SD> French, to me, is overly complicated for the sake of being different. 

Hell, yes, it is! There's no need to decide between masculine and feminine
when talking about a table! It has no gender!

 SD> Being a native English speaker, it can be difficult for me to learn other
 SD> languages, especially Japanese or Mandarin Chinese (both of which I have
 SD> attempted to learn but failed to do so).

The only languages I've ever found easy to learn are those used exclusively
by computers. In many ways, they're far simpler than any human language.

 SD> However, my original point still stands for me as I can figure out
 SD> phrases and keywords in both French and Italian and make a semi-educated
 SD> guess to what's going on.  This is reading those languages; if they are
 SD> being spoken to me, I get lost very quickly.

That's about how I am, in spoken French. I can follow along more or less, if
the speaker isn't rushing or mumbling, but I'd have to respond in english. My
written French is much better.

McDoob
SysOp, PiBBS
pibbs.sytes.net

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Raspberry Pi/32)