Philip Hart wrote: > 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. I've heard that as well. Certainly a pidgin English is easier. You only need to know the basic word, no declensions and tenses to get by. > Spelling is certainly painful in English - but have you ever tried to > use a comma correctly in German? What I wonder is how their spell checkers work.