5 Easiest Languages to Learn for Native English Speakers

If you grew up in the United States, you will understand the struggle of not being taught to learn another language in school as they do in other countries. Most school systems won't require it, if at all, until high school. So if you had the option to learn in middle or elementary school, consider yourself one of the lucky ones.

Knowing multiple languages can be extremely important to living a more culturally-aware life and decrease your chances of developing Alzheimer's later. We believe everyone should try to learn another language, regardless if their schools require them to teach it. Try it on your own with one of these five languages that are easy for native English speakers.

Spanish

You guessed it! Spanish is one of the easiest languages for native English speakers to learn. The language uses a very similar structure to English, and the vocabulary usually has a word that sounds phonetically the same in Spanish. Plus, with the number of Spanish speakers in the United States, you can't go wrong with learning this language.

 

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French

If you're lucky enough to already speak (or have a basic understanding of) one Romance language, like Spanish, it will be very similar to another, such as French. Unfortunately, being bilingual isn't that common for Americans, but thankfully, French has a similar difficulty to Spanish. You'll, again, see multiple words that look like one from English, and you can expect the structure to be virtually identical.

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German

English and German are both Germanic languages, which makes German easy for English speakers to learn. We'd go as far as saying German might be less challenging because there are fewer verb tenses and consistent pronunciation. Unfortunately, you probably won't get much use with German in your everyday life in the United States, but knowing the language will give you an incentive to go abroad.

 

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Norwegian

Much like Spanish and French, Norwegian and German are easy because they're in the same family. And as we mentioned with German, since it's a Germanic language, it will be easy for English speakers to understand. Ever heard a Scandinavian person speak and understood the gist of it without knowing the language? That's why. Norwegian has no verb conjugation based on the person or number, which makes it even better for people who struggle with the conjugation aspect of language learning.

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Korean

Some may be surprised, but Korean is one of the easiest languages to learn that doesn't use a Romanized alphabet. We understood the Korean alphabet and the structure to create a word within two weeks. The hardest part of your Korean journey will probably be the syntax. Rather than subject, verb and object, Korean uses subject, object and verb. And you'll find out very quickly, Korean takes many words from English.

 

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