Japanese is the easiest to pronounce for an English speaker. But if you want to learn to read and write then Japanese may be the hardest. At best it will be close to Chinese in difficulty. For reading and writing, Korean is by far the easiest.
According to studies, Japanese is reportedly the most difficult language for native English speakers to learn. It is important to note that this study is based on ENGLISH native speakers – since your native language definitely influences how you learn other languages.
Unlike other East-Asian languages, Korean isn't a tonal language. This means, that the meaning of the word doesn't change, regardless of what your accent is like. This makes learning Korean much easier than Japanese.
Meanwhile, Korean grammar is likely the hardest, while tones in Mandarin are notoriously difficult for native English speakers to hear, and Japanese is the fastest spoken language in the world at over 7 syllables per second.
Generally speaking, we might assert that Korean is easier for an English speaker to learn than Mandarin Chinese. But this is very relative. In fact, the US Foreign Service Institute assigns Mandarin Chinese and Korean the same level of difficulty. Both languages are in “Category Four”.
Gateway to Korean and Japanese - it would be easier for you to learn Korean and Japanese once you learned Chinese. These three languages all share sino-vocabulary. In Korean its about 60% of the vocabulary.
Mandarin
As mentioned before, Mandarin is unanimously considered the most difficult language to master in the world! Spoken by over a billion people in the world, the language can be extremely difficult for people whose native languages use the Latin writing system.
Of these, Spanish and Italian are the easiest for native English speakers to learn, followed by Portuguese and finally French.
If you're the type of learner who likes to jump right in and start speaking the language, Korean might be a better choice since it has a more straightforward grammar structure. On the other hand, if you like to take things slowly and really understand the rules before using them, Japanese might be a better fit.
Relatively, Korean would be an easier language to learn. Thanks to its phonetic alphabet and more simplistic grammar rules, Korean is not the most challenging Asian language to learn. Chinese on the other hand is much more widely spoken. This means that finding study materials and practice partners would be easier.
However, considering the larger number of sounds and the different particles in Korean, Japanese is definitely the easier language to start in. If you're not good at distinguishing new sounds and pronunciations, you're definitely going to have a hard time with Korean.
Greek is derived from Mycenaean Greek which appeared around 700 years ago after which The Odyssey was written. Modern Greece that is spoken by 13.5 million people around the world has a rough origination from almost 3,500 years back. This is the second oldest language in the world which is still being used today.
Cantonese is by far the more challenging of the two languages, particularly for a beginning Chinese language learner. This is because there are more tones used in Cantonese (Cantonese uses up to nine tones, whereas Mandarin only uses four).
The Chinese language has a unique structure and pronunciation system that is vastly different from English. Chinese is made up of tens of thousands of characters, each with its own meaning, and often multiple pronunciations. This makes the language extremely difficult to learn, especially for non-native speakers.
Due to the growing economic ties between Australia and China, Mandarin Chinese is one of the most popular languages for translators in Australia. Also, Arabic is her second most-spoken language in Australia after English, and it has a high demand for translations.