Learning English has its challenges, but so do most other languages. Mastery of English is difficult, but it's relatively easy to get the basics at least compared to other European languages. Articles are the same (there are at least 10 words in German that all me "the"). Eight verb conjugations (compare to 99 in Spanish, including a number tenses we don't even have in English, and two different forms of "to be"). German verbs have four different forms--which are different depending on what sort of vowel is stressed and which of the three genders it is.
Grammar is simple in English, so we need to mess it up some other way. One way is by having the most nonsensical rules for spelling and pronunciation of any European language (to two too). We write with 26 letters, and use no diacritical marks even though we all speak using more than 40 phonemes. We love to completely change the meaning of verbs by adding preposition: (it blows, it blows up, it blows over...)
You can almost always tell how to pronounce a word by seeing it written in most European languages. When you see words like "enough" "thorough" and "bureau" you wonder why we even bothered to standardize spelling English.
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