I studied both French and German in college a long time ago. The French vocabulary stuck with me, probably because about half of the English words are from French. But the German vocabulary went bye bye and I have to use Babelfish.

But in comparing the two, German is much easier to speak and pronounce because words are exactly what they appear. But it's the sentence structure in German that makes it hard, IMO. And the sentence structure doesn't lend itself to computer translation.

Maybe someone will devise translation software that reorganizes the sentences as well as the words. Maybe someone already has...

As to American and English spelling, I find myself shortening all those ridiculous spellings from old Welsh like thought, rough, etc. It's only a matter of time before English becomes CyberEnglish with the spelling based on phonemes.

In this forum I admire the quality of English displayed by most of the European posters. Apparently the schools there do a better job of teaching English grammar and spelling than American schools.