Even if you never end up speaking a language, there are benefits to learning one. Learning a language is one of the best activities you can do to keep your brain active and agile. It also opens you up to learning about different cultures as well as consuming content in other languages. There is a particular enjoyment in understanding the lyrics of a pop song in another language. You can even learn a language by chatting with someone from another nation via the internet. Any tutor or essay writer will tell you that communicating with a native speaker or being in an environment where only that language is spoken is the greatest method to learn a language.

When it comes to learning languages, the process can be fairly easy or very difficult. Different languages have different difficulty levels for English speakers. Of course, those with a Latin origin are most similar to English, and you can read them in the same script. Languages from the Middle East and Asia are somewhat more difficult.

If you're looking to learn a language with ease, read this review of Lingopie. Lingopie is an app that provides thousands of hours of streaming content in languages like Spanish and Italian. These TV episodes come with interactive subtitles to help you learn. It is certainly the most enjoyable way of improving your knowledge of a language.

Some languages are particularly easy to learn but not very useful. For this reason, we are leaving Afrikaans off this list. The number of Afrikaans speakers is already low, and it is only getting smaller.

Here are the easiest (useful) languages for English speakers to learn.

Spanish

Even if you have never purposefully learnt any Spanish, you probably know a fair amount of Spanish words. That is because there is a big Spanish influence in Western pop culture. There are Spanish words that we casually use when speaking English. There are also many English series and movies which include Spanish speakers.

But Spanish is easy because of how close it is to English. It is read similarly to how it is written, and its rules are relatively straightforward for English speakers.

Dutch

Dutch is not a difficult language to learn, but there are some caveats to that assertion. For one thing, you will need to get used to pronouncing the guttural sound that is somewhere between a k and an h, and is notated with the letter “g”. Once you've gotten the hang of it, however, there are few other difficult letters. A “v” is pronounced like an “f”, which is fairly easy to get used to.

The issue with learning Dutch is that it is not nearly as useful as the other Latin-influenced languages. You will pick it up fairly easily, but won’t find much use for it if you are not spending time in the Netherlands or one of the five other countries where it is spoken. Unlike Afrikaans, however, it is going nowhere.

Italian

Italian is somewhat similar to Spanish in difficulty. It is also a language people love to learn even if they have no particular use for it. Its romantic nature makes it a popular favorite among English speakers.

It beats out French, which is also relatively easy to learn and spoken in many countries, because of how much easier it is to read. Many French words sound nothing like how they look, whereas Italian words are more straightforward.

Learning a language has many benefits, even if you are not speaking it regularly. The above languages provide an easy landing for first-timers.