If you’re an English speaker and you’re considering learning a new language, it’s good to know what is the easiest language to learn. Even though there are many reasons besides the level of difficulty as to why you’d rather study one particular language over another, it is certainly wise to make sure you properly understand which languages are easy to learn before you begin the process.
To help with this, we’re going to look at a ranking of the 10 easiest European languages for English speakers to learn. This is based on a report by the United States of America’s Foreign Service Institute (FSI), which found that most English natives achieve proficiency in what they describe as Category 1 languages more quickly. So, let’s break down some of the top entries into this easiest languages to learn list.
It is well-known that Spanish is one of the world’s most widely-spoken languages, but is Spanish easy to learn? Well yes, Spanish is easy to learn relative to most other languages and there’s a major reason for this: you say what you see. Not only does Spanish share the same alphabet as English, with the exception of the letter ñ, but it is a very phonetic language, and this is key to ranking high as the easiest language to learn for English speakers. The grammar is different to English, but learning the vocabulary is usually quite simple for English natives given that the pronunciation isn’t at all complicated.
If you decide to study Spanish in Madrid or another Spanish-speaking city, you’ll very quickly realise this when you go out and about and practise your language skills. Even beginners tend to be able to pick up and understand most words from their first conversations with locals, precisely because the sounds are the same as the way they are spelled out.
This all contributes to Spanish being considered the easiest language to learn for English speakers. So, it’s no surprise that it’s such a regular choice among people looking to learn a second language, with online Spanish courses growing in popularity with each passing year.
French is another language which ranks highly in terms of easy learning. Like Spanish, it comes from the group of Romance languages and follows a very similar structure, especially grammatically. If you enrol in a French course after having studied another Romance language, you’ll immediately realise the similarities.
Although the pronunciation of certain words can make French a slightly more difficult language to master, it remains a favourite among English natives. That’s for good reason, such as the fact that several words are similar if not the exact same in both languages. That helps make it one of the easiest languages to learn for English speakers.
While the FSI points out that German tends to take a little longer to master for English natives than some other languages, German also makes the top 10 list for the easiest European language to learn.
As the name suggests, it comes from the Germanic language family and English is a close cousin. There are many words that sound very similar, even if the spelling and pronunciation might differ, and that’s because a lot of nouns share the same background.
The German case system for nouns, with its four cases, can seem daunting at first, but any German course will make this clear and, once you’ve picked this up, German can actually become one of the easier languages to learn for English speakers, given those aforementioned similarities.
We’ve already discussed three of the most popular and most widely spoken languages which appeared on the FSI’s list of easiest languages to learn for English speakers. And, there are seven other European languages in their Category 1. These other easiest languages to learn are, in alphabetical order: Danish, Dutch, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian and Swedish.
So, what is the easiest language to learn for English speakers out of these? Well, that will depend on each individual and their preferences, whether it’s more important to study a language with easier grammar or smoother pronunciation. But, the most important thing to know is that selecting a course on any of the above means you’ll be tackling one of the top easiest languages for English speakers.
