Why Dutch is so easy to learn
De kat zat op de mat.
Did you get that? The cat sat on the mat!
If you're learning Dutch, or interested in learning Dutch, you may have heard people discuss the similarities between Dutch and English. Perhaps someone has encouraged you to learn by telling you the languages are incredibly similar. Indeed, with the exception of Frisian (Frysk), Dutch is the closest existing language to English – naturally, this makes Dutch particularly easy to learn, as similarities abound.
Below, we outline a few of the many reasons English speakers may find Dutch an easy language to learn.
Dutch is ‘genetically’ one of the closest languages to English
With the exception of Frisian, Dutch is linguistically the closest language to English, with both languages being part of the West Germanic language family.
This means many Dutch words are cognates with English (meaning they share the same linguistic roots), giving them similar spelling and pronunciation.
This linguistic proximity also means the grammar of Dutch is similar to English, although there are key differences – such as Dutch retaining grammatical gender (a feature of many languages, like French, German, and Spanish).
On the other hand, Dutch and English have both abandoned the convoluted case system found in German, Russian, Finnish and others.
English and Dutch share vocabulary
If you speak English, you're in luck – you already know a large number of Dutch words! Words like warm, water, film, bank, agenda, park, dune, holster, yacht, and walrus, to name only a small number.
And many more words are so similar they are easily decipherable: droom (dream), straat (street), baas (boss), kat (cat), kaas (cheese), politie (police), discriminatie (discrimination), and countless others!
Dutch uses many English loanwords
If Dutch and English weren't already similar enough, loanwords play a significant role in making Dutch friendly to English ears.
Dutch people readily use and adopt English words. For instance, you might hear people discussing “out-of-the-box” thinking during a “whatsapp” conversation after having “genetflixt”, but hopefully their “badhairday” doesn't send them to “intensiev care”. These are all perfectly grammatical instances of Dutch borrowing words from English.
It sometimes goes beyond this, and a Dutch conversation will have so many English words that you'll find yourself being able to follow along with relative ease.
Dutch has no case system
Unlike German, Russia, Finnish, Icelandic, Japanese, Korean and others, both English and Dutch have no case system. As learners of any language with cases can attest, it's an endless frustration needing to remember the various forms of words. Thankfully, Dutch has no case system at all. Unlike a learner of German, who is stuck needing to memorise der, des, dem, den, die, and on and on ...
(While you may not truly appreciate the lack of grammatical cases if you've never tried learning a language featuring them, just be thankful they're absent in Dutch.)
Nearly all Dutch people speak English
Forgot to brush up on your Dutch? Not feeling too confident? You're in luck! The vast majority of Dutch people speak English, often flawlessly. In fact, 90% of Dutch people can speak English enough to converse comfortably, compared to only 39% in France, 22% in Spain, and 27% in Portugal. (Source 
)
Dutch people are happy to use English in conversation, and will rarely think you're being rude if you ask politely to switch to English.
Dutch people appreciate you learning
As mentioned above, most Dutch people speak English.
Because of this, many visitors unfortunately make no attempt to learn the language – why, they reason, learn Dutch when these people already speak English? There are many reasons this is a bad and arrogant attitude (employers will often require some level of Dutch proficiency or expect you to learn), but there's an upside to this situation: Dutch people tend to be far more grateful to those who put in the effort to learning Dutch. Even if you make mistakes, they'll appreciate that you're learning.
This can make conversations easier, and instantly a little bit friendlier. It's always worth putting in the effort, even if you intend to learn only a few basic words and phrases.