Are some people simply incapable of learning a language?

The fact that 80 to possibly 90% of the adult population of Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands can speak English proficiently, and in many cases perfectly fluent would suggest that the bulk of a society has the mental capacity to learn a second language to a high level.

However, the majority of these people have been exposed to English in some cases nearly as much as their native language since birth, particularly in the Netherlands, so some might argue that in the countries where English proficiency is 80-90%, many of these people could be regarded as "semi-native" in terms of exposure.

However, my question is, in mono-linguistic societies where the inhabitants are really only exposed to their native language, and none other, and never really start any real attempts to study a language until prehaps 15 at the earliest, what percentage of this type of society is incapable of becoming fluent in a language?

Cheers

<< 80-90%, many of these people could be regarded as "semi-native" in terms of exposure >>

-- No. Less than 1% of them are able to act creatively as semi-natives. What has been the Dutch contribution to English slangs so far? Much less than Jamaica, i.e. less than nil.

Maybe these figures just show how easy it is to learn the basics of English (enough to be useful), compared to learning the basics of other more complex languages (like Sanskrit, Navajo, Chinese, etc.).

I suppose reaching true native-level proficiency in English is non-trivial, however.

Chinese is much easier than English, dumbass

Grammatically Chinese is much easier than English - verbs only really have one form, the present and any word you learn can pretty much be used in any context with no transformation.

However, the tonal system complicates things so much that despite Chinese's grammatical simplicity, the difficulty of learning vocab (and the fact that repeatedly getting the wrong tone will destroy communication) will really make learning the language slow.

>>Grammatically Chinese is much easier than English - verbs only really have one form, the present and any word you learn can pretty much be used in any context with no transformation. <<

"Easier" in morphology, not so in syntax. It's so easy to spot European mistakes from all kinds of learners of Chinese, except like the Japanese learners. Chinese nonetheless has the same arbitrary, random collocation, and not a single word resembles an English counterpart. I've always been lost in translation regarding even a simple food item, a simple verb in daily speech, which all seem like rocket science to me.