As far as I understand it, modern English is a mix of Germanic and Romance Languages, just radically simplified. It explains why there are often two words in en

As far as I understand it, modern English is a mix of Germanic and Romance Languages, just radically simplified. It explains why there are often two words in english which mean the same: - liberty => libertas (Latin) - freedom => Freiheit (German) So being born as an english native speaker gives you the advantage of not having the immediate need to learn a foreign language, but on the other hand it is much harder to learn one, as your own language doesn't use many of the widespread grammatical elements. So while you might easily pick up a lot of vocabulary for central european languages, German seems to be harder to learn as its grammar is a little more complicated (but still very close compared to asian languages).