What is the easiest language to learn

Which language has the easiest writing system?

Not an easy answer to this one. Chinese writing system is not alphabetical, so in a sense it's easier then most. Yet, the amount of memorization required makes it a challenge even for the native speakers. Korean system is fairly straightforward and logical, but for someone who grew up with an alphabetical script based on North Semitic writing system (most alphabets worldwide), it will take some getting used to.  I think the answer will always be in the eye of the beholder. Main thing to remember is that complexity of language is not directly related to the complexity of writing. Some languages have switched writing systems three or four times within one century (Azeri for one), yet learning to speak those languages has not become more or less difficult.

Which languages would be the easiest to learn for a native Russian speaker?

A2A,

Native speaker of Russian here. We have to define what learning means.

In terms of understanding, the easiest language is Bulgarian. As you can see from the following lexical distance map (closeness in terms of shared words), Bulgarian is the closest language to Russian.

My personal experience coincides with this research. Once I got couple of Bulgarian books and it took me some time to figure out that they were written in some other language and not in broken Russian. Other Slavic languages in this sense are farther from Russian. Ukrainian and Belorussian are less intelligible and require deeper knowledge of Russian (particularly of archaic expressions and words). Modern Ukrainian for political reasons is doing its best to be as far from Russian as possible borrowing words from any other language but Russian, so this gap is going to be bigger and bigger.

Anyhow, if we consider not vocabulary but grammar, Bulgarian becomes less natural for native speakers of Russian. Cases of nouns are missing in Bulgarian while in Russian (and many other Slavic languages) they are ubiquitous. Every time I run across a Bulgarian sentence where prepositions normally requiring prepositional or genitive case in Russian are used with raw noun, I have to force my brain to calm down and realize that this is another language. For example, “in Paris” translates to Russian as “в Париже” and to Bulgarian as “в Париж” (which additionally means “to Paris” in Russian). Since my brain is expecting prepositional case, and languages are so similar I cannot easily enter “Bulgarian mode” as I do, when speaking some language which is not similar to Russian. When reading Bulgarian I have to constantly make my brain shut down expectation of cases in order to overcome cognitive discomfort. This phenomenon is absent in Ukrainian (that I have learnt by exposure to it) and Czech (that I have learnt by grammar book).

So, in terms of understanding my pick is Bulgarian. In terms of speaking, my choice is Serbo-Croatian (closest in terms of vocabulary among languages with cases).

What is the easiest part of learning a new language?

Well personally, what i think is that language is not that hard to learn. So for me there are many easy part of learning language. Some of the easiest part for many of us are as follow :

Grammar: Grammar is actually easy for me personally because I think that like how the language works. I find it easy to understand it's word order an conjugations.
Pronunciation: This is easy for me because some sounds that aren't in English, like the Portuguese "j" and the Dutch "g", can be easy to learn for me.
Writing: Writing is easy for me because each letter will create a different sound. Except for some languages, but I find it easy to understand.

How we can make learning a language easy :
To make learning a language, first we should know your Goal for learning. It might sound obvious, but recognizing exactly why you want to learn a language is really important.

Why are you learning this language? For professional reasons? Pleasure? To communicate with family? With your goal in mind, actively search for opportunities to learn what you need and filter out what you don’t (for example, vocabulary for talking about your work is very different to that necessary to navigate North America on a road trip). Focusing on your overall learning goal will help you combat burnout when it comes.

Memorizing lists of vocabulary can be challenging, not to mention potentially dull. Many of us believes that association is key to retaining new words: “A great way to build vocabulary is to make sure the lists you’re learning come from situations or texts that you have experienced yourself, so that the content is always relevant and connects to background experience.”

For a native English speaker, what is the easiest Asian language to learn?

From my perspective you learn languages because you have or expect to have a connection with the culture of that language, easy or hard.

The hardest is probably Japanese but choosing another isn't helpful if your other interests (e.g. high tech) are in Japan.

The Malay family of languages, which includes the languages spoken in Malaysia, Indonesia (in part), and the Philippines, has the fewest superficial complications: a limited sound system (not many sounds), and written with the familiar Latin alphabet.  There are also many speakers of these languages spread over a huge geographical area, and many of each in the USA as well.

If you consider Vietnamese, it has some of the famous sound system complications of East Asia (tones) and it formerly used the Chinese writing system (like Japanese) but that has now been abandoned in favour of a Latin script-based writing system with diacritics to show the tones. Vietnamese is, however, a language isolate: not related to any other language including Khmer (Cambodia), Lao or Thai.  Even so, the Vietnamese immigrant community in the US is large and that could be important to you.

If you're learning a single East Asian language that has the greatest worldwide utility the obvious choice is Mandarin. As a spoken language, it is of medium complexity. The writing system, of course, requires a lifetime of study, but if you're young you can get a working knowledge in about 2 years of intense effort. 

The problem is that you can a working language of almost any language in that time, with only minor variation by superficial complexity.

What do you think the easiest language to learn is?

It depends very much on what's your native language, then you could find very easy to learn a language from the same linguistic family.
Personally, I have two favourites - English and Spanish.

English is de facto the lingua franca, universal language for 21st century. There are so many educational materials and resources, influence on the other languages, signs, names, advertisments... it's inevitable. Not pointing at the complicated tenses in grammar and very free pronounciation of words, it's really easy to learn. Especially the simplified Pidgin English version.

I don't speak Spanish personally, but when I took a try, the simplicity surprised me. The grammar is straightforward, pronounciation has strict rules, so there are no hard times with it. Plus, it's even easier if you already speak English or any language with rich vocabulary borrowings from Latin (Romanic languages - Italian, French...).

Which language is easiest to learn: Chinese, Japanese, or Korean?

Giving an objective and absolute answer here is difficult because all three languages have major obstacles to overcome in order to reach a high level of proficiency. Chinese has the tones and the hanzi (the Chinese characters). Japanese has pitch accent and kanji (the adopted characters from hanzi). And Korean has a very distinct and foreign pronunciation despite the simplicity of Hangul, which makes it the easiest language to read and write.

We could go into the similarities of Korean and Japanese grammar and how much harder they are than Chinese grammar, but I think this would further complicate things and lead nowhere.

Instead, there’s a much easier answer to this question.

Korean was the hardest for me to learn. Why? There’s one simple reason. It was my first foreign language I learned outside of school. The beginner stages were fun and easy, yet the intermediate stages were hell! I didn’t know how to learn a foreign language since this was the first one I self-studied. I studied like how I studied for a final exam in college. I tried to cram in as much vocabulary into my brain as I could every day, but I forgot most of what I learned just a few days later.

Japanese was MUCH EASIER to learn not just because of the similarities between the two languages but because it was my second foreign language that I taught myself. After spending years researching and experimenting better ways to learn languages, I found methods and techniques that were infinitely smarter than what I was doing to learn Korean. I learned how to use Anki, The Goldlist Method, Shadowing, Extensive Reading and Listening, Immersion, and Cloze exercises.

So if I was to learn Chinese, it would be even easier than Japanese! Since starting Japanese 3 years ago, I’ve improved my language learning routine even more so, so I would learn Chinese faster than I did Japanese.

So the answer is…whichever language you learn last will be the easiest. In other words, the more languages that you learn the easier learning the next one becomes.

Also, if you are looking for fast and efficient ways to learn Chinese, Korean, and Japanese, learn like a polyglot! Polyglots are people who speak 5, 6, 7, or even more languages, and they offer really good advice on how to learn a language quickly. I made a video summarizing all those good tidbits of advice, so check it out here if you have the time.

What is the best foreign language to learn, and why ?

Spanish is the easiest language because its syntax, grammar and even the words are similar to that of English. It is the third most widely spoken language next to English. 5.6% of the world population speaks Spanish.

French occupies the second place. The pronunciations can be tricky, but syntax is similar to English. French is the second highest learnt foreign language in the world and first in India.

Next in line is German. Takers for German language are far low when compared to French or English due to its complex syntax and applicability. 1.8% of the world population speaks German. Germans have seen to have no inclination to learn any foreign language. Per force, foreigners working or studying there need to learn German.

Chinese comes from a very different language root and hence takes time to learn. To understand a new language, it must have some similarity with a language that we know. Chinese is mostly learnt by students, business professionals and translators.

Though Chinese and Japanese look familiar, they are very different when spoken. Of the lot, Japanese is the most difficult language to learn. Since the language does not have any significant reach in Europe and the Americas, only executives and interpreters learn Japanese for their jobs.
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I think spanish would be a better option.

Which languages are the easiest to learn for a native Spanish speaker?

Ranked in terms of closeness to Spanish:

Portuguese - Similar to Spanish in terms of vocabulary, grammar, and close in terms of pronunciation (at least when compared to French)

Italian - Similar reasons to portuguese, but portuguese vocabulary may have a bit of an advantage.
French - Different in terms of pronunciation and a bit further in terms of vocabulary, but still a Romance language like Spanish so the grammar is not that different. Portuguese and Italian still have the advantage in terms of vocabulary, pronunciation, and orthography (spelling).

English - Even if this is not a Romance language, English will have a clear advantage when it comes to exposure and easier access. Movies, music, books, cultural influences, the Internet, even the academe.

What is the easiest language to learn (except English) and what is the best and fastest way to learn it?

There is no easiest language. There is an easiest language for you to learn, but that depends on which language you already speak and how quickly and easily you learn a new language.
Years ago I taught at a school where all the students learned German and French at the same  time. Some thrived in both languages, other couldn't get on with either. The rest either found German really easy but not French or they found French really easy but not German.

If you want to learn a new language and it doesn't matter which one, I suggest starting with some free online resources, for example Duolingo and try out some languages. You should pretty soon find out which ones you don't like and which ones you like. Once you've found some you like, find some songs or films in that language (depending on the language, there should be a lot online) and listen or watch just for the sound of the language. It doesn't really matter that you won't understand.  You should end up with at least one language that you really like - and that will be the easiest language for you to learn.

The best and fastest way then is to immerse yourself into that language. If you can't go there, then find as much as you can online or in books to help you with all four skills: reading, writing, listening and speaking. If you can do that all day every day you'll learn it very quickly. If you don't have much time it will take longer. But as long as you spend some time learning the new language every day you will learn it!