Difficulty is relative to what you already speak
The U.S. Foreign Service Institute, which trains diplomats, has published rough language-difficulty groupings for English speakers for decades, based on how long it typically takes to reach professional working proficiency. It's not a perfect science, but the broad pattern is well established and matches most learners' real experience: languages closely related to English — sharing vocabulary roots, similar sentence structure, a familiar alphabet — go faster than distantly related ones, regardless of how "hard" the language is in some abstract sense.
All seven languages LingoPuzz teaches use the Latin alphabet, which already removes one of the biggest early hurdles (compare that to starting Japanese or Russian). But there's still real variation underneath that shared alphabet.
The eight, compared
| Language | Relative difficulty | Standout grammar feature |
|---|---|---|
| Spanish | Easier | Regular verb patterns once you learn the system; gendered nouns |
| Italian | Easier | Very predictable pronunciation — it's read almost exactly as written |
| Portuguese (either) | Easier | Nasal vowel sounds take practice; otherwise close to Spanish |
| French | Easier–moderate | Spelling and pronunciation diverge more than the other Romance languages here |
| Dutch | Easier–moderate | Shares a lot of vocabulary directly with English (both are Germanic) |
| German | Moderate | Four grammatical cases, and famously long compound nouns |
| Polish | Harder | Seven grammatical cases, and consonant clusters that don't exist in English |
"Easier" here means relative to English, not easy in an absolute sense — every language on this list rewards real, sustained practice. It just means the distance you have to travel from your starting point is shorter.
A closer look at each
Spanish & Italian — the friendliest on-ramps
Both are highly phonetic (words are pronounced close to how they're spelled), share a huge number of Latin-root words with English, and have verb systems that are regular enough to learn as a pattern rather than memorizing case by case. If you want the fastest path to feeling functional, either is a strong first pick.
Portuguese — pick your variant deliberately
Grammatically close to Spanish, with the biggest adjustment being pronunciation — Portuguese has nasal vowel sounds that take a bit of ear training. Worth deciding early whether you want Brazilian or European Portuguese, since (as covered in a separate article) a meaningful chunk of everyday vocabulary genuinely differs between them.
French — closer than it feels at first
French vocabulary overlaps enormously with English (a huge share of English actually comes from Norman French), but the gap between spelling and pronunciation trips up a lot of beginners — silent letters and vowel combinations that don't map onto anything in English. Once the pronunciation clicks, the rest tends to move quickly.
Dutch — the underrated pick for English speakers
Dutch sits directly between English and German on the Germanic language family tree, and it shows — a striking number of Dutch words are near-identical to their English counterparts. It's one of the least-discussed "easy" languages for English speakers simply because fewer people think to learn it.
German — moderate, with one famous hurdle
German's grammar is more rigid than English's, with four noun cases that change word endings depending on a word's role in the sentence. The vocabulary itself is often very learnable, though — German frequently builds new words out of ones you may already know, glued together (worth a full read on its own).
Polish — the real challenge on this list
Polish grammar is genuinely more complex than any of the others here, with seven noun cases and consonant clusters that take real practice for an English speaker's mouth to produce comfortably. It's also one of the more distinctive-sounding languages on this list — if you want a language that pushes you the most, this is it.
The honest answer
If your goal is momentum and a quick sense of progress, start with Spanish, Italian, or Dutch. If you have a specific destination or connection in mind — family, travel plans, work — that reason should outweigh a general difficulty ranking every time. The best language to learn first is genuinely the one you'll actually stick with.
Try a few before you commit → Switch languages freely — every topic works with all 8