If you’ve ever wanted to be fancy and speak more than one language, this list of the easiest languages to learn for anyone should be a great guide to help you pick one.
I had to take a foreign language class in both high school and college, so I went with Spanish in the former and French in the latter. I honestly don’t remember how to speak either language at all, but they weren’t too terribly difficult while I was learning them. In theory, I should be able to learn Spanish pretty easily considering it’s a Latin-based language and so is English, which I obviously can already speak. That being said, I could really learn any other Latin-based language if I tried hard and believed in myself, but as bad as it is to say, I have such a poor attention span it’s hard for me to focus enough to learn something that new.
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If anything, most US-born English speakers have a particularly hard time learning new languages because the education system doesn’t implement them into the curriculum or value them as important. I wasn’t required to start learning a language until high school, and by that time it’s a bit more challenging because my primary language was so well developed that I had trouble with translations. Additionally, I find it harder to learn something like that when I’m being tested and forced to learn it. There are, however, languages that are included in the Easiest Second Languages to Learn for English Speakers, and I wonder if they’re easy for anyone else as well. It would also be interesting to see how close to English those languages are and if that contributes to the ease of learning.
In order to create this list of easiest languages to learn for anyone, we had to consider a few factors. First, the popularity of a language determines ease of learning because if more people speak it there’s more opportunity for exposure. Next, the native language of the speaker is important. Certain languages are easier for people to learn if it’s closer to their native language. Also, you have to consider passion and motivation for learning a new language. If you’re not willing to pursue it wholeheartedly, you likely won’t be successful. Quora was our main source to help us determine language difficulty and pick the ones that made our list. It helped us search by difficulty.
Crack open your dictionaries, log into Duolingo, and get ready for the easiest languages to learn for anyone.
11. Mandarin
There are two versions of the Chinese language: Mandarin and Cantonese. Mandarin is the official language of the Republic of China and also one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Chinese is spoken by about 1.3 billion people around the world.
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10. Malay
About 60.8 million people speak Malay across Indonesia and Thailand.
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9. Indonesian
Because of Dutch colonization, some Indonesian words have Dutch roots. Indonesian is a fairly close language to Malay.
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8. German
About 76.8 million people speak German and it’s mainly spoken in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, and Italy.
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7. Portuguese
219 million people speak Portuguese across Portugal and Brazil. Portuguese is closely related to Spanish.
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6. French
French is a romance language that formed as a result of the evolution of the Latin language. French is a popular and common language, which is why it’s one of the easiest languages to learn for anyone.
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5. Afrikaans
Afrikaans ranks 5th in our list of easiest languages to learn for anyone. It is the native language in South Africa and has influences from Malay, French, and Portuguese.
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4. Italian
63.4 million people around the world speak Italian. It’s the closest to Latin and a common Romance language.
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3. Spanish
Spanish ranks 3rd in our list of easiest languages to learn for anyone. It is the second most-spoken language in the world with about 437 million speakers. It’s influenced by Latin, Greek, and Arabic and when the UN was established in 1945 it was one of the official languages.
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2. Esperanto
Esperanto is about three times easier to learn than other languages. Dr. Zamenhof introduced this language in 1887.
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1. English
English is evidently the easiest language to learn and is the third most spoken language in the world. It’s one of the official languages of the United Nations. Many countries teach English as a second language because of its cultural relevance. Many use it for business and travel.
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That concludes our list of the easiest languages to learn for anyone. If you want to become more cultured and be able to speak more than one language, one of the options on this list might be a good one for you. You’ll surely be able to find a lot of online resources as well!
