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There is a massive wealth of media easily available in english. I remember my first videogame was in english, the first movie I saw was in english, and when I was young, the only TV shows we had were in english with subtitles. You can't dismiss something as important as this when considering the difficulty of languages.
Beyond that, of course, it's all about language families. As a native Romance language speaker, I can understand a little of any other Romance language if it is spoken slowly and clearly enunciated, and if it is written, I'd say confidently that I'd easily be able to understand a third of the words, specially if given context. I was very happy to find out that even Romanian is somewhat understandable.
I have heard that this also applies to the proto-germanic language family, with native speakers of languages such as German and Dutch being able to understand a few words between them. It'd be nice to hear if anyone has had such experiences with their native language.
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