7 easiest languages to learn on your own for free

It’s never too late to become good at something new — especially if it’s one of the easiest languages to learn on your own.

Take Arieh Smith, for example. Better known as Xiaoma, he is a New Yorker who speaks near-native-level Mandarin Chinese and other Chinese dialects that are enough to confuse native speakers, including his in-laws. 

He’s renowned for learning various languages in a week. In one video, he was seen talking in the native language of various global leaders at a conference. 

Smith is a clear example that adults of any age can obtain incredible mastery over a language nearly as quickly as children.

In addition to that, there’s also the snowball effect, which argues that the greater your knowledge in a given field, the faster you can learn. 

It shows that people can learn more words a day when they’re older than when they were younger. 

Why is this the case? 

Kshipra Gurunandan, a researcher at the BCBL Basque Centre on Cognition, Brain, and Language, explains it simply: “The brain remains flexible enough to learn new languages well into adulthood, even if nailing the accent might get harder with age.”

As an adult, your vocabulary range is much wider than a child’s. This makes it easy for you to understand the meaning of several foreign words by understanding common patterns and similarities to your native language.

All of this explains how you can learn a new language, but why should you invest time and effort to do so?

Learning a new language can help you adapt to living and studying in a new country. Source: Issac Lawrence/AFP

The benefits of learning a new language

To start, being multilingual makes you more employable.

With a globalising economy, speaking a second language can help you land high-skill jobs worldwide; a study also showed that having a foreign language in your CV can increase your salary by 11% to 35%.

Besides, learning another language makes you better received by the locals too, especially in small towns where the population doesn’t use English as a main means of communication, such as France or Vietnam. 

Malaysian-born Shah Farid Rashid faced this massive hurdle when he landed in Beijing, China.

“I had zero basic knowledge of the language, so there were many problems,” he told Study International. “The language barrier prevented me from going out, buying food, using public transportation, and more. I’d always have to ask someone to come with me.”

Perhaps the biggest perk is how it slows down ageing and just makes you a better person in general.

For example, some studies indicate a link between multilingual skills and preventing dementia. Others show that speaking a foreign language can help with your multitasking abilities.  

Dan Berges, Managing Director of Berges Institute — one of the fastest-growing Spanish language schools for adults in the US and Europe — shared that there are also personal reasons for students to learn a new language.

“We did a survey with our students a few years ago, and 62% said they were learning Spanish for personal growth,” says Berges.

“We also have other people that have personal relationships. Maybe their in-laws speak Spanish and it’s really cool that they’re able to go to family meetings and speak Spanish.”

With Asian businesses and ventures dominating the market, Mandarin is increasingly making its mark globally. Source: Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP

7 easiest languages to learn on your own for free

The following easiest languages to learn on your own are free. You don’t have to spend much, attend classes or live in a country that speaks them to become fluent in them. However, there are a few things to note.

How easy or how hard a language is can be subjective. It depends on your native language, why you’re doing this, and how you learn best. In short, it depends on you.

That said, with enough time and effort, you can master the following easiest languages to learn on your own.

1. Mandarin

Mandarin is often considered one of the world’s most difficult languages to learn, but there are a few reasons to show that this is just a myth.

The fact that the language has relatively few straightforward grammar patterns, the lack of tenses, and that the words do not alter their form or conjugate like English verbs means you’re already miles ahead of wrangling with other grammar rules in other languages. 

If you don’t know the stroke of a specific Chinese character, you can use the phonetic writing system of Chinese characters to text or write. 

Here are some free resources for a quick and easy method to learn Mandarin:

2. Spanish

Spanish is an easy pick for many English speakers due to its practicality and wide reach. Much of this has to do with the fact that more than 450 million people around the globe speak this language. 

It’s also the official language in 20 countries, including Puerto Rico, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, the Dominican Republic, and many more.

As Spanish is a phonetic language, the words are pronounced the way they’re spelled, something that even English doesn’t do. 

However, Spanish does have a number of verb tenses and exceptions to grammar rules which can get confusing. The silver lining is that these tenses largely align with those used in English, so if you’re already decent in English, you’ll be able to navigate Spanish with the same ease.  

As a bonus, Spanish is also highly regarded by employers — in the US, 79% of recruiters cited Spanish as the most in-demand additional language. 

Here are some free resources for a quick and easy method to learn Spanish:

Despite being an isolated country on the outskirts of Europe, Norway has one of the most easiest languages to learn for English speakers. Source: Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP

3. Norwegian

Would you have thought Norwegian would be one of the languages on this list?

Neither did we.

Norwegian is a member of the Germanic family of languages — like English. This means that both languages share quite a bit of vocabulary, such as the seasons “vinter” and “sommer.”

What sets Norwegian apart from other languages is its straightforward grammar. There’s only one form of each verb per tense, and the word order closely mimics English.

For example, “Can you help me?” translates to “Kan du hjelpe meg?”. The words are in the same order in both languages, so it’ll be easy for new learners to master the sentence structure.

Here are some free resources for a quick and easy method to learn Norwegian:

4. Swedish

Did you know that around 11 million people around the globe speak Swedish? 

This Germanic language is classified as “Category 1” by the Foreign Service Institute  — meaning it’s easier for both native and non-Swedish people to learn the language. 

Like Norwegian, Swedish has relatively simple grammar rules and similar words to English. For instance, grass is “gräs” in Swedish — a clear cognate (words from different languages that have similar spellings, pronunciations, and meanings). 

Learning the Swedish language can provide a good foundation for picking up languages that share similar linguistic similarities with other Nordic countries, such as Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Iceland.

Here are some free resources for a quick and easy method to learn Swedish:

5. French

As with the other Romance languages, French is one of the easiest languages to learn on your own because it shares many words with English. In fact, over 300 million speakers are adept at French, either as their native tongue or as a second language.

This, however, isn’t solely attributed to its linguistic roots. 

Throughout the war and conquests between France and England, key language components were passed from one country to another. That’s why some French words, such as “avant-garde” and “à la carte,” were added to the English language.

While it can be tricky to pronounce some French words, hearing French accents in pop culture can help you replicate them and nail the pronunciation. 

Here are some free resources for a quick and easy method to learn French:

Even if you don’t know who these people are, you’re sure to have heard of K-pop before. Source: AFP

6. Korean

The rise of K-pop, K-dramas, and just interest in Korean culture and language as a whole means that picking up this particular can come in handy when you least expect it to, especially as 77 million people in the world can speak it.

Unlike Mandarin Chinese, where each character indicates a word or is part of a combination of a word, Korean characters are composed of alphabets that connect together to be sounded out phonetically like the English alphabet.

This means that once you master the 14 consonants and 10 vowels, you’ll immediately be able to read Korean, even if you don’t know what the words mean. From there, it’s only a matter of learning the vocabulary, and you’re good to go.

Here are some free resources for a quick and easy method to learn Korean:

7. Indonesian

With more than 40 million native speakers and over 150 million non-native speakers, Indonesian is yet another grammatically straightforward, phonetic language to pick up.

A few things that make Indonesian relatively easy to learn are its lack of verb conjugation (like sleep, sleeps, sleeping, slept), tenses (Indonesian uses temporal indicators instead — “sudah” for the past, “sedang” for the present, and “akan” for the future), and distinct lack of articles.

It also has close ties to the Malay language, which is spoken by more than 200 million people throughout Southeast Asia, making it a great way to start your learning journey into a new language.

Here are some free resources for a quick and easy method to learn Indonesian:

Disclaimer: This article was last updated on June 2, 2024.