Multilingual, Americans, Europeans, etc.

[mystictiger]

As an aside, I suspect that the only reason Gaelic is not on that list is because it's not a unique official language

Not entirely true.

Irish Gaelic (Gaeilge) is an 'official' language both of Eire and of the EU.
Scots Gaelic (Erse) is an 'official' language in Scotland to the extent that official documents can be written in it, and various acts of the Scottish parliament can also be produced in it. English isn't the 'official' language of the UK (there isn't a statute anywhere that says it), but it is de facto. The Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act 2005 recognises that it's a historic and important part of our culture.

[Lilias]

Granted. What I meant is that Gaelic, either variation, just like Welsh, is not the only language of any country, not in the way Hungarian and Finnish are. Without the dual-language signs, it would have been easy to avoid it altogether.

On the other hand, as you may have noticed, Greek is not on the list, despite its different alphabet and the proverbial expression, so those who claim it's incomprehensible are just lazy :P

[mystictiger]

I only ever studied Ancient Greek, and that was kind of fun to learn. Mostly because there was plenty of fun things to read! Sex, violence, intrigue, plotting, battles, drug abuse - Homer has it all! Well, except rock and roll.

The language I found hardest to learn was Dutch. It's similar to both English and German, and the similarities utterly threw me. I found I'd end up speaking in either English or German, but in a bad Dutch accent :(

[Bayushi]

I've heard it said that English is the second most difficult of the "major" languages to learn, due to its subtle nuances, homonyms, and malapropisms.   The only one more difficult?  Mandarin Chinese.

Oddly enough, I would personally rate Japanese as more difficult to learn than English.

I am of Japanese descent, but am a child of American citizens, born in the United States. I was not taught Japanese as a child, as grandparents (with whom I spent a large portion of my childhood) were still of the mind set that any language but English was unacceptable in the US (it used to be that using anything but English would bring rebuke and/or scorn, such as in school).

I have taken Japanese in grade/middle school, while living on an American military base in Japan; and again while attending University in America. I just did not have the capacity to learn another language, ESPECIALLY one as difficult as Japanese.

I really don't have the capacity now, given that I'm now missing part of my brain, and my memory is pretty screwed over.