>>63
Tok Pisin's not useless if you're looking to work in PNG. Also, language fluency is nice window dressing for any CV. Of course, knowing languages will almost never the thing that gets you the job (trust me - I speak six languages).

I subscribe to the old-school linguistics idea that all natural languages are approximately equally complex/difficult-- I think real native-level fluency even in Tok Pisin is as hard to acquire as fluency in any other language.

But to address the original question, I find that the Austronesian languages are pretty easy to acquire. Almost no inflection, and easy, regular pronunciation. Fairly complicated systems of affixes, but mostly regular, and can largely be avoided in colloquial conversation.