How difficult a language is to learn depends on many things: your native tongue (if different), the age you started learning the language, the training and support you’re given, and your natural abilities. However, there are many things peculiar to the English language related to orthography (spelling), pronunciation, and grammar that are often confusing, though sometimes amusing. For example:

• * The words look and see have the same meaning, so why can the words overlook and oversee be opposite in meaning?
• * Shouldn’t the words dough, cough, and through rhyme?
• * Why does a performer play during a recital, but recite during a play?
• * If something without fault is impeccable, why isn’t something that is full of errors peccable?
• * Why do the items in a building burn up while the building itself is burning down?

Of course, all languages have their own unique difficulties for the student. Many languages have gender-specific designations for nouns, so that in addition to learning the word for something, you also need to learn if it’s feminine, masculine, or neuter. In some languages, such as Russian, you also need to learn the specific form of the noun (the declension) to use depending on how many objects you’re referring to, who they belong to, or what your spatial relationship is to them. In tonal languages like Mandarin or Vietnamese, the pitch of the speaker’s voice distinguishes between two words: if you say the word da with a rising tone (like a question) in Mandarin Chinese you’re saying “distressed” but if you say it with a falling tone, you’re saying the word “big.”

In the late 1800s Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof developed what he hoped would be a universal language, and called it Esperanto (meaning “hopeful”). Although his dream of a globally-unifying language did not come true, English is generally accepted as the language of business around the world these days, though if one counts the number of native speakers, Mandarin Chinese is the most prevalent language worldwide. Nonetheless, anyone who hopes to get ahead in business in the 21st century needs to learn English at a professional level, no matter the quirks and inconsistencies in the language.