As a native English speaker, I hear things like “this” language is hard/easy to learn. Does this mean it is only hard/easy to learn coming from an English background, or would someone who speaks Spanish also find it similarly harder/easier to learn as well?
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Generally speaking, the fewer conjugations, tenses, exceptions, irregular verbs etc. the easier the language is to learn. Simple and consistent grammar is much easier to learn. Indonesian is sometimes described a the “easiest language in the world” for this reason.
There’s also the actual speech sounds. Some languages are relatively easy to pronounce and have relatively few sounds, such as Spanish. Others have a lot of subtly different sounds, such as French.
Additional factors may relate to the base language. For example, English speakers often struggle with tonal languages as it’s a mechanic they’ve never experienced. This makes languages like Chinese and Vietnamese extremely difficult compared to Japanese, for example, even though both are difficult.
It’s important to know, though, that the number one predictor of learning a language is motivation, not how difficult the language is. So it is possible to learn any language, even the difficult ones.
It definitely depends which language(s) you already know. As an example: French, Italian, Latin and Spanish (and quite a few others probably) have relatively similar words and grammar. Thus as I already knew quite some French, learning Italian was „easier“ for me.
It varies depending on where you are from and what you are native language is. And it has a lot to do with language structure and the way various sounds are made and incorporated into the language..
4 instance, if you are a native English speaker. Japanese will be somewhat difficult for you to learn, but nowhere near as difficult as chinese. Because Japanese has a very different sentence structure, but ultimately all of the sounds made in the language are not that difficult for English speakers to make. And they don’t encode information in ways that are alien to us.
Chinese not only has a similarly weird sentence structure compared to english, but it also is a tonal language. Meaning the actual definition of a word will change dramatically based on the tone used when pronouncing it. That is something that doesn’t exist in English at all. So it is very difficult for english speakers to learn.
As a CS major, my first thought was programming languages and I was about to put in my 2 pennies there.
I’m pretty sure while there are obviously certain difficulties going between certain languages, in terms of objective difficulty, yeah I’d say it’s about consistency.
It’s like learning to play a new boardgame. If the rules are clear and consistent, it’s easier to learn. If the rules have a bunch of little exceptions and specific situations with new rules, it’s confusing and hard to learn. Most language hasn’t been built entirely from the ground up, it’s come together naturally by many people over time so it can get messy (like English)
Languages that are similar to your native one are obviously easier to learn.
As for others, I think, they balance each other out. Some have both easier and harder concepts compared to each other.
For Russian speakers, for example, concepts that are present in English, such as articles, irregular verbs, numerous tenses, their combinations and use cases pose, are no joke. Non-straightforward spelling and pronunciation also bring their share of fun. English speakers may think that Swedish will be a breeze, but then it turns out that plural nouns add some extra work, and so on. Chinese may seem to have simpler grammar but then there are Chinese characters and tones.
Take a look at Toki Pona (r/tokipona). This will help you understand what makes a language easy to learn.
It’s likely two things: Simplicity of system (like Bahasa Indonesian has been mentioned) and how close the new language is to your own language. This would explain why speakers of romance and, to some extent, germanic language learners can pick up Esperanto well in a very short time.
Big however, the true measure of how quickly and thoroghly one learns is utility and need; the only languages I managed to get good at are those which I had a need, a encouraging environment, and acceptance by the culture, and the other two factors didn’t matter much in comparison.
Chinese will be easier for me if my spouse is Chinese and we live in China than if you are learning it in isolation somewhere in countryside Germany, for instance. Italian will be easier for you to learn if you have Italian heritage that you see as important to your identity and travel often to Italy.
FWIW I’m a trained applied linguist and language teacher who has learned a bunch of languages to various levels.
No, studies have shown that babies learn different languages at roughly the same rate. Only thing that is objectively varies in difficulty is writing. Some writing systems might be easier to learn than others.
You’re a native English speaker. You want to learn Spanish.
You come across something that’s called “prepositions”. You may not know what they are, and they may look scary, but you realise English has them. Now you just have to learn the Spanish words and rules for them.
You then come across something that’s called “nominative-accusative alignment”. No idea about what that is, but, after someone explains it to you, you realise it’s the exact same thing in English. You don’t have to learn anything this time.
Later, it’s turn for verb inflections. English has them, but on a much smaller scale. You’re going to have to spend time understanding the concept, and then learning how it works in Spanish.
Once you learn Spanish, you decide to learn another language. Some old language with less than a million speakers spoken in the depth of the Pyrenees. Cool! But they don’t use prepositions. They use postpositions instead. They don’t have nominative-accusative alignment; they have ergative-absolutive alignment instead. And they inflect verbs, just like Spanish does.
Now you have two more grammar concepts you need to understand. And, in fact, many people never manage to truly grasp what the ergative-absolutive alignment is. Good luck on your trip to the Pyrenees. You may want to stick to English.
Edit/summary: The difficulty of a language is often a subjective thing. It depends on your native language, and, to a smaller extent, on the languages you’ve already learned. (If your native language is an isolate, like mine is… you’re screwed.)
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