Spanish has much more complexity: complicated verb conjugation, gendered nouns, etc. English has no gender at all, and very little conjugation, and what conjugation it has is simple, except for a handful of words that it inherited from German.
English isn't "notorious" for being difficult to learn at all. Citation needed. It's spoken all over the world. It's known for being difficult to become extremely proficient in, but it's very easy to learn to a basic level. It's much like learning to play guitar: any moron can learn to play some power chords on a guitar, and learning some more chords isn't that hard; playing decent-sounding songs with a handful of chords doesn't take long to learn. Playing at the level of a master like Malmsteen or Vai is something entirely different, and very few guitarists can reach that level of proficiency. It's much easier to learn enough on a guitar to play some simple song than on a piano, or worse something like a trombone for instance, but the guitar has a much greater range of ability (the difference between what a beginner can do and what a master can express with it) than most instruments.
The Indo-European gender difference still survives in the distinction between he, she, and it.
More interestingly, English is in the process of developing a gender distinction between people and non-people, reflected in the use of the relativizer who for people and which for non-people. (The words do not otherwise differ; this is a purely grammatical distinction!) This incipient gender distinction is absorbing the old one, leading to the feeling that it expresses that the referent is not a person.
No it doesn't. It's not even close. Spanish has rules and generally follows those rules. English has rules and almost as many exceptions to those rules.
All this tells me is that you haven’t learned either Spanish or English as a second language learner. Spanish is incredibly consistent. Unlike English, once you learn the alphabet, you can read everything in Spanish correctly.
> It's spoken all over the world.
That has zero to do with how hard or easy it is to learn. There is absolutely no correlation. It is spoken all over the world because of British colonialism, American cultural exports, and it being the lingua franca. Not because anyone actually would choose to learn it if they had any other choice.
Linguists categorize languages according to how hard they are for people to learn. Spanish is a category 1 language (the easiest to learn). English is a category 4-5 language (out of 5).
“Is English the hardest language to learn?
Given what we’ve already noted, you might be wondering if English is deserving of an equivalent ranking as one of the hardest languages to learn. Well, that too is a very subjective opinion. After all, people who are already fluent in languages that are related to English—particularly the Germanic and Romance language families—probably won’t find English to be that bad. However, English has a lot going on that could make it very frustrating to learn, even for a person fluent in one of these languages. Here are some of the commonly cited reasons that English is often considered to be a very hard language to learn:
English is an unusual mix of Germanic and Romance languages. Many English words are taken directly from Latin and Greek without changing their form or meaning at all.
The rules of grammar, pronunciation, and spelling in English are largely inconsistent and sometimes make no sense at all. For example, the past tense of ask is asked, but the past tense of take is took. Additionally, there are tons of exceptions to these rules that need to be memorized. For example, the beloved “I before E except after C” goes right out the window when we run into a word like weird.
English is full of homophones that are pronounced identically but have different spellings and meanings, such as the words way and weigh.
Often, English synonyms can’t be used interchangeably. For example, you often mean two different things when you say that someone is clever or when you say that someone is sly.
The order of adjectives is often based on what “sounds right” rather than a formal set of rules. Often, native English speakers know the “correct” order of adjectives without even actually learning it.
All of the above issues cause problems even for native English speakers when trying to use proper grammar and spelling. Needless to say, a new learner is likely to struggle quite a bit when trying to wrap their head around the ridiculous rules—or lack thereof—of English. We may not be able to say for certain that English is the hardest language to learn, but we think it definitely makes a serious claim for the title.”
English isn't "notorious" for being difficult to learn at all. Citation needed. It's spoken all over the world. It's known for being difficult to become extremely proficient in, but it's very easy to learn to a basic level. It's much like learning to play guitar: any moron can learn to play some power chords on a guitar, and learning some more chords isn't that hard; playing decent-sounding songs with a handful of chords doesn't take long to learn. Playing at the level of a master like Malmsteen or Vai is something entirely different, and very few guitarists can reach that level of proficiency. It's much easier to learn enough on a guitar to play some simple song than on a piano, or worse something like a trombone for instance, but the guitar has a much greater range of ability (the difference between what a beginner can do and what a master can express with it) than most instruments.