12 Easiest New Languages to Learn for English Speakers

If you are eager to learn a new language, you better take a look at the easiest new languages to learn for English speakers. Even though English is one of the most spoken languages in the world, it is always good to know one or two more.

But, first, is there the easiest language to learn in the world? Well, it really depends on various things. On a person’s ability and preference to learn new languages, and, more importantly, their mother tongue. So, even though you might hear that Spanish or Italian are among the easiest, you should be aware that all depends on a person.

So, this brings us to the important matter. Does the success of learning another language depend mostly on your mother tongue? Well, certainly, since every group of languages have different logic, tenses, adjectives, pronounces, etc. So, for example, the easiest language to learn for Hindi speakers would be Punjabi, Marathi or Urdu. Or, say, the easiest language to learn for Chinese speakers would probably be Korean. But this certainly doesn’t stand for European language speakers. Let’s take Spanish speakers, for example, since Spanish is also one of the most widespread languages. And for this issue, we have dedicated the whole topic, so take a look at our – 7 Easiest Languages to Learn for Spanish Speakers.

As for English, which is one of the 6 Most Common Second Language in Europe, it can be said that it is the most demanding language nowadays. But, is English easy to learn? Well, since it has no gender and word agreement and no cases, it has very simple grammar comparing to many other languages. Because of this, the hardest languages to learn for English speakers are precisely those with gender and cases. So, Finnish and Hungarian would certainly be on the top of the list.

We have already made similar research as today and wrote about 11 Easiest Second languages to Learn for English Speakers, so may want to take a look at them as well. But, we are not dealing with only one language now. We encourage you to learn more, and for this, we will present some of the easiest new languages to learn for English speakers.

We wanted to get the information on the easiest new languages to learn for English speakers in the places that actually deal with languages. So we turned to websites for learning languages, such as Babbel or FluentU. We have also checked the opinions of people on easiest languages to learn for English speakers on Reddit and Quora as well. Then, we searched for the language difficulty (or, how many hours of studying you need to pass a certain level) and got information about it on About World Languages. And this is how we ranked the languages you will see on our list.

So, let’s check out what are the easiest new languages to learn for English speakers:

12. Indonesian

Mastering Indonesian as an English speaker would take you around 900 class hours. Which really isn’t much. It is one of the easiest Asian new languages to learn for English speakers. It is easy to imitate the pronunciation, grammar is also relatively simple; the one thing you will need to get accustomed to is to always add prefixes and suffixes, which make the essence of the Indonesian language.

11. Portuguese

The Portuguese might sound very difficult. Nevertheless, it is actually very similar to the Spanish language concerning grammar and vocabulary. The pronunciation is the biggest problem when learning Portuguese.

10. French

French is one of the popular languages that are widely taught in schools, and many people have an interest in it. Also, it needs around 575-600 class hours to master it, so it is one of the easiest new languages to learn for English speakers.

9. Romanian

It might seem weird to find Romanian on this list, but, you should know that it is one of the Romance languages, similar to Italian, French or Spanish. It takes up to 600 class hours to master it, so it is indeed one of the easiest new languages to learn for English speakers.

8. German

German is a language of strict rules and a few exceptions. It also has a lot of similarities with English, since they originated from the same Germanic language group.

7. Norwegian

As part of the Germanic language group, it is logical that Norwegian would also take a place among the easiest new languages to learn for English speakers.

6. Swedish

As Norwegian, Swedish belongs to Germanic languages, and, having 1,558 words in common with English, it surely is one of the easiest new languages to learn for English speakers.

5. Danish

If you lived some 500 years ago, it would be much easier to understand a Danish person speaking to you. However, since there are many similarities between Danish and English, it certainly is a good suggestion to start learning it.

4. Italian

Italian is among the easiest languages to learn, and you will need around 600 class hours to be fluent in it. So, it surely can be recommended as one of the easiest new languages to learn for English speakers.

3. Spanish

Spanish stands as one of the easiest languages to learn in general. It is a part of the Romance language group, which has its influence on many European languages, and therefore English as well. Spanish might be tricky for English speaking people, since there are many words that sound very similar and mean totally different things. For example, Spanish “despertar” has nothing to do with despair, it simply means to wake up.

2. Dutch

Probably many of you do not know that a great portion of the modern Dutch language is directly derived from English. This is one of the reasons Dutch is almost the easiest new language to learn for English speakers.

1. Afrikaans

Afrikaans is a Germanic language derived from Dutch, and transformed just enough from it to become the easiest new language to learn for English speakers. There are so many things in common with the English language, starting from grammar and vocabulary, so – why don’t give it a try?