Re: Nouns -- from my email . . .
It is the English language's relative lack of formal structure, I believe, which makes it easy to learn as a second language. Conversely, native English speakers are notoriously poor when it comes to learning a second language precisely because, imo, the notions of gender, case, conjugation and so on are often so, well, foreign to us.
It is true that the there is a much greater incentive for a foreigner to learn English (read: $), than there is for any of us to take on a second language, given that English now approaches the status of lingua franca in commerce and science.
sp