If you're like me, you grew up speaking a language. Since you're reading this in English, that was either your native tongue, or you've learned it at school. (If you don't understand this then thang nabbit presumably on the slindy intercongruenda, but that's neither here nor there)
But in the current cultural situation, native speakers of English (NSE) are at an intellectual advantage over speakers because it is the preferred language of diplomacy, science, popular culture. I could make a case that this is a disadvantage for NSEs but for the moment let's just assume that an English speaker is about to learn another language.
Learning a language involves a number of separate domains which are somewhat independent. There's:
- grammar (syntax), how words are ordered and modified to tell you their function with relation to the other words in a sentence
- vocabulary and sayings, the dictionary of words, what you call that thing or action
- pronunciation, the accent, those weird sounds that make up the words.
- writing and spelling, how the language goes on paper or screen. Though writing is not really language itself (language was spoken first and then individuals created writing after the fact), it is often the easiest entry into language learning and offers higher volume of consumption per unit time. Non-roman alphabets or complicated spelling rules make it difficult to learn how to pronounce things from writing (certainly for beginners).
- culture, the supporting tools in your environment that ease language learning, books, media, acceptance. Not traditionally thought of as a part of learning a language, but makes a huge difference in learnability. The internet is making a lot of things just universally available: news and movies, ordering books.
So here is a structured list of those issues for each language/language group.
French - pretty easy overall. French (and Latin cognates) form most of the educated language.
- grammar - 3 conjugation of verbs in a few tenses but very regular, gender of nouns to remember. Word order mostly like English
- vocabulary - 2 once past the basic words, educated vocabulary is almost identical. Very easy to guess meaning.
- pronunciation - 2 mostly the same as English, no distinctions but a few strange sounds to get the accent right (u, nasals)
- writing/spelling - 2 Latin alphabet, spelling very regular, a few accent marks to be aware of, a few unspoken letters at the ends of words.
- cultural - 1 taught by default in the US/England. In the US, products (few of them) that have bilingual packaging are in French for Fr Canada). Easy to get French things to read for learning.
Spanish/Romance - pretty much the same as French except slightly easier, because of close cultural connections (in US) and simple grammar
- grammar - 2.5 conjugation of verbs but very very regular, gender of nouns to remember, verb conjugations but that's it. ser/estar, por/para only difficulties
- vocabulary - 2 once past the elementary words, educated vocabulary is almost identical, part of the European group, easy to guess meaning.
- pronunciation - 2 mostly the same as English, no foreign distinctions but a few strange sounds to get the accent right (g, j, h, r)
- writing/spelling - 2 Latin alphabet, spelling very regular, a few very regular differences. Very wysiwyg
- cultural - 1 large subpopulation of Spanish speakers. Currently the default foreign lang taught in in the US. Lots of media that is Sp available.
Latin - The grammar is a lot: conjugations, declensions, gender, agreement. But the vocabulary is very recognizable. Or if it is not recognizable at first, then there will probably be some mdeical, legal, erudite term in English that corresponds.
- grammar - 5 conjugation of verbs but very very regular, gender of nouns to remember
- vocabulary - 2 once past the elementary words, educated vocabulary is mostly English looking. Half of English tech vocabulary is Latin or Latin-derived French.
- pronunciation - 2 since it's mostly used literarily, pronunciation doesn't seem to matter much. But if you have to, it's very organized. When in doubt sort of like modern Italian.
- writing/spelling - 1 Roman alphabet (the original), spelling very regular, a few very regular differences.
- cultural - 2 The source of European culture. English law and medical vocabulary. Lots of erudite literature. Very few children's stories ('Winnie Ille Pu' is about it) and no news. Even though it is not used in the real world as such, makes law, medicine, and all romance languages very easy to learn.
German - you think it is going to be easy because English and German have close historical roots, but it's not that easy.
- grammar - 3.5 conjugation of verbs sounds like English, gender and 4 cases of nouns to remember, word order/prepositions just slightly different enough to English to be annoying.
- vocabulary - 3 a lot of similarity with elementary words, educated vocabulary is loan translations from Latin (that is, not Latinate, but the pieces translated to German pieces) so visually don't look right, but are made up of squashing basic words together. Vacuum cleaner = Staubsauger = dust sucker. Easy to guess.
- pronunciation - 2 mostly the same as English, no distinctions but a few strange sounds to get the accent right (r, ch, pf, v/w/f)
- writing/spelling - 1.5 Latin alphabet, spelling very regular
- cultural - 2 not part of US/English linguistic consciousness. Not taught at schools. Large subpopulation of people with German heritage (both US and England) that is entirely ignored as a heritage. Yiddish, a variant of HG, has a larger cultural heritage (from a much smaller population). But some things are in the fabric of English culture (Grimm's Fairy Tales, general northern European culture)
Russian - for IE, hard to learn basics, hard to master because of so many rules.
- grammar - 5 conjugation of verbs sounds like English, gender and 7 cases of nouns. And even more exceptions to these. Getting the basics is hard and then it steadily gets worse.
- vocabulary - 4 there is a lot of borrowing for educated vocab directly from English, but no where near as much as English from Latin. So most vocab unfamiliar
- pronunciation - 3 lots of consonant clusters and weirdly placed palatalization, and
- writing/spelling - 3 Cyrillic alphabet, spelling mostly regular, except for 'o'
- cultural - 3 not part of US/English linguistic consciousness. Not taught at schools. Small subpopulation of people with German heritage (both US and England) that is entirely ignored as a heritage.
Irish - This is the most surprisingly exotic. It is definitely Indo-European, but it changes as many parameters as possible within that system to make it just plain weird. Nothing seems to be regular at first sight. Also at second sight. But eventually it is very regular, just there are so many context rules that are hidden or look like they overlap, but actually aren't
- grammar - 4 if only gender were the only difficulty, but there's so much more. VSO, prepositions that seem to conjugate like verbs, lots of initial sounds changes with exceptions on exceptions. The rules are regular but getting them is hard for a beginner. Oh, and 5 declensions for 2 cases with nouns.
- vocabulary - 3 not really cognate, except maybe numbers (but to complicate it, two sets of numbers that lenit or elide depending on the number). Plurals and verb roots don't seem regular at all.
- pronunciation - 3 the sounds aren't strange (except for 'ch' and 'dl' and 'gh' and dh' and slender vs broad and etc etc), it's the sound changes based on grammar that are insane.
- writing/spelling - 3.5 Latin alphabet, spelling is very regular but in the most misleading way. Lots of letters (vowels and consonants) sound nearby but different enough their English counterparts, if they're sounded at all. Should be 4, except it really is rule based.
- cultural - 3 Taught in Ireland, not in US. Very small world community. Huge subpopulation of people with Irish heritage in all former English colonies...where Irish is entirely ignored as a language heritage. Not much out there to read.
Persian - This is the most surprisingly non-exotic. No gender, very little conjugation of verbs straightforward word order.
- grammar - 2 no gender, little conjugation of verbs
- vocabulary - 3.5 some cognate words, but educated has a lot of Arabic borrowings. But mostly unfamiliar.
- pronunciation - 2 a couple of uvular throaty g's (gh and kh) but not the sore-throat of Dutch or Arabic
- writing/spelling - 3 Arabic alphabet, no vowels. Hard to get pronunciation unless heard before. Also it seems like all typesets of Persian/Arabic are much much smaller for a given fontsize
- cultural - 4 very little connection with the West. Mostly Islamic.
Arabic/Hebrew - exotic grammar and writing, but at least it has an alphabet.
- grammar - 4 conjugation of verbs and nouns similar not by endings but by vowel changes within the root, gender different enough to English to be annoying.
- vocabulary - 4 entirely different. some direct English borrowings but not enough to make a difference.
- pronunciation - 3.5 a few extra throaty sounds and s/t/th's that they distinguish but don't exist in English
- writing/spelling - 3 Semitic alphabet (no vowels) (Arabic and Hebrew are similar like Roman and Greek), so you have to know things first to read properly (makes learning difficult)
- cultural - 3 Hebrew has a lot of cultural connections (Christian and Judaic vocab). Arabic has the difficulty that MSA (Modern Standard Arabic) is not really used in the street or at home, and each country has its own dialect (which two countries over may not be intelligible). Why Arabic and Hebrew together? Salaam/Shalom should be enough to convince you
Chinese - exotic, learning writing takes as much work as an additional language. I'm referring to Mandarin, not Cantonese or Shanghainese, which are unintelligible foreign languages (very similar but unintelligible as English is to German). But just as hard (or harder if you think having many more tones is harder. which it is).
- grammar - 2 no gender, no conjugating, no declining, no nothing. Straightforward order (slightly different from English), few exceptions.
- vocabulary - 4 entirely different. But like German, new words are created from pieces of smaller words. Semantically it's not always obvious how though. Words and phrases made from these short simple VC words have this otherworldly feeling that you can't get a hold of them, maybe because they're shorter or all sound a like.
- pronunciation - 3 tones are exotic, and distinguishing some palatals is exotic. but that's it. lots of near homophones (see pronunciation) so lots of room for misunderstanding or puns. Not as bad as it seems. 4 for tones and palatals but 2 for everything else. Cantonese has like 12 tones, so count yourself lucky.
- writing/spelling - 5 Ideographs, every syllable has a picture. Like learning an entirely additional language. It's not as terrible as that; most characters actually have two distinguishable parts, one as a hint to pronunciation and one. Supposedly only 2000 characters needed to read a newspaper. Only?
- cultural - 4 very different cultural history so interpersonal expectations can be very different
Japanese - exotic, shares ideographs with Chinese but the spoken language is entirely different
- grammar - 4 (my vague impression)
- vocabulary - 5 entirely different. (my vague impression)
- pronunciation - 4 (my vague impression)
- writing/spelling - 5+ Chinese borrowed ideographs, plus two syllabaries (hiragana, katakana), and oh plus maybe another alphabet. So like Chinese but worse.
- cultural - 5 very different cultural history (my vague impression)
One take away is this, that because of extensive borrowing from nearby or imperial cultures, languages that are different grammatically may have learning eased by having some vocabulary overlap. So European languages tend to be easy to learn among each other for pronunciation and vocabulary (and if one Romance is your native language then all but Latin are all 1's), Arabic and Persian with vocab, and Chinese and Japanese with respect to writing.
Of course this is an entire oversimplification. There are much more refined metrics on language learning: a scales of language proficiency like ILR (0 to 5), CEFR (A1 to C2), or ACTFL (novice to distinguished). And each level has published expected hours of instruction to reach it. So these are admittedly very subjective assessments on my part.
The best way to learn a language is to be born into it. If you can't do that, have relatives in your household who speak it and nothing else so you can't rely on the one you already know. As those strategies are not always at hand, immersion is the next best thing (but also where you can't fall back on the crutch of your native language). As that often poses a chicken and egg problem, your most realistic first attack is study habits, lots of listening and reading. And the latter is what I think I am 'scoring' for English speakers.
It's only fair to go the other direction. One might think that it is a simple inverse of the above (or really since difficulty is a distance, exactly the same numbers as above. But that's not exactly the case. There are language to language difficulties (or simplicities) and universal ones. I will oversimplify considerably and talk about all languages trying to learn English.
- grammar - 2 basic grammar as simple as can be. No gender, little inflection or irregularity. prepositions and phrasal verbs have lots of exceptions and ambiguity. I'd give it a 1, but I'm trying to account for familiarity bias.
- vocabulary - 2 easy for Europeans, not so much for outside of Europe.
- pronunciation - 3 should be given 5 for 'th' alone which hardly any other language in the world has. Short i and diphthongs are weird but you'll get over it.
- writing/spelling - 4 For a logical roman alphabet, its spelling is atrocious. There seem to be more exceptions to exceptions than the rules themselves. Almost like ideographs, you feel like every word has to be learned by itself.
- cultural - 1 Because of English colonialism, American economic strength, entertainment media, and commercialization, English is everywhere. Movies, music, TV, the internet, everything you buy, something about it is going to be English. Everything is available everywhere in English. Even if it is exotic to you, it is so in your face you can't help but know about it. People elsewhere know more about English speakers (mainly Americans) more than they do themselves. There's so much opportunity for learning English.
Sorry if I left yours out. I'd like to add in other representatives, Slavic (Czech), sub-saharan African (Swahili), Indian subcontinent (Hindi and Mayalayam) and southeast Asia (Thai and Indonesian), to get a better world coverage.
Handy table to compare (and more easily see where you disagree with me)
| Language | Grammar | Vocabulary | Pronunciation | Writing/Spelling | Culture |
| French | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| Spanish | 2.5 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| Latin | 5 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 2 |
| German | 3.5 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| Russian | 5 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 3 |
| Irish | 4 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 |
| Persian | 2 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
| Hebrew/Arabic | 4 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 4 |
| Chinese | 2 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 5 |
| Japanese | 4 | 5 | 4 | 5.5 | 5 |
| English | 2 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 1 |
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