Originally Posted by Aviatrix
Dutch is a Germanic language. As is English - at least structurally.(It has a lot of vocabulary that isn't). In theory Dutch should be easy to learn if your first language is English. I know quite a few English speakers who learnt Dutch by just picking it up as they went along. It is certainly VERY easy to learn if you know German.
I've never actually learned Dutch, but when I was a kid living in Germany and learning French in school and traveling to the Netherlands on weekends with my family because we could get hamburgers there (this was in the 70s), it always seemed to me that Dutch was just a blend of German, French, and English (and a spoonful of phlegm).
And while some have suggested Spanish as the first language for the OP to learn because it will be most useful, that's probably true. But Italian is the most enjoyable.