> > Actually, I'm unaware of such a consensus. I'd say Latin, French, German, > Dutch, probably Hebrew and Greek and Russian are more difficult than > English; Italian (and more so Spanish) a bit easier. But for > communicating with someone at the 500-word vocab level I think English is > easiest by a good deal. Also a lot of modern words are more comfortable > in English. Anyway, the consensus among Europeans I know is that English > was easiest to learn of the languages they know. > > Spelling is certainly painful in English - but have you ever tried to use > a comma correctly in German? Talk to an Italian from a small town? Speak > French well enough not to get Englished in Paris? Keep gender/person > references straight while drunk in whatever non-English language? > Agreed. I don't know how linguists could prove that one language is inherently more difficult in terms of grammar than another, since no one does not have a native language. The best they could do is study language acquisition in infants, but when they do that, they find that kids learn their native language all about the same time. Studies have shown, however, that English is harder to read and write than many other European languages. But there I don't think English gets anywhere near Chinese and Japanese, as far as writing difficulty goes. (The Koreans use a syllabic alphabet) Charmian