The Easiest Language in the World to Learn?

Many people take pride in learning languages like Chinese, Arabic or Russian. These are considered some of the most difficult languages for foreign speakers to learn, and students may attempt them to challenge themselves and impress others. When I first started learning Chinese, I also was a bit motivated by this. Would I be able to speak it if I really tried?

Today, I genuinely believe that anyone can learn these difficult languages with enough consistency and dedication, but the real question we should be asking ourselves is not can we can learn them but should we?

In my opinion, the mark of a well-designed language is the relative ease with which a foreign speaker can learn it. If a language is impossible for someone else to learn, it essentially fails at the primary purpose of language, which is to facilitate communication between new people.

Historically, an “easy” language could be a powerful tool in spreading a country’s influence, developing into a lingua franca that can unite and integrate different peoples across an empire. Therefore, standardization and simplification should be in a government’s best interests as well. With that in mind, I want to present Bahasa Indonesia as the easiest language I’ve ever come across.

Some of the features of Bahasa include:

1. No verb conjugation (in the traditional sense). Anyone who has ever studied German or Russian knows what a nightmare this can be to memorize. In Bahasa, to distinguish whether an event occurred in the past, present or future, you simply add context. Today I go / Yesterday I go
2. No gender pronouns. German has three gender pronouns (der, die, das), and every noun has its own gender. While some are logical like ‘the boy’ (der Junge), others are far more abstract like ‘the curve’ (die Kurve). None of this exists in Bahasa Indonesia.
3. Easy pronunciation. Nearly all sounds in Indonesian exist in western languages. There is a rolling ‘r’ that we don’t have in English, but those who studied Spanish before are familiar with it. Contrast this with Mandarin Chinese, which has over a dozen sounds not present in English, including several you make with your bottom front teeth (try it out).
4. Spelling that matches pronunciation. No silent letters or vowels that change sound in different words. The only exception to this is the letter “e”, which occupies two vowels; schwa (like in ‘the’) and the traditional (like in ‘egg’). Bahasa actually used to have an accent mark to distinguish them, but this was removed.
5. Roman alphabet. Unlike Russian or Arabic, Bahasa does not have its own unique alphabet, and it instead uses the roman alphabet. There are no new letters that westerners would be unfamiliar with.
6. No tonality. Mandarin Chinese has five tones (including neutral tone), and each word has its own unique tone. In certain contexts, the tones of words change when next to other specific tones. For example, two 3rd tones next to each other cause the first word’s tone to switch to the 2nd tone. If this sounds confusing, that’s because it is. You essentially have to memorize every tone for every single word.
7. Connection with other languages. Bahasa contains all kinds of loan words from around the world, reflecting their diverse and tumultuous history. From Dutch to Arabic to Portuguese, you are bound to recognize plenty of key words when learning vocabulary.

Even though I’ve been learning languages for quite a while, I don’t consider myself to be particularly gifted at language acquisition. I have some friends who are natural language geniuses. One amazing friend spoke better German than I before he ever traveled to Germany and casually reads War and Peace in Russian as a hobby. Another close friend speaks at least a dozen different languages, and at one point I remember him holding simultaneous conversations in Chinese, Hindi, and Spanish with a group.

For me, language learning is an absolute passion, but it doesn’t come easy. That being said, after spending only three months learning Bahasa (one of those months outside of the classroom), I am already conversationally fluent. This is not a testament to my own abilities but to the wonderful simplicity of learning Bahasa Indonesia.

One more component to language learning that I want to highlight here is the importance of learning environment. It must be conducive to speaking or you will end up discouraged.

In some countries, butchering the native language means you will be ridiculed and ostracized. It is expected that you already are fluent by the time you arrive. “Speak English or go back to your own country”. In Indonesia, however, the people are so kind and supportive when you try to speak Bahasa. They are excited to see a foreigner interested in their language, and they will be happy to practice with you. Indonesians are some of the most welcoming and warm people on the planet, and their encouragement makes you want to continue improving. This is an often overlooked component of language acquisition and further points to Bahasa being the easiest language to learn!

You can read more about my adventures in Indonesia, such as the time I almost died from cholera or when I participated in Bali’s holy day of silence, Nyepi.