I think the central claim about Chinese isn't that it's hard to speak; it's that it's hard to read and write. Although the wonderful article "Why Chinese is So Damn Hard" (http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html) does mention the lack of cognates and the difficulty of tonal languages, which are clearly a matter of perspective, there is little doubt that the Chinese writing system is more difficult than alphabets in absolute terms.