In many ways, we can see why English is so different from other languages. It's a mixture of other languages and its grammar has been greatly simplified
It can be very interesting to compare English with, say, Chinese. Do you see any similarities with your langauge? Language differences: English - Chinese
From an English-speakers perspective, there are 'difficult' languages. How do these compare with yours Most Difficult Language To Learn
... And there are the 'easy' languages: Easiest Foreign Languages To Learn - Business Insider
This is what we can 'language distance' - and there is a useful guide from Gill Ragsdale on how language distance shapes fluency in the E L Gazette:
The ‘language distance’ between English and a language learner’s first language affects reading fluency, but not comprehension according to a study by Victor Kuperman at McMaster University, Canada. Gill Ragsdale reports.
Clearly it is easier for someone to learn a language that is more like their native language than one that is more distant: learning English is generally easier for Italian than for Japanese speakers. What is less clear is which processes in language learning are affected and how to quantify those effects.
Kuperman set out to clarify the effect of language distance on reading fluency and comprehension. Past studies have given mixed results, possibly because the focus has been on comprehension, which is relatively easy to measure.
Data for this study was taken from the Multilingual Eye-movement Corpus. This database has measures of reading fluency and comprehension from 1,105 students and staff from 24 universities having 18 distinct first languages.
For more, see: How does language distance affect reading fluency and comprehension in English as second language? by Victor Kuperman.
And: Linguistic distance - Wikipedia
Plus the discussions on Language distance in Europe : r/languagelearning
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