GeneralThe easiest languages to learn are those that have vocabulary, grammar rules, spelling, and pronunciation that are similar to your native language. Easy-to-learn languages often belong to the same language family (groups of languages that are historically related). The easiest languages for speakers of English will then be other languages in the Indo-European language family – check out the image below to see what we mean. English is most closely related to Dutch and German, followed by Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish. But as you may know, English has also been influenced by the Romance languages (i.e. Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, Romanian), which makes these languages good candidates too.Graph showing how proto-indo-european languages are relatedInterestingly, it’s possible for two languages to have some elements in common, and so be easier to learn, without actually being in the same family! Some examples (relative to English) include Indonesian, Malay, Haitian Creole,...
