I've always felt that any language is easy to learn if you are motivated enough. Plus I think that it helps you to learn much faster when you are exposed to the native speakers of the language you have chosen to learn. I'm not a teacher, just a student, but I've been learning Afrikaans, and I found that rather than jsut learning from a book, it's much easier to retain the words and phrases and to learn the right accent and pronounciation when you regularly converse with native speakers.