Hi!

Being a native French speaker, I can't say I find French difficult. (Sorry, guys ). I actually like all the tenses, because it allows for a subtility I can't quite reach in English when I write.

I have trouble with my English accent. Anyone ever heard a French speaker speaking English? It's anything but natural! I remember crying in my English class when I was ten because I was so shy.

But of course I understand that all those French names in ballet can be difficult for a lot of people. Feel free to pm me if you don't know how to write something!

I'm not doing anyone's homework, I've got enough with my own, but I can help...

I doubt that any particular language is harder to learn than any other if you are starting as an infant.

A native English speaker knows many words with Germanic roots and many with Latin roots; so learning languages with either type of derivation (for example German, Norwegian, French, Spanish) is relatively easy. Chinese, Japanese, Arabic and other languages with fewer similarities should be relatively difficult (but maybe not -- see comments below).

I would think that learning English as a second language would be very difficult as it is such a mish-mash of other languages and you can't depend on the rules of grammar because there are so many exceptions. And as for spelling rules -- forget it! But many people do find English easy. I haven't figured out why. Maybe because it is SUCH a mess that nobody gets uptight if you make mistakes. You're simply being creative!

I should note that some time ago I studied a little bit of Japanese and found it quite easy to learn. For one thing, the grammar does follow the rules with very few exceptions. For another, although the iconographic kanji writing is unfamiliar to an English speaker, once you have learned the kana, the phonetic syllable "alphabet", you can write down anything and a Japanese speaker will be able to read it. Although there are more "letters" than in the English alphabet, what you see is what you get (almost always). There are no variations like "ie" sounds like "I" in "pie" but it sounds like "eeeeee" "in piece".

So if someone from, let's say, Mars, were trying to learn an Earth language I'd suggest they start out with Japanese.

As an English speaker, I find French and Spanish relatively easy. And, since Portugese is sort of half way between French and Spanish I once had an interesting conversation with a woman from Brazil on an airplane. I was sitting between her and a woman who spoke Spanish. The Brazilian lady would say something in Portugese. I'd understand and reply first in French, then again in Spanish. She understood me quite well, too. The Spanish-speaking woman had no trouble in the conversation, either. It was an interesting flight.

I don't find it too hard... but I often forget the grammar/spelling rules and exceptions. I started when I was 10 and now I'm 17, and I quite enjoy having a random conversation in French. My friends and I speak in franglais all the time, like yesterday we were going to a French-speaking competition and it went something like...
HER- Oooh there's gonna be refraichissements la!
ME- Hourra! Let's totally fete it out.
HER- Genial!