An alternative ranking is given in http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language

An alternative ranking is given in http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/lang... > Chinese probably has advantages as L2 due to the lack of inflections but disadvantages due to the extremely difficult writing system and (maybe?) tones Tones aren't much of a problem. The main problem is the script, combined with the lack of vocabulary sharing between Mandarin and English (no cognates, very few loans in either direction. It isn't particularly difficult - it just requires lots of tedious memorization of thousands of printed characters and spoken words. Cantonese and other Chinese languages have very little printed material. (All Chinese speakers use the same written language, which is based upon spoken Mandarin.)