Relatitive difficulty?

I have read some of these great forums but one question there is a myth going around that spanish is a simple language and easy to learn and the easiest language to learn for speakers who speak and European derived language
is there any facts to back up these claims?

I don’t think any language is “simple”, but Spanish is an easier language to learn for English speakers than a lot of others, and an even easier language for speakers of other romance languages…

That link is to a list put out by the Foreign Service Institute based on their experiences with teaching these languages to native English speakers.
There are a lot of cognates between English and Spanish, the spelling is mostly phonetic, there isn’t a case system, grammar is relatively simple. Not too bad, really : )

Spanish is easier to “get going” in for an English speaker because there are lots of opportunities to access it, and lots of opportunities to use it. The spelling and pronunciation are pretty straight forward and it’s one that the vast majority of second learners undertake if they are native speakers of English. However, like any foreign language, it is difficult to speak it well. You have to be pumped about doing it and be willing to put in the time. Also, like any language, the first foreign language is always the toughest.