Am I speaking another language?

I walked into work to find a guy from another department waiting by my desk, he was a project planner person from project planning people dept. We exchanged greeting and then he asked me a stange question:

"What's the easiest language to learn?"

Hmmm. Being a computer nerdy type i assumed he meant programming language so I said

" It's more important to understand the principles of programming, the theories and intricacies of how your language will be processed by the machine. And then of course it depenends on your goal, the application of your writing. Some languages are good all-rounders, some are great for fast math, some are only used for internet programming, or in my case, database programming. Your question is way to vague I'm afraid"

He pondered and then asked "But what''s an EASY language?"

Growing rapidly bored I said "Try BASIC or Pascal" (Which are computer languages almost like human talk that i could teach to a 5 year old. I know this isn't an exagerration cos i was using it by age 7, self taught, so i could certainly teach it to a kid of that age.

It transponded he had decided to by one of those Teach Yourself, Listen and Repeat Language CDs. It had always been his ambition to learn a foreign language and someone had told him to ask me as being a pom i would know more about languages than others in an aussie office.

I patiently explained again that his question was dumb:

me: "You really need a purpose to learn a language before choosing one"

PP: "Well, I just want an easy one"

me: "Look, if you're researching the roman empire, Latin would help. If you want to read russian classics, dutch will be useless. If you want to expand the business into china then spanish wont be overly useful. Please, give me a clue what you're trying to achieve?"

PP: "Which is easiest?"

me: "Look, all are different! Urdu is easy to speak but tough to read or write. Welsh can be easy to understand aurally but damn tough to speak or read. Latin is great to read and write if you are good at following rules and logic. You cannot just ask someone for an easy language!"

PP: "Well..... I've actually booked a cruise of the greek islands with like, 15 stops on different islands. I don't know what language is spoken on any of them so I figured if I learnt one language there'd be a chance of being able to use it on at least one of the islands"

me: [pauses and waits for him to show he's joking]

....
....
.... [waits]
....

me: "Umm, you DO realise they'll all speak Greek dont you?"

PP: "Greek? I always thought the expression 'Ít's all Greek to me' meant that it was a mix of lots of languages because there are so many islands?"

me: [sighs] "Ay gamsou mate, Ay gamsou....."