Language difficulty for non-English speakers

[yong321]

One good way to rate the studying difficulty of a foreign language is to see how many study hours (on average) it takes the students speaking one specific native language to reach a set proficiency level. It is said that this rating for English-speaking learners is given by the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California:
http://www.omniglot.com/language/faqs.htm
or
http://web.archive.org/web/201106240517 ... whard.html

I've been searching for such data for the students whose native language is not English. So far I have only found one:
http://www.amazon.de/Leichtes-Englisch- ... 3899302729
Without reading the book, I interpret the book title as English < French < Russian in order of difficulty. And it's not clear whether that order is for all Europeans in general (i.e. average) or for a specific native-language group.

Does anyone know of such study for non-English speakers learning foreign languages?

[tarvos]

It varies too much by country and language. Dutch speakers, for example, have a very easy time with English and German, but given they are also prone to having to study French Romance languages are among the easier ones for them. Swedish and co. are not a walk in the park but very doable for Dutch speakers, and insanely easy to read with some practice.