Swedish

Swedish is the most widely spoken Scandinavian language — 10 million speakers in Sweden plus a sizeable Swedish-speaking minority in Finland — and the gateway to the entire Nordic region. Mutually intelligible with Norwegian and (to a lesser extent) Danish, it gives you a passport to three countries' literature, film and pop music for the price of one. It's also the working language of Spotify, IKEA, Volvo and a tech ecosystem far larger than the population suggests.

For English speakers, Swedish is one of the easiest major languages to start. Vocabulary, grammar and word order are recognisably Germanic; verb conjugations are hilariously simple (the verb stays the same regardless of subject); and the famous melodic pitch accent gives it a sing-song rhythm that's actually quite forgiving. The hardest part is finding people willing to keep speaking Swedish to you — Swedes default to fluent English the moment they sense effort, so the real test is patience, not grammar.