Originally posted by: joker-kun
To be honest though - this includes myself - I really don't think any natural english speaker, or even someone who grew up around the language has any right to comment. If you grow up around something, you mimic and adapt to it, where as when you are learning something, without constantly being around it, it is much harder. This is probably a reason why some can also pick up english quicker then other languages. Someone said above it is an international language, you can hear some of it almost everywhere, which means it's easier to adapt to and mimic.
I've always looked at difficulty this way:
Tell an 8-year-old kid that's pretty literate in his native language to suddenly go to a whole different society and learn their language. Give him one year and see how much he progresses.

I learned a great deal of English in my first year in Canada. Now, if I imagine myself being born in Canada and going to China when I was 8, I would've made very little progress.