Actually, about the easiest languages to learn are supposed to be Korean and Italian because they are both phoneitic.  Each Korean character is actually a phonem.  What's difficult?  Depends on what you know.  Chinese is a pain in the ass for a westerner.  Pretty much abstract characters with little or no hint of pronunciation.  And, you need to know about 2,000 different characters, relatively unrelated, to be able to read a newspaper.  It's supposed to take six years for a westerner but I've known people who learned it rather fluently in a couple of years.  I am so jealous of Benelux folks.  They have a real edge over most anyone else in learning a language.  Pretty easy for Japanese to learn Chinese since they use a similar character set.  For Asians, English ranks right up there with pain in the ass.  Has to do with the quirky idioms, I think.  Or is that quirky idiots?  I'm not sure.

A couple of other kind of interesting facts.  You'll never see a western word adopted into the Chinese language.  And, the Japanese will pick up and modify any old word from any old language, if they like it.  They have a saying in Japan.  They are born Shinto (Japanese  religion), marry Christian (they like the ceremony), and die Buddhist.  The Shinto gods are hilarious.  If you go visit one of their temples, you have to bring a pocketful of change to thow in a bucket to wake them up.  Cool gods.

The Appy's and the UT's have had many a discussion (well me banging on probably and them nodding saying 'yes UT) about English and it's flexibility. Like WW says for Japanese, English is a magpie language and will happily pick up any word or phrases it likes from anyone else's language (or just make words up) and pop it in their along with all the other words and no-one gives a monkeys about it. We spend a lot of time in France and they have a real bug up their arse about it and actually tried to stop French being infiltrated by other words; particularly English ones. Of course, the kids paid no attention what so ever and it is funny to read a passage of French text and all of a sudden, up pops a word or two in English. Appy's cousin who lives in France (having been married to a Frenchy) is a language teacher and was once asked to translate an article that was in English into French about the 2nd world war. She came to a part that included the phrase 'parachute bomb', as in a bomb that was dropped with a parachute attached to it, and without using about 20 French words, could not come up with 2 or 3 words to translate this original content. Don't get me started on genderising nouns. If you use the wrong gender with your nouns in French, no-one understands what you are talking about. Le or La? We go for the non committal Luh!
So enjoy English. The nearest we seem to have to a universal babel fish of a language. Mangle it, do not genderise the nouns, rearrange the order of words in a sentence, add whatever foreign words you like or even make some up; no one gives a shit, we all manage to understand! (Well, except Geordie's. What is that all about?)
I once stood in The middle of nowhere in Turkey and witnessed end a Norwegian talking to an Italian. The language of choice? Well English of course.
Viva la Week-End !

https://twitter.com/historylmages/status/471070862465323008

Is this anything to do with you UT?

^
Maybe the back of the beehive hair is aerodynamically shaped, like Chris Hoy's helmet.

(Stop that sniggering at the back of the room)

I took it out cos it linked to my whole photo collection! 

Don't give up, Kat.  You're almost there!!!