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.

"Fluent" means "near native." Anything less than that is "conversant." JLPT2 is not fluent in my opinion.

I lived in Japan for a year (and was highly conversant before I went). I returned still not being fluent. I'm JLPT2 for those who care or know what that means.

It is nearly impossible to be fluent in three years. If you're a language savant, then yes. But you cannot build up the requisite level of vocabulary in three years to be fluent.

AJATT will not make you fluent in 2 years. I'm sorry you've been misled to believe that. It is nearly impossible to learn a language to fluency in two years.

If you found German and French harder than Japanese, then you had terrible teachers or you are a linguistic anomaly. There are so many more cultural similarities, sentence structure, syntax, and cognates between Germanic languages and Romance languages than between English and a linguistic island like Japanese.

And yes, I'm pretty sure that "takes longer to master" means "is harder" for anyone's definition of "harder" but yours, apparently. Compare the writing system of English (26 letters) with Spanish (the same 26 letters plus four (which are basically either combinations of others—rr, ll, ch—or ñ) and ´+¨. Compare English with German (English + ß + ¨). Compare English with Japanese (an extra 2,000 characters minimum). How is Japanese easier to write than German or Spanish again?

As for why I cite to US government organizations, I do so because they are more credible than your opinion. I mean, for one thing, they performed research. Research beats anecdotal evidence any day of the week.

As for your absolutely bewildering implication that Chinese writing is not hard to master...I'm not even sure what to make of that.

Next, there is a huge difference between being naturally gifted with languages and actually speaking a specific language well. It is beyond question that I can pick up languages faster than the average human. I say this not to brag, but merely to make a point. Just because I pick up languages quickly doesn't mean that I'm not going to make an error in Japanese. I make errors in my native language. That doesn't mean I'm not good at learning languages!

Finally, conflating the "high" in "hold your head high" and　鼻が高い means you don't seem to know that "pride" has two meanings. One is self-assurance and the other is self-aggrandizement. "Hold your head high" means to have self-assurance (pride). 鼻が高い is a reference to having a self-aggrandizing feeling about oneself (again, pride). Two different meanings of "pride," however. define:pride - Google Search

Edit: Response to chryuop: You may not hear good Italian or Spanish coming from Americans, but that doesn't mean the languages are necessarily harder than anything else. It just means that Americans don't learn any second language sufficiently. Come on! Do you hear good Chinese or Russian from the average American that makes those languages seem easier than Spanish, etc.? And even if that didn't bear out, you can still explain it away by the fact that Spanish is basically the default language for Americans to learn in high school and college. It is often picked because they have to as opposed to because they want to. Because the language is forced upon many, they slack off and don't learn the language well.

On the other hand, those who speak Japanese might actually, on average in the US, speak it better than the average Spanish-as-a-second-language American would speak Spanish simply because those who study Japanese tend to do so because they want to as opposed to because they have to.

Furthermore, it's almost impossible to have a kid learn a second language before they're well past the critical period for language learning. Couple that with the facts that (1) English is one of the de facto languages of the world and (2) the USA is so huge means that there is relatively no incentive for Americans to learn a second language since we rarely venture outside our own borders.

And sure, you can find idiomatic expressions in any language that are not immediately obvious to a non-native. You point out that almost no English speaker would understand the idiomatic meaning of "tener que ir." However, no English speaker would understand "tener," "que," or "ir" without studying the language first!

And if you want to start talking difficulty, look at English prepositions. They are numerous, and in my opinion are the hardest part about learning/teaching English.

But all that is irrelevant. The fact of the matter is that, for an English speaker, learning French or Spanish is easier based on almost any metric than learning Japanese. I make no claims about who finds English easy, or whether English is easier than another langauge. I'm just saying for English speakers, Japanese is much harder than Romance languages.

Sure :) Perhaps you need to consider what you're writing before posting it, as you seem to be rubbing people the wrong way and come off as somewhat arrogant?

Me thinks you haven't taken a spin in the Harujuku photo gallery on this site.......or the JRock gallery =\

Now, not only are you insensitive, arrogent, and ignorant, but you are also immature. You say you're 21, yeah right. More like 12. And you want to be a teacher? Hah.

I have an extra one.

I would argue that Japanese is a far simpler system than English, in so far as verbs.

You say Japanese has different dialects. So does English. Even the major subsectors (US/Canada, Australia, NZ, UK) have sub-dialects. You can't tell me someone from Ireland won't have a different speach pattern than someone from British Columbia.

The Verb conjucation has a lot of rules, this is true. But it sticks to them far more than English does. I would argue verb conjugation is far easier in Japanese. I would agree with Shadow on this point, French conjucation is farm more complex (and also why I put French on the back-burner).

The only major hinderance to learning would be the Kanji characters. Otherwise, its no more difficult than other languages for an English speaker. English is ass-backwards from most in terms of grammar.


**Note on dyed hair **
There are young people in Japan who dye their hair. There are also young people with tattoos. Cultures do adapt good sirs.

Is it really so different from Western culture? If someone has dyed hair at a music store, you don't care. However, if your teacher or bank manager has dyed hair, it is suddenly an issue. I would apply the same to Japan. If someone is in a position of public authority, act accordingly. Otherwise, who cares?

Oh English is a hard language - I don't at all envy people learning it as a second language, since there are so many rules and then so many exceptions to those rules, for no apparent reason. In terms of speaking it probably is harder than Japanese. I expect Japanese gets the difficulty rating due to the writing aspect.

But, as an English speaker, I do find Japanese hard.

Haha it always takes a while for people to come round to me, but I like it that way. It tells me which people are genuine and who doesnt care. Also, I think it takes a bit of intellegence and a good sense of humour to get me anyways, as my dry, british sense of humour just doesnt travel across the internet :)

oh noes, these words - they hurt sooooo much!

Your a n00b here - your hardly in a position to throw your weight around. The amount of people that have popped up here to defend me clearly shows that I'm not those things above. I've had my fun with you and the games over now. just drop it, will ya?

Many culture-specific websites in relation to Japan excessively promote the notion that conformity is a strong attribute of the Japanese, and the youth have been taking on some popular Western trends. That is where I got what I said from. If Harujuku and JRock is a majority I have not taken into what I said, then I am sorry for my wrongful indirectl quoting of my Japanese culture research. And I'll check those out :)

Alan X- lol! Cute :)