A friend on Facebook shared this article from Page F30, explaining why, in the opinion of the author, Norwegian is the easiest foreign language for an English speaker to learn:

Since it’s a Germanic language that means you will have a fun time realizing that words that originally don’t seem similar to English actually are. One example is the word selvstendighet. Looks like a completely foreign word at first, but each part has an equivalent English word: rewrite it as self-standy-hood and suddenly it looks more familiar. It means independence, which is a state of being able to stand by oneself. Another example is snikskytter. That means assassin, or a ‘sneakshooter’. Norwegian is full of these words. It also has words that aren’t exact English equivalents, but are similar. I’ve always thought that a lot of Norwegian words seem like those words you will sometimes wake up with in your head from a dream that seem so real in the dream but then turn out to be words that don’t actually exist. A translator for example is an oversetter, to exaggerate is overdrive, to accept is godta (goodtake), abroad (as in another country) is utland, and so on.

Which just leaves me, personally, fairly embarrassed to recall how long it took me to “master” the language–and such mastery as I have is only with the written word. My conversational Norwegian is still from hunger.

(Blogger’s note: Phil suggested I share this, and I told him I was too tired and had studying to do. But a massive power outage in Milwaukee has rendered my grad school web site incommunicado tonight, so here it is.)