the troubadour

The Easiest languages for speakers of English to learn would be the generally accepted easiest are Malay and Indonesian, which are very similar and Swahili.
I think the grammar structure in French doesn't make it particularly easy same for German.
Spanish would most likely be the easier of European languages to speak.

Meow

I learnt quite a bit of Malay when I was a small child living in Singapore and much of it has stick with me despite never having had much use for it.

I found French pretty easy and at one point I was spending a great deal of time in France (and had a French boyfriend who barely spoke English) that I was almost fluent, but lack of practice means I'm a bit rusty but can still manage well. Similar in Turkish but I've managed to forget much of that apart form food related items and can read it aloud fluently despite not understanding most of it these days.

I thought German was much harder, but I'd studied French for two years before I started German and as The Dean says the sentence structure is weird.

I'm ashamed to say that I only understand very little Arabic, despite good intentions when I first moved here some seven years ago.



Edited to ask, does this make me at all cultured???

scrubbedexpat141

It depends if you've ever read The Sun....apparently.

Meow

No, so yes then.

I knew it.

scrubbedexpat141

Regardless of language skills I look at the Sun's football bit for their outrageous gossip / transfer talk.

Therefore; Scamp = Uncultured.

Cypselos

I think it's important to read the Sun and the Mail to see what Murdoch and Co are feeding the masses.

weasel decentral

Read the Sun in French or Spanish ( if that's possible) you will be a living paradox

scrubbedexpat141

Careful. On here that kind of search for other opinions will have you branded before you blink.

Shit the bed. I wonder if the Earth would start turning the other way?

ctfc

Agree that bahasa malay/indonesia is probably the easiest though in fact basic English is extremely easy as it's very flexible on word order and poor grammar and hence so popular. Learning English completely fluently is almost impossible for a non native and very rare. Which is strange because even scousers seem to manage it so it's clearly not difficult per se.

The reason native English speakers don't speak second/third etc languages is basic economics at work - it's a simple matter of payback. English is spoken as a first language by around 400 million and as a second language by around a billion.

If a German, Spaniard, Italian etc learn English they can then also talk to nearly 1.5 billion new people in almost any country, but an English speaker learning German only gets repaid with the ability to converse (boringly..) with the 80 million Germans.

Having said that you'll have much more fun in Russia if you can discuss the finer points of трусики in Russian. (perhaps nsfw..)

scot47

Scamp has asked about my foreign languages. German and Bulgarian are my best. My French is rusty and my Arabic is slowly withering as I no longer use it at all.

scrubbedexpat141

Bulgarian is a random one to chuck in the mix? I assume there is a reason?

scot47

Lived (and worked) there for a long time. Bulgarian wife and Bulgaro-Scottish daughters. I liked BG until they joined the EU and all those dreadful Oiks from GB started buying properties there.

scrubbedexpat141

Fair enough, good reason to learn!

The Dean

I once met a Thai girl who offered to teach me her native tongue........

OleJanx

That's a bit of a low offer.