From what I understand peoples problem learning English relates to it lacking fixed rules for most issues. Spelling being the most obvious example. A Spelling Bee would be a far more trivial exercise in Spanish or German. Granted the 988,968 words in English http://www.slate.com/id/2139611/ have something to do with that. Although the total number of words in German is larger (In the modern scientific German vocabulary data base in Leipzig (since 1.7.2003) there are 9 million words) the core vocabulary is fairly small and consistent by comparison. EX: "glove" as "hand-shoe (Handschuh)