but english is one of the most difficult languages to learn, it's up there with german.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1233-english-is-toughest-european-language-to-read.html

English would probably be best, although Esperanto was created as a language pretty much everyone in the world should be able to learn.

there is only space for one motherlanguage in your brain. At least, that was what I always heared. Is there a new theory?

In any case you can't compare it to a second language avo.

esperanto?

lol i know what esperanto is, i thought of it as an most obvious choice...

But if we use esperanto, it needs a second version i.m.o. It can be made even more easy. Then again I'm not an expert in esperanto, I can hardly communicate in it.

Another option is to use a simplified version of english for foreigners. Adjusting a few rules would surely make it a whole lot easier. Tough this will create a lto of resistance.

But yeah the only problem with english is spelling and pronaunciation because words aren't pronounced to the letter.

There is a reason why Esperanto isn't a world language yet
The fact that it's artificial plays a surprisingly big role in it for one
Also, there's no reason to learn a completely new language when history has brought us to the point where English fulfills the role of world language pretty well. As such, on a smaller scale (Europe) it's only easier cause you have less different countries to keep in mind *and* you have the English living at your doorstep

So no discussion needed as to what language...

I haven't been given an education in English that I consider decent until I got at uni...
You don't see me having trouble with it though. And since I'm by no means super-intelligent, it's just shows people need to put some effort into it and they'll grasp the language soon enough
This requires people to care about their linguistic skills, of course..

Only an englishman could have the arrogance to think his language was hard to learn; of the languages I know english has got to be the easiest one by far (including my native language), it's ridiculous how easy it is. sure you'll make a few spelling mistakes and quirky sentences but that's even normal for native speakers in any language

german is exponentially harder than english to get a decent handle on

PS ever consider that study shows british children have bad education?

Surely it would make good longterm economic sense for most small EU countries to change their official language to English anyway? There'd be resistance by many... but there's really no room for Dutch/Flemish, Slovakian, Hungarian, Polish, Danish, Swedish or Finnish in the world. I woud also argue that German and Italian are pointless as international languages. Only French and Spanish speakers in the EU have a case for keeping their language (but should still learn English as their 2nd language).

Is English hard? I don't know. It's my tongue and I speak no other. I'd say that if English is "around" people (TV, music,ads) all the time then it gets absorbed. Throw in formal teaching from an early age and there's no reason it should be particularly hard.

To put into perspective, China and Korea are launching massive English teaching programmes. India is used by so many American and UK firms because it has English as a national language.

I think why we keep languages is a matter of heritage, politics and culture.
In any event ENGLISH is the official language of the EU, UN, etc. Yes, some countries (France, Russia etc) may choose not to use English for formal meetings. But everything is published in English.