--- Philip Hart <philiph at slac.stanford.edu> 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. For whom? For you, of course, and maybe many other anglophones, but that ain't the world. > But for > communicating with someone at the 500-word vocab level I think English is > easiest by a good deal. Ah. 500 words. Which words, and how do you use them? Let's see... a good deal = a bargain. English is easiest ... because of ... a low price? Also a lot of modern words are more comfortable > in English. What does that mean? I assume that you have asked the words? Anyway, the consensus among Europeans I know is that English > was easiest to learn of the languages they know. At last, data, even if anecdotal. > 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? As a foreigner, talk to an American or a Britisher from a small town, say, in New England or the Deep South or Texas or the Scottish Highlands? Speak > French well enough not to get Englished in Paris? Keep gender/person > references straight while drunk in whatever non-English language? Or in English. -- Dr. Whom, Consulting Linguist, Grammarian, Orthoepist, and Philological Busybody a.k.a. Mark A. Mandel [This text prepared with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.] __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Send holiday email and support a worthy cause. Do good. http://celebrity.mail.yahoo.com