The hardest language in the world?

I'm completely amazed to see people listing English as one of the hardest languages to learn. My native language is Croatian, and I found English too damned simplistic. I picked it up in a single summer and I barely did any formal studying while doing so. Just sat down in front of the TV and read books. Eventually I just sort of absorbed it.

Probably the hardest change to adjust to was the fact that I couldn't write down words as I spoke them. In Serbian and Croatian, the letters are made of sounds - not a bunch of letters like in English. I'm not sure what the technical term is so here's an example. Say we're talking about the letter 'j'.
In English, you write down j and pronounce it as jay.
In Serbian, you would write it down as j and pronounce it as j - the y sound in yard.

It's really an awesome system because spelling is not necessary. When someone tells you a word, you can spell it because you just write down the sounds that you hear.

I have good spelling in English because of this non-phonetic writing style. Whenever I speak a word in English, I visualize it in my head. When I say things out loud, it's as if I'm reading them - I'm aware of their proper spelling and I use the letter formation as a guide for pronounciation.

Also, out of the blue - I find English to be damned choppy. It isn't as musical as other languages like Italian and French. It seems to be switching directions with each word and ... it just doesn't flow. Anyone else get this feeling?

Jam it back in, in the dark.