English is so much easier for native German speakers to learn than for native Chinese speakers that it's tough to draw many conclusions from that. Imagine you

English is so much easier for native German speakers to learn than for native Chinese speakers that it's tough to draw many conclusions from that. Imagine you studied Chinese for years, moved to China for a job and struggled to read all the documents at work. Then a Japanese person mentioned how at their office at a subsidiary of a Chinese company, they all just read Chinese documents. While the rationale might be perfectly reasonable, you'd still need more time to adapt because you were crossing a much wider linguistic chasm.