"England and America are two countries separated by a common language."

- George Bernard Shaw

D9 "Prawns" Reference is South-Africa Specific

In the 2009 film "District 9," the alien species are referred to (in a derogatory manner) "prawns" by humans because of their distinct features (I don't know the precise term - but the aliens have little leg-like appendages, sort of like whiskers or tentacles, that come out of their chests and above their mouths). I had thought, up until reading the TvTropes.com page on D9, that prawns meant shrimp (as prawn is another word for shrimp). However, it turns out that the name refers to a king cricket species commonly found in the Johannesburg, South Africa suburb of Parktown called the Parktown prawn. I can definitely see the resemblance it shares with the D9 aliens, but I don't think it was far fetched to think that the aliens look like shrimp. Either way, I found this an interesting little bit of trivia; I never would have thought to question my assumption regarding the movie's use of the word "prawn" -- my discovery of this fact was simply fortuitous.

a shrimp

a "prawn" from D9

What is the most difficult language for a native English speaker to learn?

In The Economist, a highly interesting article raises this question and discusses the problems various languages pose for anglophones. For example, as illustrated in Mark Twain's humorous quote below, English speakers often struggle with gendered languages:

"German has three genders, seemingly so random that Mark Twain wondered why “a young lady has no sex, but a turnip has”. (Mädchenis neuter, whereas Steckrübe is feminine.)"

Of course, Twain was joking and the assignment of gender to nouns in languages such as German has nothing to do with the noun having feminine or masculine characteristics.

The article mentions that the further a language is in terms of its linguistic relation to English, the harder it will generally be for an English speaker to pick it up. It seems intuitive that for a Brit, learning Mandarin would be a greater challenge than learning German.