> For me, Chinese is a much harder language to learn to speak; its reliance
> on tone is hard for a non-native speaker to get right. (What do you call
> someone who speaks two languages? Bilingual. What do you call someone who
> speaks one language? American.)
>
BTW, it goes even deeper than that.  The relative inability of the
Chinese to
make the "r" sound occurs because the speech part of the brain is
patterned
at an early age and is very difficult to retrain at a more advanced age.

Nick D.