In my Linguistics class today we were reviewing the difference between a second language and a foreign language, along with various other subjects and terminology from past chapters in preparation for the upcoming midterm and essay. Somehow it came around to the idea of the hardest language for someone to learn. A couple students said English, a few others said Chinese, and I suggested Basque, from my personal struggles and aggravations of learning it. However, my professor's answer was very enlightening although it seems obvious to me now. She said that a lot of people in the United States think that English is the hardest language because they witness people from all different countries come here and struggle with the language. We think that because everybody is having so much trouble with English, regardless of their native language, it must be that English is the most difficult language to learn. However, if we go to their respective countries, we would have about the same difficulty learning their language as they are having learning ours. But our misconception is based upon what we see. We see millions of people struggling to learn English, and we would struggle to learn Chinese, but we don't see people struggling with Swahili, Hindi, Urdu, Hebrew, Portuguese, et cetera. Even the so-called primitive clicking languages of Africa are just as difficult to learn, and contain as much complexity as English, or any other language for that matter.

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My enduring personal, original quote: Many mistake what should rightly be called "passivism" for pacifism. Pacifism and passivism are COMPLETELY different.
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Ronald Reagan was not the only one to suffer from Alzheimer's Disease. America did, too.
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"I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully." --President George W. Bush.
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Los Angeles voters=dumber than rocks.

But I do believe English is a very difficult language to master, although perhaps not the most difficult. The main problem, I think, is that it is so idiomatic. Nonnative English speakers are often baffled by phrases such as "put up with", "get over it" , "fed up with" , "the bottom line" , "jump the gun" , and "so on and so forth." We english speakers rely heavily on such phrases. I've struggled at times as an ESL teacher just trying to express an idea to beginner english students simply because I couldn't think of a way to convey the idea without using an idiom off the top of my head.

Many other languages simply don't rely so heavily on idioms, so a lot of students are baffled just by the concept of idioms itself.

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WARNING: In the unlikely event of an accidental agreement with any or all points made in the above post, contact a clinical psychologist immediately.

The views expressed in the above post are not necessarily those of Joker and/or any of his affiliates.

. "You have found the secret message. Do you have too much time on your hands? ...Let it go."

The hardest language is russian and chinessen

English has no straight-forward rules. Compare it to Spanish. I can't remember more than three words from Spanish class but I can understand how to pronounce any word I read in it. I can determine what part of a sentence any word is.
English isn't so straight-forward. It's fun to play with. It's the dream language of writers... but a nightmare for people who just need to figure out how to communicate with us.

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"Man lives in the sunlit world of that which he believes to be reality. But unseen by most is an underworld, a place that is just as real... but not as brightly lit... A DARK SIDE!"
-opening from Tales From the Darkside

Through, thorough, rough, cough.....these are just a few examples of why English is baffling to many.

They're also examples of why English is fascinating - I loved Linguistics when I did it at University.

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We've got rules and maps and guns in our backs, but we still can't just behave ourselves. Even if to save our own lives, we are a brutal kind. The Shins

My favorite thing that I learned in linguistics (which I took in lieu of foreign language for college) is that... how do I write this? "%$#@ing" is the only example in English of a word (there is a name for this kind of word, but I forgot it) that can be placed in the middle of another word.
Examples: In-%#@%ing-credible, out-%@#%ing-standing. And there appears to be a rule about where it is placed in the word.

Really the hardest part about English as spoken is our tenses of words as children illustrate. Why do we have "me","myself" and "I"? Why is the past tense of dive "dove"? Why is the plural of goose "geese"?
We get irked with children who say "Me go with you" and "He dived" and "Look at the gooses"... but these are all logical within the rules they pick up.
All children automatically pick up rules over time of their language. The trouble with English is that there are too many dumb little specific rules rather than a nice organized system.

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"Man lives in the sunlit world of that which he believes to be reality. But unseen by most is an underworld, a place that is just as real... but not as brightly lit... A DARK SIDE!"
-opening from Tales From the Darkside

Learn how to control your throat and you can speak normal hebrew or arabic(it's not hard!).It's very exhausting watching people say H(!)aifa like it was aifa.

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To be free people,in our own land,the land of Zion and Jeruaslem

Another thing that makes English difficult is that it is not a "pure" language -- it has Germanic roots but has been heavily influenced by the Norman conquest and the Latin church. The English language has over twice as many words as the German language and almost five times as many words as the French language. If English is hard to learn, it is very hard to master.

I understand your point, but I have learned Spanish to near fluency, and although there is a formal version of Spanish in which they use almost no idoms, most native speakers use lots of idioms and slang. In fact, I have several idiom and slang dictionaries to keep up, along with constantly trying to decipher what Spanish speakers are saying and what they really mean.

"Compare it to Spanish." So you command it, so it shall be. Let me compare the conjugation of the verb "to have" ("tener") and "to talk" (hablar).

English: I have, you have, he (she, it) has, we have, pl. you have, they have
Spanish: (yo) tengo, (tú) tienes, el (ella, usted) tiene, nosotros (nosotras) tenemos, [in Spain, some S. Am] vosotros (vosotras) teneis, ellos (ellas, ustedes) tienen

English: I talk, you talk, he (she, it) talks, we talk, pl. you talk, they talk
Spanish: (yo) hablo, (tú) hablas, el (ella, usted) habla, nosotros (nosotras) hablamos, [in Spain, some S. Am] vosotros (vosotras) hablais, ellos (ellas, ustedes) hablan.

Notice how many more rules Spanish has to handle verb usage? We don't even have a "polite or formal" form of the word "you," let alone a verb conjugation corresponding to it. They have a different form of the verb with every subject type, whereas we pretty much have only two forms. In fact, we can say that we only have one rule, and that the third person singular is the exception to that rule. Spanish also has a subjunctive form that we don't have.

Don't forget "thought." It has the "ou" of "cough" but the silent "gh" of "though" and "thorough."

My professor used the example "goose," like you did, but she used the verb "go" for conjugation overgeneralization.

I dont know why someone would have trouble saying "Haifa." Maybe you've been listening to Brits who drop the "h" a lot at the beginning of a word?

Yes, English is the #1 mutt in the linguistic spectrum, and it loves to borrow things without giving them back. But I don't think it necessarily makes English harder than any other language by any objective standards.

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My enduring personal, original quote: Many mistake what should rightly be called "passivism" for pacifism. Pacifism and passivism are COMPLETELY different.
-----------------
Ronald Reagan was not the only one to suffer from Alzheimer's Disease. America did, too.
-----------------
"I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully." --President George W. Bush.
-----------------
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Los Angeles voters=dumber than rocks.

Really the only way you can speak from authority is to learn several languages as second languages, including English... which is impossible.
To get better insight we need the testimony of people who actually have learned multiple languages from scratch.

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"Man lives in the sunlit world of that which he believes to be reality. But unseen by most is an underworld, a place that is just as real... but not as brightly lit... A DARK SIDE!"
-opening from Tales From the Darkside