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.
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