A Level English Language Website
What is the easiest language to learn?
By Mark Sebba
All children seem to take approximately the same length of time - around five years - to learn their first language to a point where it is almost the same as the adult language. So for children acquiring a first language, none of the world's languages seems to be easier than any other. Learning a second language is a different matter. Individuals vary widely in how successfully they learn a new language after acquiring their first. However, these differences seem to be mainly due to factors like the learners' motivation, their method of learning (for example, whether they have a teacher or learn by themselves), and the extent to which they have contact with the language (it is easier to learn Russian in Russia than in England). The target language (the one the learner is trying to learn) probably is less significant than the factors just mentioned. However, the learner may make more progress, at least at the beginning, if the target language is similar in some ways to his/her own. So some English learners of French may find it helpful that many French words are already familiar from English, while English learners of Norwegian may be helped by grammatical similarities between the two languages.
Where languages have different writing systems (for example, English and Japanese) this may present an additional barrier to learners who want to learn the written language, especially if they depend on written materials for learning the new language. Once this barrier has been overcome, the new language should be no harder to learn than any other.
One group of languages - pidgins, are always easy for the learner. This is because they develop in situations where no common language is available and speakers have to learn a language quickly in order to bridge the communication gap. Pidgins characteristically have small vocabularies, short words and simple, regular grammars. Languages which are not pidgins sometimes have one or two of these characteristics but very rarely have all of them.