Easiest Critical Languages to Learn

[sanantone]

The State Department has categorized languages based on how long it takes to gain proficiency. Category I languages are the easiest. Category I languages include languages that are most closely related to English. Since English is a Germanic language, almost all of the Germanic languages are easy to pick up because the grammar is similar, and basic, everyday English is mostly Germanic in vocabulary. It also includes the Romance languages since English absorbed a lot of French vocabulary while England was under Norman rule and used Latin root words to form new words during the scientific revolution. That resulted in English vocabulary being almost 60% Romance, but many of those words are not used in everyday conversations. German is unique in being a Germanic language that is classified as Category II instead of I because German's grammar is more complex.

Other languages in Category II include languages that are not related to English, but they're pretty simple in structure. I've heard that Indonesian is easy to learn. I've studied Swahili for a bit, and it's a relatively basic language.

Foreign Language Training - United States Department of State

If you're looking to work for the government in an international job, these are the critical languages. Among the listed languages, Portuguese and Romanian should be the easiest for a monolingual English speaker to learn. The next easiest would be Swahili, Malay, and Haitian Creole.

Critical Languages | nsepgov

If you're looking to work domestically for the government, Spanish is the easiest critical language for the FBI.

FBI — All About FBI Linguists

FBI — FBI Offers Job Opportunities for Foreign Language Speakers

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The list isn't exhaustive, so if you want to know which living language is most closely related to English, it's Frisian. But, I don't think too many employers are looking for Frisian speakers. It's only spoken by a half a million people.