In terms of things that are difficult for non-native speakers, English doesn't have grammatical gender, which takes an immense amount of time to acquire.
English's irregular verbs also fall into classes. There are only a couple of (very common) verbs like "be", "go" which are truly idiosyncratic. And English has the advantage of actually having very few verbal forms overall. Other than forms of "be", the present tense only has 2 forms (3rd person singular and everything else (e.g. "I go, you (sg.) go, he/she/it goes, we go, you (pl.) go, they go") and the past tense only one form (e.g. "I went, you (sg.) went, he/she/it went, we went, you (pl.) went, they went").
> Certain ambiguous sentences are only able to be deciphered through sheer exposure to the language + context, which is not necessarily easily transferable across languages ("I can't find my shoes" means that you so far haven't been able to find your shoes, whereas "I can't eat pork" means that you prefer not to eat pork for one reason or another, whereas "I can't see infrared" means that it is impossible for you to see in infrared).
These all have to do with modality and work the same way in every language I know.
> English also has a weird way of asking question compared to other languages, i.e. in many other languages (most?) you normally say something like "You want to buy a hotdog" or "What you want?" whereas in English we require a varying assortment of nouns and helper verbs.
This is true, and is fairly unusual (though French has some weirdness of this sort).
English's irregular verbs also fall into classes. There are only a couple of (very common) verbs like "be", "go" which are truly idiosyncratic. And English has the advantage of actually having very few verbal forms overall. Other than forms of "be", the present tense only has 2 forms (3rd person singular and everything else (e.g. "I go, you (sg.) go, he/she/it goes, we go, you (pl.) go, they go") and the past tense only one form (e.g. "I went, you (sg.) went, he/she/it went, we went, you (pl.) went, they went").
> Certain ambiguous sentences are only able to be deciphered through sheer exposure to the language + context, which is not necessarily easily transferable across languages ("I can't find my shoes" means that you so far haven't been able to find your shoes, whereas "I can't eat pork" means that you prefer not to eat pork for one reason or another, whereas "I can't see infrared" means that it is impossible for you to see in infrared).
These all have to do with modality and work the same way in every language I know.
> English also has a weird way of asking question compared to other languages, i.e. in many other languages (most?) you normally say something like "You want to buy a hotdog" or "What you want?" whereas in English we require a varying assortment of nouns and helper verbs.
This is true, and is fairly unusual (though French has some weirdness of this sort).