Learning a second language?

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What language is easiest for us to learn? I have tried to learn Italian and French (at different times) and had the hardest time with it. Learning a language is something I am very bad at (even my first language) and so I was wondering if any of you have had luck with learning a specific language when you have had trouble with others. For example, I was thinking that learning sign language might be easier for us because it is not focused so much on writing grammar and tenses and whatnot?

I grew up bilingual French/English so I may have an easier time learning more languages. But I took Japanese in high school and found that easy to learn. But I had also lived in Japan when I was very little so I was already familiar with the sounds. But I had also lived in communities where Spanish was very prevalent and I have always had a very difficult time learning Spanish.

What are your goals in learning the language? Is it to be able to read and write fluently, requiring extensive study of grammar and verb forms/moods/tenses, or to have a basic conversation in the language when you travel? The latter is a lot easier to do.

Americans differ on ease of learning another language. Some do better with Romance languages like Italian, French, Spanish, and some do better with Germanic languages like German, and the various Scandinavian languages. English derives much of our vocabulary from both.

Americans seem to have more difficulty with Slavic languages. And then there are the three major Finno-Ugric languages, which are Finnish, Estonian, and Hungarian. Good luck with those.

For me it seems to come down to interest...

...I took a couple of years of spanish in high school, and I live in phoenix, but I can't string together a sentence en espanol. I don't really want to learn it really.

If you're going to learn a language based on value... Spanish, Mandarin, Hindi... in that order... but I just don't wanna learn any of those...

I love Japan though, the country, the culture, the language... I've picked up more Japanese than spanish over the years, and I'm hardly touched by it...

A couple months ago I started learning it through tapes... er... audio files... on my commute to work, its a good morning workout for my brain... and it's been MONTHS and I'm still doing it, because I actually WANT to...

Not sure if that helps or not...

...and it is a cool language... even if they do have 2 completely different words for seven, which is mind boggling.

Bilingual family as well, English and Cantonese. My voice is more adapted to English because I use it more often than I do Chinese. I am also learning French is school, so a lot is in my head, but it feels automatic when I comprehend any one of them,

You can learn sign language like you said, it's pretty easy, but I can't say anything I speak portuguese, so spanish, italian they look easy to learn.
Look here what I found:

^ Interesting. How come German is missing? Is it considered as a dialect of English?

Any way, I think it depends on your interests, strengths, first language, purpose etc. although I think Spanish, Indonesian and Japanese are fairly easy for most people. If you had a hard time with Italian and French, you may find Spanish hard, too. Verbs are quite complicated. Why don't you try Indonesian?

I started to learn english through games when i was a kid and since then i learned to use mainly games, movies and music to learn about the language. I'm far from perfect on it especially because i've never done lessons about it but i don't think it's very difficult to learn. But maybe this only true about english because it's a language used almost everywhere.

A lot of my classmates with normal hearing found sign language difficult to learn when they took classes for it but I picked up on it very quickly compared to them. I was the only deaf person in the class so it was great fun being able to communicate with them more fluently.

I wouldn't underestimate the difficulties of learning sign language but it depends on where you live. If you live in Britain, British Sign Language is almost completely different compared to the spoken English language because the syntax is different. If you want to ask someone their name in BSL, you don't say "What's your name?" but "Name, what?" instead. And "my name is..." becomes "name -direct sign at yourself and fingerspell your name-". I don't know about American Sign Language though. Also a lot of sign language relies on facial expressions and body language which might be difficult for people with an ASD to understand and use. I struggled with this. There is also some lip-reading.

Another thing that a lot of people with normal hearing seem to struggle a lot with sign language at first is that you don't actually say words but mouth them instead and how conversation in sign language is often silent. I guess I picked up quickly on sign language because I'm used to having people make quick gestures with their hands if I can't hear them properly to help me work out what they're saying. As I mentioned before sign language relies heavily on body language and face expressions.

Thanks for all the responses guys. I know that things like spanish and french are easiest for english learners to learn because it is so close to our native tongue. However, I find any language difficult to learn... It does not help that I become overwhelmed with literally everything that I will have to master in order to become fluent. Like I said, I was in special ed classes in first grade because I was having difficulty with English and had severe communication issues. I was wondering what the easiest second language for Aspie's with communication/ learning language difficulties would be to learn. I thought sign language might be easiest because I learn by seeing things (which is generally how sign language works.. it is almost an action language) rather than something like spanish-- which is more so about written words. I guess it depends on your learning style-- I learn by seeing... not by reading.. which is how most languages work (is by reading).

Quote: Also a lot of sign language relies on facial expressions and body language which might be difficult for people with an ASD to understand and use.

I don't have too much trouble making expressions-- actually I have learned to over acentuate my facial and body expressions so that people won't constantly ask me if I am okay because I have a blank stare.. so that should not be too hard. And I live in the US so I would learn ASL.

You might want to try Hebrew. People fluent in Hebrew read it without the vowel marks. Since the writing is not in the same alphabet as English (the Latin alphabet) I wonder if it would appeal to your visual learning strengths. I too am very visual. I don't find the Hebrew grammar very difficult. I find I have trouble with languages written in the Latin alphabet.

Mandarin might be fun for you if you try to learn to read it in the Chinese characters. I had success with it. The characters are so much fun. It is hard but if you find it fun, it's a challenge you'll come to enjoy. The grammar if minimal.

I actually never learned how to write Chinese, primarily because I didn't learn how to write until I was 9 and my schooling is in America.

Probably the easiest to learn would be Norwegian or Dutch as they are linguistically the closest to English.

From what I've seen of it, Old Dutch orthography seems to be much closer to King James/Shakespearian English than modern Dutch Orthography is to modern English. --When languages diverge from each other, this tends to happen.

However before rushing into this, read English materials from that era, as all of the older Germanic forms are still present in the English of that era, and these are all retained in practically all of the Germanic languages except of course English.

I'm having some success with the Spanish language on Rosetta Stone.

I have found Japanese to be easier to pick up than some other languages, mainly because of the visual aspect of the characters and it having no grammatical ambiguity. I enjoy learning to draw the characters rather than learning the words of an alphabetical languages that all look the same to me.

I started learning Irish when I was a toddler, and now I'm more or less fluent now. I find that the sounds work better for my voice.

I also find, I can talk more easily and more clearly in Japanese, Russian and Norwegian. I have different accents for different languages, and some just work better than others. I'm learning my third and + languages now, but it's because I enjoy doing that.

A lot of people recommend Chinese, Hebrew or Japanese for aspies. I recommend the three as well, but I also think Swedish is really fun, as is Norwegian (I've noticed some similar or loan words in them from Dutch, German and English). There's a good few languages that use the same alphabet as us that are easy enough.

If you like symbols and languages that don't use the same alphabet as us, Arabic and Korean are also good. You can also use them in jobs, and they can be handy (Of course, Korean or Japanese may be less useful than Chinese at times, but an extra language is and extra language)

I hope I helped, since I'm not very good at giving advice. xD Feel free to message me if you want to talk about languages, because linguistics is my fixation. Good luck!