There are two ways of viewing this. One view sees learning a second language as a cumulative process, which builds on one’s knowledge of the first language. All things being equal, learning a language closely related to one’s native language is easier than learning a language that is radically different, e.g. a native English speaker would find learning Spanish easier than learning Chinese, not only because of linguistic features (e.g. atonal vs. tonal; inflectional vs non-inflectional), but also because of differences in their writing systems (alphabetic vs. pictographic). A second view sees an equivalent relationship between learning an L2 and L1. This is known as the L2=L1 hypothesis. Research evidence shows that second language learners, regardless of what native language they speak, tend to make similar errors and go through a similar process of language development. This is similar to first language acquisition in that there appears to be some universal tendency in the acquisitio