V for Vendetta

[Andromeda18_]

just curious what is a Germanic language? (i am actually learning stuff here)

I believe this exlains it quite well:

The Germanic languages form one of the branches of the Indo-European language family. The largest Germanic languages are English and German, with ca. 340 and 120 million native speakers, respectively.

Other significant languages include a number of Low Germanic languages (including Dutch, Afrikaans) and the Scandinavian languages (principally Danish, Norwegian and Swedish). The SIL Ethnologue lists 53 different Germanic languages and dialects.

Their common ancestor is Common Germanic, probably spoken in the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age Northern Europe. Common Germanic, and all its descendants, is characterised by a number of unique linguistic features, most famously the consonant change known as Grimm's law. Early Germanic dialects enter history with the Germanic peoples who settled in northern Europe along the borders of the Roman Empire from the 2nd century.

I think why most people say english is the hardest is because of the weird rules and some weird words. I mean english is not a phenetical language.
you have things like
to, too, two which all pronounced the same but mean different things
which, witch
dessert (leave), desert (food), and dessert (sand).
basically read these why people think it is.

1. The bandage was wound around the wound.
   
2. The farm was used to produce produce.
   
3. The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
   
4. We must polish the Polish furniture.
   
5. He could lead if he would get the lead out.
   
6. The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
   
7. Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
   
8. A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
   
9. When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
   
10. I did not object to the object.
    
11. The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
    
12. There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
    
13. They were too close to the door to close it.
    
14. The buck does funny things when the does are present.
    
15. A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
    
16. To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
    
17. The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
    
18. After a number of injections my jaw got number.
    
19. Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
    
20. I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
    
21. How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?
    

and then i found this quick comment
The history of English is complicated, is because it incorporates spelling patterns from several different languages. Look to Irish American Vernacular English for examples

I'm familiar with those, you can find them all over the net. They're actually quite amusing. I suppose every language has it's own crazy rules. It's related to words in English while in Portuguese it's related to interpretation. Even we native speakers tend to say it's a tricky language because one sentence might have several meanings. But in my opinion, and this is only an opinion, that's not what makes a language hard to learn. I mean, this sort of thing is too advanced for beginners to tackle and those who are already good at speaking the language won't really have a lot of trouble getting used to it. There are languages out there that are far more difficult to learn than English, or Portuguese or Spanish. Finnish has a reputation for being difficult to understand and learn. Mostly because there are few languages closely related to it, making the vocabulary unfamiliar. Also, most people I know that speak German say it was rather hard to learn.

I might be a little biased about all this because I really like English and don't find it hard at all, never have really. I love the way it sounds. Songs sound better when sung in English, though I think Japanese also fits songs very well. I don't like to hear people sing in Portuguese very much, the sound is too stiff. Well, there is one good thing about speaking Portuguese, at least to me, it makes learning how to speak Japanese quite easy! If I read a Japanese word (written in Romanji) the Portuguese way I'll most likely get it right. We pronounce the vowels, in their pure form, in exactly the same way. Actually, while the Japanese only pronounce vowels like that, we Portuguese have other ways of pronouncing them but that's easy to remember. There are a few other exceptions of course, like the sounds 'shi' and 'chi' (in Portuguese 'chi' sounds like 'shi'), but this is also easy to memorize. Plus, speaking Portuguese makes learning other Romance languages a whole lot easier. The same is also true for English speakers trying to learn other Germanic languages.

So you're saying when they make me a cop to fight "bad guys" and give me a gun it's entirely their fault for giving me a gun if I got on a rampage and shoot people with it?

And english is both awesome and sucks at the same time lol. I think there seems to be a lot you can do with english you can't do with many languages but it can be so confusing sometimes. Also elcoholic if you care you should try to learn the differences between your and you're. Noticed in your last post you used your when you meant to use you're. Easy way to remember using that one. Youre is a conjunction. If you can replace it with the words you are then it works.

You know, I sometimes make that mistake as well but not because i don't know the difference between 'your' and 'you're'. It's because I know the difference between them that I usually correct that mistake when I proof read my posts before posting them. I suppose I'm just so concentrated on my writing that I write the word based on the way it sounds on my head and not on its meaning. The funny thing is that I don't make this mistake when it comes to 'to' and 'too' but make it with 'its' and 'it's'. I wonder why...