| @moondust: Having taught Latin and having learned some German and Spanish, I think that German would "more difficult" than Spanish or French. From my understanding, between the influence of Latin and Norman French, English is roughly 65% based on Latin. Of the words that commonly appear in everyday speech, however, 85% of English comes from German. Hence, it is the "and"s, "with"s, "I"s and "you"s etc. that build English. The exact numbers may be different, but it should be about right. The major difference, however, is the use of a case system that appears in Latin and German, but extremely rarely in English (he and him are good examples.) Furthermore, Spanish and French, to my knowledge, only uses the same minor case usage as well. Therefore, while the English and Germans languages are more similar to each other, the more complex grammatical structures make it more difficult for an American learner to learn. Hoc dicto, personally, an arbitrary list like this is too vague to be truly effective. If you take American citizens with a natural proclivity for language and drop them into China with some linguistic guides and sympathetic listeners, they're going to be reading, writing, speaking, and listening to Mandarin pretty quick. |
US Executive Departments 
First Ladies 
My Pyramid
