I am german and part english and I think that English is pretty easy. German is more difficult. For example: There is only one article in English: "the". And in German there are "der" (masculine article), "die" (feminine article) and "das" (article for neuter nouns). But I hate the english prepostitions. I never know if I have to use either "at" or "on" or "in". The most difficult language is Latin! I'm learning Latin for three years and I suck at it.
Dammit!!!! Now I have to do an oral interpitation!!!! Gaaaahhhhh!!!! I hate public speaking!!!!! Gahhhh!!! English Sucks!!!!!! Sorry...I really needed to rant there!!
My native language is Spanish. I studied in the USA for four years, so I learned English. I did my master's in France, so I speak French too. I also studied one year of German. If you are going to study a language to be able to live and study abroad, it is going to be difficult even if it a language close to your own.
One of the largest problems with the English language is it's completely random and arbitrary spellings and pronunciations. Light? Night? Their/There/They're? Frighten? Weigh? Comb? The examples are never-ending. Along with Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain, there's an educational group mostly comprised of teachers and others education employees (although membership is freely open to all), called the Spelling Society - http://spellingsociety.org - , which advocates modernization of the English language, because it's the only language in the world that isn't updated over time. Fun fact: Spelling Bees (competitions to spell words) don't exist in other languages. Actually, the idea is quit absurd to most other countries because everyone gets the spellings correct. Not because of a higher literacy rate, but because the spellings actually make sense. In turn, leading to almost universal literacy rates in non-English speaking languages. Compare that to the UK and USA, where as many as half can't even spell "embarrassed" correctly. I think when this many of a language's own native speakers cannot spell accurately, maybe it's not that people are dumb, maybe it's the language that needs fixing.
French is also very difficult to spell. I hacve more problem with French than with English. I don't know if it is the same for other people whose first language is neither French nor English.
I like English being more complicated. Words are fun. There's something like 41,000 words in the average Swedish dictionary and 220,000 words with 600,000 forms in the average English dictionary. See how much we get to play with! People in other countries get to say exacty the same thing back and forth, day by day, we get to be creative! Oh, and it helps with jokes/humour too. Words sounding the same/similar and whatnot.
Again, Latin is way tougher than English. Imagine: the word "agricola" means "the farmer", but "agricolae" means "of the farmer", "to the farmer", "for the farmer", or "the farmers".
That said, knowing Latin gives you a deeper understanding of where English words come from and why they are how they are, which in turn makes English slightly easier.
You hate it because you don't know it. If you understood it, you'd know you don't place 6 question marks and 100 exclamation marks after a sentence.
