Why the easiest language is not Latin, French, German or Spanish

These are very populat languages which are often promoted in schools. Note even if you learned all of them (a near impossible feat) you could still understand less than 10% of the people in the world.

This site will not tell you what you want to hear but rather just give you the facts. There are no politics here nor national favoritism just scientific facts.

And the answer you will see will be a win win for everyone.

Now we are speaking below of the average learner with average learning abilities. There are a few gifted people who can pick up new languages as adults much quicker than the rest of us. Note children achieve fluency in 8 or so years while their minds are fresh and not fixed to set language patterns. That is over 70,000 hours. Adults usually require longer times than children.

Well first the easiest language is not Latin, Greek or any of the ancient languages with exceedingly difficult verb forms and obsolete grammar.

How about French. Well you have to learn about 85 verb forms and endings and you must learn genders for each noun. Many schools teach French and the vast majority of students even after several years of classes are laughed at and find it exceedingly difficult to speak it in France. After years of study they can't understand much and can't speak it. So it is certainly not a language that is easily learned. Recent research shows about 40,000 hours of study and practice for fluency. This translates into many years of study for most people. Many people have studied for ten years and are still laughed at in France.

What about German. It has some words like English. But you have to memorize genders of every noun. You have to memorize hundreds of weird grammatical endings. There are some irregular verb forms but not as bad as French or Latin. At least the pronunciation is simple and fairly easy to learn. But that does not make it an easy language to learn. Thousands of hours of memorization and practice are required for fluency. Takes at least a few years of study and practice for fluency for most people.

OK teachers favorite choice for the easiest language in the US is Spanish. Pronunciation not difficult even if it is a little strange. But how you learn the pronunciation will determine your understanding and understandability depending on which country you are in. The Spanish you learn in school stands a big chance of not being the Spanish you will be forced to try to understand later. But oh dear those hundreds of genders have to be memorized. And the verb forms are a big hassle. Some words are like English but not that many to be a big help. And there are other irregularities. So teachers often say Spanish is the easiest language for Americans to learn but then if that is true why can't most students speak and understand it after four years of classes in it? And when they visit Spain or Mexico many report being almost totally lost in understanding and fluency. Many people have studied Spanish for years and still aren't fluent in it. Many people having studied it for years still feel lost in real life conversational settings. So therefore Spanish fails the test for the easiest language.