I learnt French, German and Italian in school.  Those languages may have complexities (eg. In German, Gender for a table is male, a fly is female).  However, if you heard a word, you could spell it and vice versa.<p>English has many inconsistencies: Spelling vs pronunciation, completely different words for tenses (eg. Go&#x2F;went), inconsistent pluralisation rules (look up fish vs fishes as one example), &quot;me and&quot; vs &quot;and I&quot; rules, etc.<p>I&#x27;ve heard many people say that English is one of the hardest European languages to learn.  Supposedly, Japanese and Chinese are a different league altogether.