Is English the easiest language ever?

[BillyIdol]

It's really hard to say, because when comparing languages, what levels are you comparing? For example, I can see it being confusing for someone who hasn't mastered English to learn the plural of certain words. Like the plural of box is boxes, but then the plural of ox is oxen, and the plural of goose is geese. This can be frustrating.

[Litnax]

It's not that easy in my opinion. But I'm surrounded by it through media and it was the first foreign language that I learned in school, so the effort to achieve sufficient fluency verbally and in writing is somewhat 'easy'.

[BonClay]

I feel learning the alphabet or how to read and write in English is extremely easy. Speaking English is where most of the people have their problems. In today's age, there's just so many different ways to say the same thing. We're constantly coming up with new words for "Cool" all the time. If you're really serious about learning English properly, the best thing to do is just listen. You can probably learn a lot just by watching a television show that you like.

[czarina84]

I think this is a thing that varies person-to-person.  Some people have an aptitude for languages; others have to work a bit harder.  Some languages come more easily to some people than others.  One person can learn Mandarin very easily, yet have trouble with Swahili or vice-versa.  I think it just depends on the person. 

[Nathicana1992]

A lot of people say English is the easiest language ever and I don't think that's true at all. For that matter I don't think that there is such a thing as an easiest language but English has a lot of complexities that other languages do not have. To say it is the easiest language is just not a good thing to do.

Edited October 18, 2015 by Nathicana1992

[kurdapia]

It could be easy to acquire because a lot of people use it as a means of communication. It is everywhere somewhat universal if I may say so. Although in reality if you study the rules and grammar of the English language, you will notice that it is quite complicated. It is not pretty straight forward compared with other dialects or languages we know. 

[111kg]

I've been learning English since I was 5 years old, therefore English comes as a second language to me. It's pretty easy to learn it, at least until you get to a decent level, as there are a lot of common words with other European languages, especially with German and Dutch. Moreover, most of the famous movies are in English, not to say that most of the popular music is in English too. You, basically, learn it either you want it or not.

[xTinx]

It's really hard to say. Personally, I find the language much easier to learn because I've been learning it since kindergarten. I basically grew up speaking the language (but mostly in school). However, there are those who start learning English in their teens or 20s. If you factor in their native tongue and level of linguistic comprehension, then obviously their learning pace would differ greatly from those who've learned the language since childhood.

[Cave Bear]

It seems easy and intuitive to native speakers. English is not easy though; it's German, and Latin and smatterings of other languages jammed together and hammered into a funny shape. Just look at all the irregular verbs, for example.

[Litnax]

It could be easy to acquire because a lot of people use it as a means of communication.

Agreed. In other words, English seems 'easy' because it's widely used. 

This is a somewhat difficult question to answer, because whether a language is considered easy or not depends to a large extent on the learner's native tongue, culture and reason to learn it in the first place.

 

[foolsgold]

It's easy to learn for sure since it is everywhere in the media and there are a lot of resources to study it unlike, say Urdu or Punjabi. When you're coming from a language with a different alphabet, it can either be really easy if it has less letters (Chinese, Japanese) but rather hard if it is from a different family entirely (Chinese, Hungarian). But again, the availability of English makes it easier to learn since we consume entertainment in English anyway. It's just unavoidable these days.

[Tyrell]

Calling English the easiest language ever would be a little far fetched, don't you think? If they were that easy I don't think anyone would be making grammatical errors. Among the easiest, sure, but definitely not the easiest. In fact, most of the people I've met seem to think that English is incredibly hard. My former classmates for example, struggled in English.