are Scandinavian languages, or Romance languages easier for an English Speaker?

[Ogrim]

As a native Scandinavian-speaker having learnt English and Romance languages I would say that, from a purely linguistic point of view, Scandinavian langauges are probably easier because the basic structure is much more similar. The verb system should be much easier to learn, basically it has the same pattern as English - the verb stays the same in all persons and numbers, you have three tenses: present, past preterite and past perfect; the future and the conditional are made with an auxiliary verb + infinitive. There is no subjunctive. You do have a number of irregular verbs, but also they follow the same pattern as in English, e.g. Norwegian å drikke, drakk, har drukket = to drink, drank, have/has drunk.

What is a bit more tricky in Scandinavian languages is gender of nouns - while in Spanish and Italian you can tell the gender in most cases from the ending, there is no simple way of determining a gender of a noun in e.g. Norwegian, so you have to learn it for each noun. Right use of prepositions can also be a challenge, but that is often the case in Romance languages as well.

With regard to vocabulary in general, it is true that English and Scandinavian languages have many cognates, but on the other hand, English has taken up so many words of Latin/French origin that it kind of evens out in my view, at least at an advanced level.

Brian's point about number of English-speaking learners is of course relevant, but that has undoubtedly more to do with the fact that French and Spanish are world languages and there is an incredible wealth of learning material and easy access to media in those languages. Scandinavian languages are "small" and most people who decide to learn them will probably have a very specific reason to do so, whether it is practical (Scandinavian partner, moving to the country) or out of pure interest (wanting to read Ibsen or Strindberg in the original).

[sjintje]

I think it probably depends on the individual. Most English speakers seem to find German rather difficult, while there seem to be a handful that take to it as if they were born to learn it. It wouldn't surptise me if some of us had germanic brains, and some of us romance brains.

[tastyonions]

My progress in German feels about as rapid as my progress in the first Romance language I studied (French). Definitely much slower than my progress in subsequent Romance languages (Spanish and Italian). But then there is also the fact that with French, all available "language time" was focused on one language, whereas now my attention is divided by four.

My impression is that English is probably the least helpful Germanic language to have in one's tool belt when learning German.

[YtownPolyglot]

This sounds like just one more version of the eternal question.

French is my first foreign language. I started young, and I was excited to be *finally* learning a language. I went on to take French II and Spanish I in my second year of high school. I was struck by the similarities between French and Spanish, and sometimes I would translate my homework for one language class to the language of the other just for fun. You know you're a language nerd when...

So you might just say that the Romance languages imprinted themselves on me early. I attempted Russian and Hebrew and things did not go well. In graduate school, I took several terms of German and did quite well. I am trying to teach myself Brazilian Portuguese and having mostly good results.

I'm devoting 2017 to Portuguese and plan to give 2018 over to Norwegian. I figure I'll be fine. I've indulged in wanderlust, and the toughest thing about Norwegian seems to be the intonation.

Honestly, I think that any language at all will help pave the way for another language, no matter how dissimilar they are. I was young and a bit spooked by the different alphabets in Russian and Hebrew, and maybe not nearly as serious as I am now.

If I had started with Scandinavian languages, the story would have come out differently, but there were and are no schools anywhere near me that offered any of those languages.