annadahlqvist:
I think another of the big problems with English is the dialects. It feels like I have to learn to understand a new one every two weeks or so.

I think this is probably true with most languages. With English, I think it is more true in the UK than in the US. We do have dialects in the US but at least there is a lot more geographical area between them.

Even as a native speaker, I have had problems with understanding people on visits to the UK, not only due to accents, but due to differences in idioms. I watch a lot of British TV, too, so it's not that I'm not exposed to it, but TV accents tend to be a lot more standardized than real world accents. I was once at a pub in Wales ordering food, and I told the waitress I wanted the fish and chips with peas. She said something incomprehensible, I asked her to repeat herself, and she said something incomprehensible again, and I still had no idea what she was saying, and she repeated herself a third time like I was an idiot. It turned out she was repeating my order, but using some colloquial term for fish and chips with peas (I don't remember what it was and I had never heard it before, and did not even know until that day that this was a common enough food combination to have a special name) and speaking it with a heavy Welsh accent.

Also, I was recently at a supermarket in the US, and the cashier had some unidentifiable foreign accent, it sounded like English was not his first language. I asked where he was from. The answer? Scotland. I am familiar with a variety of Scottish accents but this one was brand new to me.

Regional dialects in the US are very interesting to me. Would anyone here say that dialects in the US are blending together and fading somewhat? For example, I live in the south, and the accents around here vary from very backwoods country accents (for example, the comedian "Larry The Cable Guy") to more normal-sounding accents that aren't very distinguishable from the rest of the country. I don't even have the same accent as my parents. I use words differently than they do, and I pronounce them differently than they do. And that's not even anything I've done on purpose. And I've noticed that the same is true for a lot of other people around here.

It's very intriguing to me. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that my generation grew up watching so much TV.

To me, some aspects of English are easy, and some are not.
I first thought that English was easy, but after about ten years learning it, I am still not able to speak it fluently, even though my level is not bad.
Many things are easy: no grammatical gender (whereas most European languages feature it), simple conjugation (irregular verbs are almost nothing, compared to French conjugations), no declensions... And many words come from French, so I have less vocabulary to learn.

On the other hand, English has some difficult sides: phrasal verbs (“go in” is easy to understand, but “give up” isn't, if you haven't learnt it). Spelling is also difficult: “know” doesn't rhyme with “know”, but is pronounced like “no”, and I often don't know which syllable I must stress...
And I didn't think of this until I read Piron's texts: there are many words with the same meaning, and unpredictable derivations. But I had already wondered: “If ‘serpent’ in French is ‘snake’ in English, why does the word ‘serpent’ exist too?” “Why do they say ‘invisible’, whereas ‘unseeable’ would be more logical?” (It seems that this one exists too.)
That is not really a problem to me, because half of these words come from French, but for someone who speaks no Germanic or Roman language, that must be quite difficult.

And the numerous English dialects don't help. Lately, at school, we watched a sample of Friends. I thought: “I understand everything the teachers say, so I should understand well.” What a surprise, when I found oud I understood only half of the dialogues!
When I watch movies in English, I always enable subtitles, and I understand more easily what the characters say, since I know what it is supposed to mean.

Pigin English written in Esperanto manner

Englishi is nat so izi to lern aj agli
cxajnis iz le most izi langigxi iu si

si haux izi iz cxajnis:
laj bu laj me guansi
ing-un buhau caj shi da unti
aj ja uode ma
Ing-un ling fen naux sjaux-hua
lauxsxi iding ba wo da

uxo jaux ba ing-un pauxcxi
gzen-gxeng ba ing-un pauxcxi
gaj si shijie-i

Iu sed Englisxi iz nat so izi
hujcxi aj agli
Aj cxuli agli

Iu sed Cxajniz iz le most izy langigxi
hujcx I don agli.
Aj totaly don agli.
Cxajniz iz veli veli difikat fo mi
no namba, no tens en no glama
nat tu sej le difika cxajniz kalakta

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
English Equivalent:

English is not so easy to learn I agree
Chinese is the most easy language
See how easy is Chinese:

If you come or not is not the problem
Bad English is the big problem
Zero point in English makes joke
O mama mia
Mama will certainly punish me

I will put away English
thus switch to Esperanto

You said English is not so easy
which I agree
I truly agree

You said Chinese is the most easy language
which I don't agree
I totally don't agree
Chinese is very difficult for me
No number, no tense, and no grammar
not to say the difficult Chinese characters
Not to say the dificcult Chinse characters

===============================================
Remarks:
1. Most Chinese speakers cannot speak r-sound well, or make no difference between r and l.
2. Laj is the noun and verb for English come. It never change its form.
3. The minor consonant sounds are often neglected for Chinese English learners,
thus don't = don, and = an, difficult = difika.

JenniferatLernu:Just a couple of thoughts.

Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses. Perhaps some people who find English easy are people who have a natural talent for learning languages?

The problem is that everyone can probably think of one or two people who think English is easy (or hard). However, basing it on just a few test subjects does not mean you have good statistical data.

I am curious though about statistical analysis/experiments as I admit that I do not have any references for experiments proving that English is harder than many other languages to learn.

(I can find websites with their own rank order of difficult languages but so far I have yet to find any that quote actual scientific research as opposed to just opinion.)