As a native French speaker, I feel we are quite lucky to be able to learn and understand easily other latin languages such as Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. English, however, is a whole different animal. Its vocabulary’s origin being mostly divided between French, Latin and Germanic languages (those three almost equally making over 80% of its vocabulary). English has evolved over the centuries into a language unlike any others and has somehow turned out to be seen as the easiest to learn in the world. What then are the languages that come easily to native English speakers?

It might disappoint some, however, I would advise against French if you are looking for an easy journey. With its 22 modes and its surprising pronunciation rules, the “Language of Love” can quickly turn into a nightmare. Spanish, on the other hand, is rather straightforward, melodious and probably a lot more useful. If you are in for a challenge, the choice is vast. You could try your hand at Mandarin, the most spoken language in the world with 1.1 billion speakers, considered the hardest language to learn apart from English. But if you’d like to go for a more “underground” one, you can always go for Basque – a language spoken by less than 700,000 people – or Hungarian, whose grammar rules are rumored to be the most difficult in the world.