And no, English is still, like, the worst language, from the perspective of being able to understand its rules. I love English. I am a huge proponent of the English language and all the beauty it is capable of. The absolute bullshit that is the English language is why it is so infinitely flexible and glorious. It is an amalgamate beast stealing from every other language in the world in order to constantly feed and augment itself. Look up any word in a thesaurus and marvel at your options and the nuance that each of them represents-- sad is different from gloomy is different from dour is different from maudlin and every one of them is valid and perfect for a different purpose. I love English.
But it's a nightmare if you're a non-native speaker. I've met plenty of bilingual (at least) folks to whom English is a second (at least) language and they pretty much universally attest to it being the hardest language they ever had to learn. Its rules can change on a dime, its spelling feels utterly arbitrary. Let's not even discuss idioms. The other languages I've studied (high school level, nothing fluent) have, like... actual rules. I don't speak Latin but I remember the grammar classes, and if you put a sentence in front of me I'd still be able to tell you what word is modifying what object and what tense the verb is in because it has strict rules.
Meanwhile over here in English nobody knows when to use 'who' versus 'whom'... and nobody ever will because nobody cares (that's a lie, I care). Octopi is the plural of octopus even though it should actually be octopodes. Cats and dogs are easy, but mouse becomes mice, goose becomes geese, sheep stays sheep. The past tense of a verb just adds -ed, except for a bunch of irregular verbs, which also conjugate arbtirarily and the only way you know which is which is to memorize them and hope for the best.
The reason for this is BECAUSE it's an amalgamate, not just of vocabulary but of grammar. The octopi/podes debate? Is because -us is usually a male Latin suffix and would pluralize into -i, but octopus is actually Greek, which has a different set of instructions. The vast majority of English is based on Latin derivations but its grammatical structure is Germanic. But its loan words are still rooted in their original languages, which come from Literally Anywhere, so even if you know 'the rules' of basic English you're going to be tripping all over exceptions. And those aren't, like, weird outlier words, you have a lot of common-use words that don't adhere to the general grammar you've been learning.
Not that other languages don't have their nuances and idiosyncrasies. I'm certain English isn't the only one where the rules can be ripped out from under you arbitrarily, and of course I'm not familiar with every language on the planet. But as far as widespread speakership is concerned, it's definitely up there as the worst language from a purely technical standpoint.
There was a easy win just sitting on the ground there man! You blew it!
