I strongly suspect that they’re still a lot better off than native speakers of (say) Mandarin or Korean or Japanese. To be more specific: I suspect German is somewhat better for this purpose than Italian, which in turn is substantially better than Russian, which in turn is substantially better than Hungarian, which in turn is substantially better than Mandarin.
English and German are both Germanic languages. They share a lot of structure and vocabulary and are written with more or less the same letters.
English and Italian are both languages with a lot of Latin in their heritage. They share some structure and a lot of vocabulary and are written with exactly the same letters.
English and Russian are both Indo-European languages with some classical heritage. They share some structure but rather little vocabulary, and their writing systems are closely related.
Hungarian is not Indo-European, but largely shares its writing system with English.
Mandarin is not Indo-European (and I think is decidedly further from Indo-European than Hungarian is). It works in a completely different way from English in many many ways, and has a radically (ha!) different writing system.
I would guess (but don’t know enough for my guess to be worth much) that the gap between Hungarian and Mandarin is substantially the largest of the ones above, and that one could find other languages that would slot into that gap while maintaining the “substantially better” progression.
I don’t think the writing system would account for that much of a difference, since learning the Latin Alphabet is something everybody is doing anyway, and it’s not much extra work (compared to grammar and vocabulary). I still suspect Hungarian-speakers might find English easier because of closer cultural assumptions and background.
I strongly suspect that they’re still a lot better off than native speakers of (say) Mandarin or Korean or Japanese. To be more specific: I suspect German is somewhat better for this purpose than Italian, which in turn is substantially better than Russian, which in turn is substantially better than Hungarian, which in turn is substantially better than Mandarin.
English and German are both Germanic languages. They share a lot of structure and vocabulary and are written with more or less the same letters.
English and Italian are both languages with a lot of Latin in their heritage. They share some structure and a lot of vocabulary and are written with exactly the same letters.
English and Russian are both Indo-European languages with some classical heritage. They share some structure but rather little vocabulary, and their writing systems are closely related.
Hungarian is not Indo-European, but largely shares its writing system with English.
Mandarin is not Indo-European (and I think is decidedly further from Indo-European than Hungarian is). It works in a completely different way from English in many many ways, and has a radically (ha!) different writing system.
I would guess (but don’t know enough for my guess to be worth much) that the gap between Hungarian and Mandarin is substantially the largest of the ones above, and that one could find other languages that would slot into that gap while maintaining the “substantially better” progression.
Agreed.
I don’t think the writing system would account for that much of a difference, since learning the Latin Alphabet is something everybody is doing anyway, and it’s not much extra work (compared to grammar and vocabulary). I still suspect Hungarian-speakers might find English easier because of closer cultural assumptions and background.