[chryuop]

I love that US governement (at your saying) puts Spanish and Italian amongst the easiest languages to learn.
I haven't heard so far an American (even amongst Italian-American) who can speak a decent Italian. Not to mention the huge amount of idiomatic expression they get wrong (Italian I can easily say it is made 70% of idiomatic expressions) I haven't heard a very good quality of conjugation or way of using our 25+ tenses.
I am not a perfect Spanish speaker, but I know it a little bit and I have to say that even for Spanish I have heard alot of buchering from English native speakers. What cracks me up is the (here in the USA) widespread idiomatic expression "no problemo" of which I guess only 1% of the American population realizes it is very wrong. And I would like to know how many English speaker would immediately understand what it means "tiene que ir" (has to go). Who has to go? Me or someone else? Coz it can mean both. In French it can be "vous devaiz aller" as in the English "yous". Does that mean again me or you all? Yes it can mean both. Not to mention Italian where we have 3 level of politeness where when I am speaking to you I might use conjugation for second person singualr, third person singular or secon person plural. Not to mention that you better know conjugations pretty well because like in Japanese, Italian and Spanish do not use pronouns.
Not to mention agreement of gender. In English is pretty easy...talk about a woman, female possesive and all the rest is normal (like for example "her car"). Is it so easy in other languages? Car in Italian is a female name, so if I talk about my brother's car should I say his or her car? Even past participle in Italian agree with gender, so saying before that in Italian apple (mela) is female, if I say I have eaten an apple what gender should eaten be? Does it always work with the same rule with the gender of past pariciple? Well, no it doesn't.

My 4 year old daughter says clearly that she hates Italian coz it is so dang hard to learn and English is her favourite because it is very easy. I mean, I am sure people have different thought about what language is hard and what language is easy. However I still have to find strangers (even resident in Italy) who speak a decent Italian, if not only after 10-15 years living in Italy.