Comment Re:Sesame Street & the Importance of Bilingual (Score 1) 1077
Ah, those weasel words. Considered by whom? Is there any research done in this area? Finnish is not my native language and after having lived here in Finland for 13 years, I am pretty fluent in it. I haven't found it any more difficult that any other foreign languages I have experience with. Different yes, but more difficult hardly. And for your information Chinese too consider their language to be the most difficult to master and so do Russians. I guess the difficulty of a language is a part of the national pride found in many cultures.
English is not easy at all. A myriad of exceptions, completely weird pronunciation rules (again with tons of exceptions), 15 or so tenses - these factors alone make English far from trivial. The only case for simplicity of English I can think of off the top of my head is its ubiquity. In most Western cultures you cannot avoid English, it is everywhere. And if you encounter a language on a daily basis, of course it makes it easy for you.
English is not easy at all. A myriad of exceptions, completely weird pronunciation rules (again with tons of exceptions), 15 or so tenses - these factors alone make English far from trivial. The only case for simplicity of English I can think of off the top of my head is its ubiquity. In most Western cultures you cannot avoid English, it is everywhere. And if you encounter a language on a daily basis, of course it makes it easy for you.