They say that English is the second hardest language in the world to learn. Russian is the first.
I would gather that picking up Italian would be a lot easier for me to learn. I'm just fluent in one language, but I find that I can pick up other latin based languages fairly quick if I'm around people which speak it a lot.
I'm sure if I lived in Italy for a decade, I'd probably end up very fluent in Italian. Although, I'm sure for the first few years, my grammar will be so horrible and mangled that people would think that I had some kind of mental retardation.
I have a LOT of respect for people whose first language isn't English. Even I have trouble speaking English sometimes and it's my native language! Mr. Bewitched, you should be very proud of your English. It's very good.
BTW, I thought I should clarify something.. "Whyte" is actually a name, not a word. However, it sounds phonetically identical so it's just an honest error.
The one thing I have noticed about other language speakers is that when they do speak English, they tend to speak it... differently... In other words, they tend to use words in a grammatically correct way, but in ways that a native English speaker wouldn't use them.
It's very difficult to describe, but I'm sure that Italians have noticed the same thing, that people whose first language is English speak Italian very differently (Yet correctly) than native Italians.
Ok, This post really does belong in the "As the tub turns" forum now....
