some point you kinda crack the code and are able to learn very fast with minimal input, especially if the language you’re learning belongs to the same family as another one you’re already fluent in.
For me, learning Russian, my fourth language, was hard because the whole declension paradigm and perfective/imperfective verb system was so far away from everything I knew. But then I became fluent. And then I started with Lithuanian (my seventh language) and I found it extremely easy. I remember I was in a class with Italians and Portuguese (they grouped us by country of origin) and I got bumped up two levels forward because I needed very little explanations. So for *me*, personally, Lithuanian is the easiest language *I*’ve learnt, relative to my previous learning experience and knowledge of other languages.
I get very defensive about those polyglot YouTubers claiming they can teach you a language in 20 minutes because they’re basically gaslighting viewers about the knowledge needed before starting a new language. As an example, I remember having a conversation similar to this one with my Lithuanian teacher:
“So this verb requires accusative like in Russian, right? So why is the object not in the accusative?”
“Well, that’s a genitive…”
“Ah, so it’s a partitive form, like in French, right?”
“Er… Yes”
“And the verb has this prefix because it’s in the imperfective mode?”
“We actually call it repetitive mode because we’re trying very hard not to be Slavs, but yes”
“And the ending in the adjective is an enclitic article like in Swedish, is that right?”
“Er… I guess”
“Gotcha”
There’s no way I could’ve done that if I hadn’t been already fluent in Russian, Swedish, and French. Like, I don’t think I’d have gotten very far if Lithuanian had been my first foreign language.
So yeah. Sorry for the rant. I guess what I meant to say is, it’s not the language, it’s you 😅
Going against the current here: as a native Hungarian, English was the hardest one for me – not because it is really hard, but because it was the first foreign (and Indo-European) language for me. After having learned English, I kinda knew how to learn. Moreover, Hungarian is different enough that both German and French seemed super close to English, making them not so hard to learn. German was OK because there is a lot of similarity with Hungarian. French, the pronounciation kills me.
I’m a native Portuguese speaker. I learned Spanish at the same time I learned Portuguese, so definitely it was the easiest (I consider myself native Spanish speaker also, not only because I learned it so young, but also because I live quite close to the border)
Difficult, for me, was Finnish (although I barely tried honestly)
Its certainly English, because looking long term, you engage in english daily if its in movies, online, in work or even simply from music. It ensures you can keep up with the language so it makes it easier to learn through experience.
I speak Icelandic, English, Spanish and a bit of Finnish and English was a bit too easy to learn. But Finnish is haaaaard
I grew up speaking English and Welsh, and was taught French and German in only the way a UK school can teach languages and simultaneously remove any joy from it. I can get by in French still – well order food and buy train ticketes.
Finnish – not as hard as you might expect – at least if you have a good teacher and actively use the language.
Swedish – a bit, but no real reason to use it. I can read ok, but speaking, not a lot.
Estonian – a few phrases, but more of an academic exercise after Finnish, but good fun. It is a nice language.
Portuguese – my current challenge.
Basically (and another poster stated this), once you recognise patterns, eg: I, you, he/she/it etc, the basic principles of tenses and how basic sentences are constructed then you’re half way there. After that you *have* to use the language: reading, speaking especially.
English was the easiest, closely followed by Spanish. German is probably the most difficult, and I’m still not nearly as fluent as I’d like to be.
Norwegian as native language, English as second, French as third. Pretty fluent in both orally, but pls don´t ask me to write in French. I can kinda decipher German and Spanish texts though. Never attempted to learn a fourth.
Not considering English, probably Spanish.
Easiest was Spanish (learned it in highschool and by having Spanish speaking friends)
Hardest Korean, it took many years until grammar and sentence structure felt natural and I only had to expand by learning vocabulary.
Any language that you learn as a kid is easy.
Swedish for me was easy, but the pronounciation has to be pretty much perfect because they are not used to hearing foreigners speak their language.
Greek native speaker here. Learned German starting at the age of 6 and I’m almost bilingual, as I later studied in Germany and Austria. I also had French and English and learned later Italian, as I had an Italian partner. Even took lessons of Swedish at the age of 15 but my teacher got divorced and returned to Sweden. The easiest language for me was English. The reason was that we see all films and series on TV in the original version with Greek subtitles, so we practically grow up with English. I happen to learn languages easily, watching English series and reading the same b titles were the best lessons I could get.
Easiest was English, the hardest one by far was Sanskrit but I didn’t even give it a fair shot and dropped it after a couple of weeks. The second hardest was French I would say because of the complex grammar.
Swedish easiest compared to them all. English second easiest. German 3rd and Polish 511th. I don’t wish upon anyone to learn Polish.
English was very easy for me. Even though the spelling is kind of wacky, you can get used to it, and the grammar is very simple.
I learned Romanian in middle school, and it was *very* hard. I don’t know what it was exactly, but I always struggled with it.
I learned German in high school. It was hard at first but after a while the grammar clicked and I realized it’s quite logical. The hardest part was learning the genders and endings of every word one by one.
A few months ago I started learning Spanish. Even though I can only form the most basic sentences so far, it’s fun. I was afraid of genders but don’t they don’t give me too much trouble.
English, easy compared to Dutch for French speakers. And I bet it’s easy to learn for a Dutch speaker when compared to French
Irish. I spoke Irish when I was young but around the age of 7 it was stopped being used at home and I lost it. Then at the age of 15, I decided to dedicate some time to learning mo theanga dhúchais and I was fluent again by 19. Definitely was the easiest language for me to learn.
Began French at 13 and still speak French quite well. I had a background in Latin because my grandfather had a love for Latin so it was pretty easy to pick up.
The hardest language for me so far has been Arabic, completely foreign to me and has been quite difficult so far.
English was easiest, but that’s a bit of cheating, as I was raised bilingual.
French and Italian were manageable.
German was difficult and I still can’t speak it properly, but I can read it.
Danish… I gave up after six months.
I am a native Dutch speaker.
I can speak 5 languages and Spanish was the easiest for me. I already had some knowledge of French so it was easy to pick up Spanish – once you know one Romance language you can often learn another.
For starters I wouldn’t say I actually speak more than 2 languages, but I been taught both English and German as foreign languages. English was by far the easiest due to just the shear exposure to it, through SoMe, popular culture, games etc. In a year there are probably 1-2 days where I actually use any form of German, and probably also 1-2 days where I don’t use English at all.
English because it’s everywhere. I learnt English almost by accident. Definitely not at school.
I grew up with Portuguese and Swiss-German/German ( never know if I should consider it one or two here).
For me the easiest to learn was English although I’m far from perfect at it (and to be honest i’m far from perfect in all of them…).
Japanese is the hardest by far and I think I’m pushing it saying that I speak it. I wonder how able I am to actually speak it in a place like Japan in a colloquial setting.
French has this weird effect on me given that I understand it almost fully but I struggle to speak it. I’ll be able to have basic conversations but anything that requires a lot of description or nuance has me having a hard time evoking the apropriate words. Adding to this the difference between spoken and written French (and I understand France’s French, not Quebequois French)
Spanish is hard in the sense that I never know if I’m actually speaking Spanish or portuñol due to the false friends between the languages. In the same line, I sometimes struggle in Italian to be sure if I’m actually speaking Italian or Spanish with and accent…(This has gotten worse over the years since I no longer speak with Italian and Spanish speakers on a daily basis).
Italian is almost cheating as a Frenchman but I guess it counts as easiest.
Hardest would actually be Irish, I’ve got my TEG lvl 1 and I’ll stop there 😀
Luxembourgish is my mothertongue. Learned German and French and later English. English was the easiest. French the hardest. German is my best foreign language though, like I speak it basically perfectly
Contrary to popular belief but Dutch and English were quite easy to learn since there are PLENTY of online resources and classes. Also, immersion and media consumption helps.
Italian was alright. Maltese was insanely hard for the sole reason of lack of resources. Also, the fact that Maltese is two language families mashed into one, so there’s loads to learn for such a niche language.
Dutch of course:)
English was easy because of its heavy presence in our culture.
German because it resembles Dutch in so many ways, it makes it very easy to pick up.
(Russian is a quite simplified language and I find it very easy to learn:)
Easiest: English, just bc there is exposure to it which ever way you turn. Yeah, you could watch Dutch shows or browse Dutch Reddit but English is just easier. It’s also the first foreign language you get taught in Germany.
Spanish and French: similar but personally I feel Spanish has just a bit more cohesion with its rules and the sounds are slightly easier.
Quechua: absolutely fascinating but incredibly rough. It’s hard to learn a language that is so incredibly different with its structure than your mother tongue. The grammar system and many of the sounds are the most divorced from Indo-European languages from the languages I know and it took the most effort and conscious thought whenever you wanna speak.
Personally, I think vocabulary and semantics is just a matter of learning in most languages, so that wasn’t much of a problem for me.
I used to think I was good with languages, then I moved to Lithuania. Send help
48 comments
English was the easiest one, Catalan was the hardest one to learn.
I’m native to Spanish, Catalan and Romanian.
Native English speaker here, learning Spanish and Polish. Y’all can derive which one is the easier one.
Estonian is harder than Russian, Ukrainian, Polish and English
I’m a native English speaker. I can speak English, French, German and Tamil.
English came naturally because most of my education from the start was in English.
Tamil came naturally because my foster parents wanted me to connect with my heritage and put me into a Tamil-language tuition.
French came somewhat naturally. I spent the first couple years of my life in Genève, Switzerland, but kept going back to the UK due to my parents moving around for work. Acquisition took a while.
German came the hardest. My dad got a job in Basel, Switzerland when I was 13. He often took me with him since him and mum were separated at the time. Had to learn and adapt to Swiss German as a teenager with very sporadic visits. I still struggle with German to this day.
English was the easiest one, the second was French and the worst was German.
English was easy, Spanish easy-ish, French fucked me up and Latin was a nightmare
English, but only because it’s the only language I didn’t grow up speaking of the four I know.
Spanish and Danish
English, because we hear it so much in popular media.
Hardest that I actually learned relatively well was ancient Greek I think, for the obvious reason that you don’t actually speak that language so it remains very theoretical in your brain. At least in mine. Also I think it’s probably the most different from Dutch.
TL;DR: Saying Spanish or Italian would almost be cheating, so I’ll say English. German was really, really difficult, but Dutch was even harder (and I never really grasped it, tbh, so I don’t think I’ll count it).
The long version:
1- Spanish – I picked it up as a child while watching cartoons and spending summers in Spain, so I don’t think it counts
2 – Italian – picked it up within a month of living there. It’s just louder funny Spanish (jk)
3 – English – pretty flat grammar, you need to learn very little vocab to be able to have a conversation, and we’re always surrounded by anglophone media, so quite easy to learn.
4 – French – all the ease of the familiarity of Romance languages, all the difficulty of grammar and spelling designed by drawing shit out of a spinning tombola.
5 – German – rules? Nah, just commit an entire language to memory! Do you like grammar? Here, have a neutral gender, more cases that you know what to do with, and inverse the composition of the sentence depending on what verbs you’re using. Fun.
6 – Dutch – German and English had angry drunk sex and birthed… this. Good luck and may the gods be on your side.
English is certainly easy. The verbs are easy to conjugate because the conjugations are all the same. At the same time, there are a lot of English language movies and series with subtitles that allow for a person to watch what they like and learn at the same time.
I’m Portuguese, I understand Spanish and Italian to decent levels without ever having studied them. So those should be fairly easy to learn for me.
I have trouble with French because words tend to be spoken more connected than I’m used to, so I don’t even know where words start and end.
I hear some type of Creole are easy but idk anything tbh.
English. Grew up in Belgium speaking Dutch and German, French is still an issue (I do well in writing and reading) and Irish is a whole other kettle of fish.
I do like learning Irish 🙂
German.. two-sided. Learning the words is quite easy. Norwegian is a germanic language, so many of our words originate from the same. Though the grammar being a big hassle. The case-declination that they use on nouns is non-existing in norwegian.. and their grammar has tons of exception and special cases. And even the gender of the words differ in many cases from what they are in norwegian.. So being gramatacially correct is a mess.. You can get the gender correct, but get it wrong by the cases.. or you can have gender wrong, but getting the case-declination correct.. both ending up with wrongs… on top of that german-teachers being the oldest and strictest at school.. often meaning the worst teachers.. and put on top of that..at the time.. only german-speaking influence you could get on tv then was Derrick..
I’m a native Latvian speaker and fluent in Russian, English, Portuguese, and German.
The easiest language for me was Portuguese, and the hardest was German.
Easiest was probably English, but I’ve understood/spoken English since childhood.
Of the languages I’ve learned as an adult:
Easiest: German. Germanic language like Swedish, which means a lot of vocabulary and some grammar in common. One semester of German at uni, a month-long intensive course in Germany + an exchange semester resulted in my language level being somewhere around C1/C2 (probably C1 now).
Hardest: Georgian. I’ve also studied French and Spanish, but those were easy as Indo-European languages, Georgian was a whole other story. Different language group, different alphabet and (to me) strange ways of constructing sentences. Still have nightmares about Georgian verbs. Took half a semester of Georgian: never again will I try. Lovely wine and food, though, and an amazing country.
I speak Icelandic (native), English, Danish, German and French.
English was easiest as it is pretty much learned unconsciously here. Second easiest was German for me. Danish and French grammar is easy but the pronounciation is crazy lol.
Native Spanish, English, French, Italian Arabic. Italian was like effortless I learnt it just living there a couple of weeks.
Easiest was English, hardest was German
English, because it’s everywhere.
Japanese, because while objectively complex, I found it easy because I was very passionate about it, and so yearned to constantly learn more.
It’s easier to learn 8 languages than it is to learn one or two. I’d like to phrase this in a way that doesn’t sound conceited or arrogant. But at some point you kinda crack the code and are able to learn very fast with minimal input, especially if the language you’re learning belongs to the same family as another one you’re already fluent in.
For me, learning Russian, my fourth language, was hard because the whole declension paradigm and perfective/imperfective verb system was so far away from everything I knew. But then I became fluent. And then I started with Lithuanian (my seventh language) and I found it extremely easy. I remember I was in a class with Italians and Portuguese (they grouped us by country of origin) and I got bumped up two levels forward because I needed very little explanations. So for *me*, personally, Lithuanian is the easiest language *I*’ve learnt, relative to my previous learning experience and knowledge of other languages.
I get very defensive about those polyglot YouTubers claiming they can teach you a language in 20 minutes because they’re basically gaslighting viewers about the knowledge needed before starting a new language. As an example, I remember having a conversation similar to this one with my Lithuanian teacher:
“So this verb requires accusative like in Russian, right? So why is the object not in the accusative?”
“Well, that’s a genitive…”
“Ah, so it’s a partitive form, like in French, right?”
“Er… Yes”
“And the verb has this prefix because it’s in the imperfective mode?”
“We actually call it repetitive mode because we’re trying very hard not to be Slavs, but yes”
“And the ending in the adjective is an enclitic article like in Swedish, is that right?”
“Er… I guess”
“Gotcha”
There’s no way I could’ve done that if I hadn’t been already fluent in Russian, Swedish, and French. Like, I don’t think I’d have gotten very far if Lithuanian had been my first foreign language.
So yeah. Sorry for the rant. I guess what I meant to say is, it’s not the language, it’s you 😅
Going against the current here: as a native Hungarian, English was the hardest one for me – not because it is really hard, but because it was the first foreign (and Indo-European) language for me. After having learned English, I kinda knew how to learn. Moreover, Hungarian is different enough that both German and French seemed super close to English, making them not so hard to learn. German was OK because there is a lot of similarity with Hungarian. French, the pronounciation kills me.
I’m a native Portuguese speaker. I learned Spanish at the same time I learned Portuguese, so definitely it was the easiest (I consider myself native Spanish speaker also, not only because I learned it so young, but also because I live quite close to the border)
Difficult, for me, was Finnish (although I barely tried honestly)
Its certainly English, because looking long term, you engage in english daily if its in movies, online, in work or even simply from music. It ensures you can keep up with the language so it makes it easier to learn through experience.
I speak Icelandic, English, Spanish and a bit of Finnish and English was a bit too easy to learn. But Finnish is haaaaard
I grew up speaking English and Welsh, and was taught French and German in only the way a UK school can teach languages and simultaneously remove any joy from it. I can get by in French still – well order food and buy train ticketes.
Finnish – not as hard as you might expect – at least if you have a good teacher and actively use the language.
Swedish – a bit, but no real reason to use it. I can read ok, but speaking, not a lot.
Estonian – a few phrases, but more of an academic exercise after Finnish, but good fun. It is a nice language.
Portuguese – my current challenge.
Basically (and another poster stated this), once you recognise patterns, eg: I, you, he/she/it etc, the basic principles of tenses and how basic sentences are constructed then you’re half way there. After that you *have* to use the language: reading, speaking especially.
English was the easiest, closely followed by Spanish. German is probably the most difficult, and I’m still not nearly as fluent as I’d like to be.
Norwegian as native language, English as second, French as third. Pretty fluent in both orally, but pls don´t ask me to write in French. I can kinda decipher German and Spanish texts though. Never attempted to learn a fourth.
Not considering English, probably Spanish.
Easiest was Spanish (learned it in highschool and by having Spanish speaking friends)
Hardest Korean, it took many years until grammar and sentence structure felt natural and I only had to expand by learning vocabulary.
Any language that you learn as a kid is easy.
Swedish for me was easy, but the pronounciation has to be pretty much perfect because they are not used to hearing foreigners speak their language.
Greek native speaker here. Learned German starting at the age of 6 and I’m almost bilingual, as I later studied in Germany and Austria. I also had French and English and learned later Italian, as I had an Italian partner. Even took lessons of Swedish at the age of 15 but my teacher got divorced and returned to Sweden. The easiest language for me was English. The reason was that we see all films and series on TV in the original version with Greek subtitles, so we practically grow up with English. I happen to learn languages easily, watching English series and reading the same b titles were the best lessons I could get.
Easiest was English, the hardest one by far was Sanskrit but I didn’t even give it a fair shot and dropped it after a couple of weeks. The second hardest was French I would say because of the complex grammar.
Swedish easiest compared to them all. English second easiest. German 3rd and Polish 511th. I don’t wish upon anyone to learn Polish.
English was very easy for me. Even though the spelling is kind of wacky, you can get used to it, and the grammar is very simple.
I learned Romanian in middle school, and it was *very* hard. I don’t know what it was exactly, but I always struggled with it.
I learned German in high school. It was hard at first but after a while the grammar clicked and I realized it’s quite logical. The hardest part was learning the genders and endings of every word one by one.
A few months ago I started learning Spanish. Even though I can only form the most basic sentences so far, it’s fun. I was afraid of genders but don’t they don’t give me too much trouble.
English, easy compared to Dutch for French speakers. And I bet it’s easy to learn for a Dutch speaker when compared to French
Irish. I spoke Irish when I was young but around the age of 7 it was stopped being used at home and I lost it. Then at the age of 15, I decided to dedicate some time to learning mo theanga dhúchais and I was fluent again by 19. Definitely was the easiest language for me to learn.
Began French at 13 and still speak French quite well. I had a background in Latin because my grandfather had a love for Latin so it was pretty easy to pick up.
The hardest language for me so far has been Arabic, completely foreign to me and has been quite difficult so far.
English was easiest, but that’s a bit of cheating, as I was raised bilingual.
French and Italian were manageable.
German was difficult and I still can’t speak it properly, but I can read it.
Danish… I gave up after six months.
I am a native Dutch speaker.
I can speak 5 languages and Spanish was the easiest for me. I already had some knowledge of French so it was easy to pick up Spanish – once you know one Romance language you can often learn another.
For starters I wouldn’t say I actually speak more than 2 languages, but I been taught both English and German as foreign languages. English was by far the easiest due to just the shear exposure to it, through SoMe, popular culture, games etc. In a year there are probably 1-2 days where I actually use any form of German, and probably also 1-2 days where I don’t use English at all.
English because it’s everywhere. I learnt English almost by accident. Definitely not at school.
I grew up with Portuguese and Swiss-German/German ( never know if I should consider it one or two here).
For me the easiest to learn was English although I’m far from perfect at it (and to be honest i’m far from perfect in all of them…).
Japanese is the hardest by far and I think I’m pushing it saying that I speak it. I wonder how able I am to actually speak it in a place like Japan in a colloquial setting.
French has this weird effect on me given that I understand it almost fully but I struggle to speak it. I’ll be able to have basic conversations but anything that requires a lot of description or nuance has me having a hard time evoking the apropriate words. Adding to this the difference between spoken and written French (and I understand France’s French, not Quebequois French)
Spanish is hard in the sense that I never know if I’m actually speaking Spanish or portuñol due to the false friends between the languages. In the same line, I sometimes struggle in Italian to be sure if I’m actually speaking Italian or Spanish with and accent…(This has gotten worse over the years since I no longer speak with Italian and Spanish speakers on a daily basis).
Italian is almost cheating as a Frenchman but I guess it counts as easiest.
Hardest would actually be Irish, I’ve got my TEG lvl 1 and I’ll stop there 😀
Luxembourgish is my mothertongue. Learned German and French and later English. English was the easiest. French the hardest. German is my best foreign language though, like I speak it basically perfectly
Contrary to popular belief but Dutch and English were quite easy to learn since there are PLENTY of online resources and classes. Also, immersion and media consumption helps.
Italian was alright. Maltese was insanely hard for the sole reason of lack of resources. Also, the fact that Maltese is two language families mashed into one, so there’s loads to learn for such a niche language.
Dutch of course:)
English was easy because of its heavy presence in our culture.
German because it resembles Dutch in so many ways, it makes it very easy to pick up.
(Russian is a quite simplified language and I find it very easy to learn:)
Easiest: English, just bc there is exposure to it which ever way you turn. Yeah, you could watch Dutch shows or browse Dutch Reddit but English is just easier. It’s also the first foreign language you get taught in Germany.
Spanish and French: similar but personally I feel Spanish has just a bit more cohesion with its rules and the sounds are slightly easier.
Quechua: absolutely fascinating but incredibly rough. It’s hard to learn a language that is so incredibly different with its structure than your mother tongue. The grammar system and many of the sounds are the most divorced from Indo-European languages from the languages I know and it took the most effort and conscious thought whenever you wanna speak.
Personally, I think vocabulary and semantics is just a matter of learning in most languages, so that wasn’t much of a problem for me.
I used to think I was good with languages, then I moved to Lithuania. Send help