Language Difficulty

I know this will be highly subjective, but I want to know how you all gauge how difficult a language is? This question is mostly for English speakers, but other language speakers would be appreciated as well.

As an English speaker, I would say that languages with complex verbal systems are the most difficult, or at least that is one of the toughest parts of learning a language for me... Noun cases may get confusing, but in my opinion they aren't so bad...

Thanks.

As an E1Ler, I'd say that unfamiliar language features make a language difficult:

- Tones, complex stress patterns, meaningful syllable/pause lengths, etc.)
- Ideographs or Heiroglyphics, non-alphabetic writing systems
- Vocabulary totally different than English
- not SVO
- complex morphology (verb polyagreement, polysynthesis, huge number of noun classes, numbers, cases, moods, tenses, voices, adjective degrees, honorific forms, etc.)
- Unusual sounds (whistles, clicks, implosive consonants, coordinated hand or body movements, etc.)
- Strange rules like vowel harmony, consonant mutations, inflection by changed syllable order, changed vowels/consonants, suppletion, or sound/syllable swapping/movement, especially between multiple words
- Highly irregular, where there are no concrete rules, just fuzzy conventions on how to construct sentences.

Strange RULES ain't hard if they are logical. In fact, they make the language simpler.

vowel harmony

This is quite easy

E1Ler

What does this mean???

<<vowel harmony

This is quite easy >>

Surely a language without vowel harmony is even easier?

<<E1Ler

What does this mean??? ..

English 1st Language + er = one whose first language is English

Ergative is difficult

<<English 1st Language + er = one whose first language is English >>

Small + er = one who is small, for intance ,Zarkozy.

Wanna try a very hard language? Start learning Basque, the most difficult language ever....

I think that the languages such as Gaelic or Basque that are not worldwide spoken are the most difficult.

<<Start learning Basque, the most difficult language ever.... >>

Can someone outline the features of Basque that make it harder than any other language?