In your opinion, what's the easiest and the most difficult language to learn and why?

Question

Easiest: Portuguese and Italian

Most difficult: Chinese and Japanese

Answer 1

The hardest language, hmmm. A debatable question to be sure.

Each language is dependant on the complexity it presents to potential students, and the desire and mental discipline that those students command. English is a contender because of all its bastardizations and idioms. Navaho (Navajo) is also. They used Navaho as a code language in the Pacific because of its complexity during World War II.

The constructed language Esperanto is the strongest contender as the easiest language because it is designed to be just that. A look at its history will show you that it is expanding exponentialy. In numerous studies conducted over the last century, it has been demonstrated that first mastering Esperanto can lessen significantly the amount of instruction required for a third or forth language, because it clearly demonstrated linguistic theory that is useful in understanding languages. The link below provides details on this phenomena.

Now one could say that the same effect would happen with almost any language, and I believe they are correct. So if you are in a position to learn any language, and hope to use it to vault into a third language, then by all means do so.

The only real benefit that Esperanto has over the other tongues in this case is its ease of absorption, and its clear demonstration of linguistic principles.

I frequently make this next statement, and I live by it.

"If you can't learn Esperanto, you can't learn any language."

At the very least, if you learn Esperanto first, which by the way can lead to the enjoyment of meeting new friends and traveling to new places, you'll at least have that under your belt regardless of how far you decide to take any other languages.

It's not uncommon for a student of Esperanto to become fluent inside of a month, maybe less, if you've the desire.

Please don't let anybody tell you it's useless. As with anything else, it's use is dependant on how you decide to use it. With over 2,000,000 speakers in the world, there aren't too many places where you won't find it, you just need to look. The internet is the best place to start. The sites below are the best intitial places to investigate the language and it's history. (Yes, it has a history (120 years) and a culture.)

Research and make your own conclusions.

Ĝis!

Answer 2

It depends on your mother tongue.

For English speakers, the easiest are probably German & Italian;

most difficult Chinese (for the many characters) and Finnish.

Answer 3

It's much more difficult to learn a language from outside of your language group than one that is a part of it. That's why Esperanto would be easy for English, Spanish, French, or German speakers to learn but would be very difficult for those who only know Chinese, Japanese, Finnish, or Arabic.

Answer 4

I grew up speaking both English and Chinese so neither seems terribly difficult to me although my Chinese never progressed much beyond the vocabulary of a child .

I learned Yiddish and Italian from my neighbors in NYC and French while at University in Montreal. I found Italian quite easy to speak.

I've tried Arabic and Farsi but had little success with either but that may be because the people I was learning those languages to communicate with also spoke English perfectly well. Indeed, I find the biggest obstacle to acquiring more languages is the fact that English is so widely spoken by educated people everywhere that they'd rather speak English than listen to me massacre their language.

I would agree that languages with tonality such as Chinese and Japanese are probably more difficult to learn for English speakers than most European languages.

Answer 5

The former: Chinese, English, Turkish

The Latter : French, Arabic, Hebrew, Farsi

Answer 6

italian/spanish are easiest

arabic/chinese are the hardest

english is the most casual

arabic is the most beautiful language to learn

french is cool  

Answer 7

Italian would be the easiest, Chinese is definitely the hardest!