What is the hardest language you will ever learn?

We were recently sitting with Dominique at the Wednesday conversation group out near la Bastille.  He posed the following question:

What is the hardest language you will ever learn?

Naturally everyone listening to him scratched their heads and offered up some, for us, very difficult languages.  Chinese.  Japanese.  Some of the obscure languages from Africa.

After a short while Dominique smiled and said "it's whatever second language you try to learn.  Every language that comes after that will be easier."

What he meant, in part, is that while learning a second language you pay attention to the details of what makes a language usable.  Once you've developed an approach it can be applied to learning subsequent languages.

I quickly have come to see it similarly to Dominique.  Just the other day I read a short passage in the news in Spanish.  I swear I don't know Spanish.  After struggling to learn French maybe I know more Spanish than I realize?  Maybe I should try a little Italian?

I know.  It's likely a bit more complicated than all that.  Still...