Similarity in European languages helps. I speak Portuguese natively. It means Spanish is very easy and Italian a bit more difficult, but can be both picked up "

Similarity in European languages helps. I speak Portuguese natively. It means Spanish is very easy and Italian a bit more difficult, but can be both picked up "by ear" just listening to TV shows. French is the first latin language that really required formal teaching to learn. English is taught at school from an early age, so while I recognize I'd never pick it up autonomously, it is now in the area of "easy languages". Mandarin is probably so far from European languages that I can't even identify the expected learning roadblocks. P.S: kudos on speaking Dutch. Amazingly difficult language. Tough pronunciation, strange grammar (for us coming from non-germanic languages at least).