Is English an easy language to learn?

I'm a native speaker, but I love learning languages. I've always wondered what the hardest things are for people who aren't native English speakers. Whether it be certain accents, words, phrases that don't make sense, etc. So ESL Learners, what's the most difficult thing about English for you? How did you all learn to speak English so perfectly? I would think that 95% of you guys are native English speakers by the way that you write. What's more surprising is that some of you come from countries in which I've heard most of the population speaks little to no English, so I'm very curious as to how you all learned it so well. I was mostly just asking out of curiosity because the few people I know who speak more than one language either learned it when they were young from family or learned it on their own later on because U.S. schools don't do a good job with foreign languages.

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Oneofthestormboys · 100+, M

My pet hate is the ever increasing incorrect use of an apostrophe with a plural. This makes my teeth grind.
I feel like keeping a big red marker and a tin of red spray paint so that I can correct this glaring mistake on shop signs or even other people’s graffiti 😂

ArishMell · 70-79, M

@Oneofthestormboys I agree! A long-established food shop in my town had "Eat's" in its sign for quite some years before correcting it!

I think more serious is the distortion of meanings or syntax, as that might be confusing to anyone trying to learn the language, perhaps visiting the country. Some of is by ignorance, such as shown by politicians trying to use as metaphors, technical terms they clearly do not understand; but more insidious is the deliberate mis-use, most often in trying to make some campaign point or other.

Perhaps one of of the saddest attacks on the language though came last year or in 2019, when the Oxford English Dictionary excised everday names for common plants and animals from the children's edition on the feeble excuse of making space for IT terms. Yes, the computer lingo need be there, but so should the nature names. Perhaps the editor was too fond of George Orwell's novels....