Which language is easier for the typical English speaker to learn?

[opebo]

Christ I don't know.  I find foreign languages almost impossible to learn.  I've lived in Thailand almost four years and still speak only the most basic Thai. 

[Grumps]

Easily spanish

[Benwah [why on Earth do I post something] Courseyay]

French. I took some in high school... And while I can't speak it and probably couldn't understand most spoken French language, I can still read a lot of it just because it's similar enough to English.

Oh, that's not so simple, and i can tell, a lot of words are similar in appearance but have actual differences in the meaning, what we call false-friend here. Why the hell you English speakers decided to twist all these words?! Along with the fact that you didn't decide to chose our universal language...

Damn, when i think to the fact that most websites around the world have at least a display in English, and that some people just need to be born in an English speaking country to have an access to it, I'm jealous...

Though, yes, a lot of things are similar in the English and French vocabulary, and along with the fact that we use to live with the idea that our language is a universal stuff, plus the fact that English grammar seems to be incredibly easy compared to ours, all of this make us very lazy to learn your language. That's why English is so massacred here, the highest level of this being that English terms are very very trendy here, so in the end it gives a kind of wild mix of both languages spoken by the youth, a new language is on!

[Benwah [why on Earth do I post something] Courseyay]

Oh, and, to English speakers who think they pronounce French correctly. That may be true, and congrats then, but have you already had the feedback of a French??

No, because, in terms of pronunciation our languages are really different, and I've rarely heard Anglophones, and especially Americans, pronouncing it correctly.

When you think that pronunciation is already different to the hell between France and Québec...

[paul718]

I was always under the impression that English was one of the more complicated languages, and extremely frustrating to learn.  Is that not the case?

[Bacon King]

Spanish is easier to speak and understand when spoken, French is a lot easier to read and understand when written.

[Senator Libertas]

Spanish is most definitely easier for a typical English speaker to learn. Grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation are all much simpler than French.

[Senator Libertas]

On a side note, I decided to attempt to take up Italian, and even bought the expensive Rosetta Stone software.  I regret it.  Italian is a great language.  But I have enough trouble learning languages as it is, and Italians sound system is brutal.

Rosetta Stone is crap. A waste of money. They won't even allow you sell it on ebay when you realize you spent hundreds of dollars on crap.

[12th Doctor]

On a side note, I decided to attempt to take up Italian, and even bought the expensive Rosetta Stone software.  I regret it.  Italian is a great language.  But I have enough trouble learning languages as it is, and Italians sound system is brutal.

Rosetta Stone is crap. A waste of money. They won't even allow you sell it on ebay when you realize you spent hundreds of dollars on crap.

I actually think its pretty good.  I've learned as Italian in probably a cumulative 1 hour I have put into it than I learned German in three years of schooling.  I have also notices that there is a difference in learning, I think of the Italian words as just words, where as if I ever have to do German, I have to translate in my brain.  In otherwords, I can just think in Italian, even if I don't know that much right now.

[Sibboleth]

I don't know if I'm a typical English speaker, but I know enough French to publically embarrass myself and that's the main thing.

[Sibboleth]

I was always under the impression that English was one of the more complicated languages, and extremely frustrating to learn.  Is that not the case?

My Taid is a native Cymraeg speaker and would dispute the first part but would agree with the second.

[A18]

Rosetta Stone certainly helped me think in Spanish. When I hear "tres," I immediately think of the number; I don't waste time translating the term into English. Class lectures and tutorials definitely sharpened my knowledge of subtle grammatical points, though.

[dialectical fetishist]

Spanish. I've tried French and it's quite difficult.

[Senator Libertas]

On a side note, I decided to attempt to take up Italian, and even bought the expensive Rosetta Stone software.  I regret it.  Italian is a great language.  But I have enough trouble learning languages as it is, and Italians sound system is brutal.

Rosetta Stone is crap. A waste of money. They won't even allow you sell it on ebay when you realize you spent hundreds of dollars on crap.

I actually think its pretty good.  I've learned as Italian in probably a cumulative 1 hour I have put into it than I learned German in three years of schooling.  I have also notices that there is a difference in learning, I think of the Italian words as just words, where as if I ever have to do German, I have to translate in my brain.  In otherwords, I can just think in Italian, even if I don't know that much right now.

Well perhaps I just prefer more traditional comprehensive and methodical language study. I found Rosetta Stone to be little more than extremely-overpriced glorified flashcards.

[Citizen James]

Both are classified as Category I languages (relatively easy for native English speakers to learn).

I found Spanish easier, though I have trouble with most linguistics.  (which is a little strange since my father speaks several - including a category 4 (Chinese), a category 3 (Russian), and several Category I's (Spanish, French, German, smatterings of others).

[Kuu ülevaade olulisematest]

Screw both Spanish and French.

You people should lean Swedish, the singing language.

Det är det vackraste språket i världen och så likt engelska att ni inte kommer ha några som helst problem med att lära er det.

I consider myself relatively competent in linguistics and I haven't got the slightest idea how to pronounce that.

[12th Doctor]

Problem for me is that I will never be good at other languages, as hard as a try... and I would like to be.  Thanks to my wonderful brain, I have enough trouble wrestling with the one language I do know, half the time.

[Holmes]

Oh, and, to English speakers who think they pronounce French correctly. That may be true, and congrats then, but have you already had the feedback of a French??

No, because, in terms of pronunciation our languages are really different, and I've rarely heard Anglophones, and especially Americans, pronouncing it correctly.

When you think that pronunciation is already different to the hell between France and Québec...

I have a Northern Ontario French accent, I wonder if you'd be able to understand me.

Mine is the correct accent, though. Québec butchered their French, and France's French is becoming more and more like English every day.

[Benwah [why on Earth do I post something] Courseyay]

and France's French is becoming more and more like English every day.

Well, as I said in an other post here, it's not exactly becoming like English, but rather a kind of weird mix of both, in which both syntax, both vocabulary, both ways to make neologism would tend to mix themselves. Well, as I said it is mainly by youngs, 20/30 a bit, and especially those under 20.

As I tend to think for a long time now, English by having invaded the world would certainly create a lot of new dialects around the world which would be the results of the mother languages of people and of English, the mechanism that happened with the Latin then.

Though, meanwhile, i tend to think a global language can rise, which would be mainly based on English but with some global adding modifications spontaneously coming in, and this transported by the new media like satellite TV, internet, so on... Not sure if both the new dialects and the global language can exist side by side on the long term or if the formers will become the predecessors of the final only latter, which already has a name: Globish.

Anyways, i find it pretty interesting...

[Bacon King]

Both are classified as Category I languages (relatively easy for native English speakers to learn).

I found Spanish easier, though I have trouble with most linguistics.  (which is a little strange since my father speaks several - including a category 4 (Chinese), a category 3 (Russian), and several Category I's (Spanish, French, German, smatterings of others).

How would one find what category specific languages are?

[titaniumtux]

@Bacon Veep:
There are websites that categorize languages, along with printed material (books, encyclopædias, etc.).

@obepo:
Thai is tricky. I have a traveller's level of Thai, but I'm no where near fluent. Thai (and other S-E Asian languages), though much easier for Westerners than Mandarin, Japanese and Arabic, are certainly trickier than European languages for us. Consider that you'd probably find Russian easier



French vs. Spanish? Spanish is inevitably a winner in easiness for Anglophones.
Granted probably a plurality of English vocabulary comes from French (or from Latin through French), but that vocabulary is also incredibly similar to Spanish.

Spanish has only one auxiliary verb (so you don't have to care too much whether a verb is transitive or intransitive), has fewer exceptions and no nasal sounds (for the monolingual English speakers who struggle with the nasal sounds). Spanish is easier than French regardless of your first language (unless your first language is Spanish, French, or a really similar language like Catalan or Portuguese, and even then you'd probably find Spanish easier), because Spanish is pretty much an easier language in all aspects. The only thing I could think of that would be easier for English speakers in French would be for/by (pour/par), which lines up with English much more than in Spanish (para/por). Once you tackle para/por in Spanish, pretty much everything else is easier than in French. Oh, and Spanish might trick you on the masculine/feminine thing...not all words ending in "a" are feminine. Already knowing French will make this a freebie for you, because 98+% of words are the same gender in both languages. Seeing as French and English are both my first languages, I cannot explain why a word is either masculine or feminine (I can tell you all the rules for German, but not the Latin languages). When I learned Spanish, I learned the differences on a case by case basis, seeing as there are so few of them. Spanish will probably seem easier for learning masculine/feminine, but then will trick you at times, whereas French will probably require you to learn the "logic" behind it a little more because it's a little less obvious going by word ending, but you won't get "tricked" once you've got the logic figured out.

If you want to learn both, I would recommend learning French first. It's a little trickier, and once you learn those subtleties about grammar (like transitive/intransitive verbs), if it's ever mentioned in your Spanish lectures, you can already appreciate it when learning about, say sentence structure, and enjoy the fact that you won't have to even think about it when formulating sentences in Spanish on the fly

[GMantis]

It's difficult for me to say, as I know neither of the two and I'm not a native speaker of English, but I think it's French. Mainly due to the enormous number of French borrowing.
And I'm pretty sure that English is the only native langauhe for which the above is true.

[Stranger in a strange land]

  For upper-level vocabulary all you really have to do is Franco-phone familiar English terms.

That's also true of Spanish, as well as most European languages, since most upper-level terms derive from Greek or Latin roots.

and France's French is becoming more and more like English every day.

again, also true of Spanish

[Benwah [why on Earth do I post something] Courseyay]

again, also true of Spanish

Oh, Spanish is spoken is so much countries. Do they all follow the same evolution? Would comfort my theory then...