"Easiest foreign languages to learn..."

[Erebus]

here

Purely out of interest!

[Bonsoir]

"but most English learners I have come across have the idea that learning paradigms is very difficult and only for an intellectual elite."

I agree that this idea is widespread but it is so silly. The sorts of paradigms that whole populations learn when they are 7/8/9 are not exclusive or difficult. Just a bit tedious!

[Shanghaidiva]

Dutch is relatively easy if you can speak German and English. I haven't spoken any for years but find I can still understand newspapers, menus etc.
Mandarin has proved the most difficult for me. Grammar is simple - no real tenses, no articles, no plurals - just god awful tones. After five years I still cannot hear the difference between them, although have mastered about 1000 characters -

[ZZZenagain]

well done mastering 1000 characters. I know I could never learn to hear the tonal differences, so I have never tried to learn Mandarin. I had no idea that Swedish is tonal as well.