Hardest to easiest

Haha   Sat Aug 15, 2009 12:32 am GMT
Please rate these languages in order of difficulty in your opinion:

English
Afrikaans
Swedish
Dutch
Indonesian
Spanish
Chauvinist   Sat Aug 15, 2009 12:39 am GMT
Afrikaans
English
Dutch
Swedish
Indonesian
Spanish
Haha   Sat Aug 15, 2009 2:25 am GMT
For what reason do you rate Dutch as easier than Swedish and Indonesian?
Chauvinist   Sat Aug 15, 2009 2:29 am GMT
Because I'm biased. It's my mother tongue.
Chauvinist   Sat Aug 15, 2009 2:36 am GMT
Personally I think Dutch is easier to pronounce than Swedish and it doesn't have cases, I think Swedes articulate less. Indonesian is non-Indo-European, also my bias.
Haha   Sat Aug 15, 2009 10:41 am GMT
Swedish doesn't have cases either.
K. T.   Sat Aug 15, 2009 8:19 pm GMT
English
Afrikaans/Dutch
Spanish/Swedish
Indonesian

English (my native language)
Afrikaans/Dutch=Close to English
Spanish/Swedish-more distant from English
Indonesian=Not an IE language. Said to be "easy", but it would still involve learning a lot of new words, not just cognates.
K. T.   Sat Aug 15, 2009 8:21 pm GMT
My list is from easiest to "hardest", btw. If you start out with another native language, your list will likely be different.
sss   Sat Aug 15, 2009 8:22 pm GMT
In my view Swedish is much easier than Spanish even for an English speaking person. But I agree that Indonasian must be the hardest one, at least for a speaker of the IE languages
personal opinion   Sun Aug 16, 2009 11:17 am GMT
Afrikaans
Swedish
Dutch
English/Spanish
Indonesian
Harman   Sun Aug 16, 2009 3:16 pm GMT
I'm spaniard and only major lenguages, ok?

1) Spanish (native so very easy ;-) ).
2) Portugues (latin as spanish, and mutually intelligible without learning especially brazilian one).
3) Italian (latin as spanish, i understand 50% more o less without learning)
4) French (latin as spanish, i understand 33% more o less before i started learning)
5) English (german lenguage but very easy grammar, more easy than latin one and no accent at all.I understood only some words without education).
6) Romanian (latin as spanish but i understand only some words, quite away from western latin lenguages, i guess compatible latin grammar).
olasz   Sun Aug 16, 2009 6:56 pm GMT
) Romanian (latin as spanish but i understand only some words, quite away from western latin lenguages, i guess compatible latin grammar).

This is not completely true. Italians can generally understand Romanian better than Spaniards and Portuguese. Italian can be considered in between Romanian and Spanish/Portuguese. Grammatically It's more similar, such as plurals, some verb endings and so on. Even FRench is more similar to Italian lexically than Spanish and Portuguese. However, Spanish , particularly some American variants are extremely easy to understand for an educated Italian.
This doesn't mean that all these languages are easier to learn than others, particularly at an advanced level. Similar languages can easily get confused: syntax and vocabulary are the most difficult aspects to master.
lobinho   Sun Aug 16, 2009 7:14 pm GMT
Harman What about CAtalan and Galician? Can you understand them?
no   Thu Aug 20, 2009 12:21 am GMT
Finnish is definitely harder than all of these
Guest   Thu Aug 20, 2009 12:36 am GMT
Harman What about CAtalan and Galician? Can you understand them?


Catalan is not that intelligible for a Spanish speaker as people may think. Galician is 100% intelligible, even more than Andalusian Spanish.