What was the toughest part about learning a new language for you?

Personally, verb tenses always trip me up. Not so much present or past tense, but once it gets to be like... future tense and things like that, I get frustrated! I'm not sure if other languages have these, but I purchased a 501 French verb book to try to help me... It helped when writing, but not so much with speaking! 

What about you guys?

Ditto. For me, it's a bit hard to grasp too many tenses. For example, why does French have plus que parfait? The whole concept of it is very mind-boggling for me. For me, languages with complex grammar tend to trip me up a lot more than languages that present other challenges, e.g. script.

I also tend to be terrible with conversation, although it is not particularly specific to French. I just tend not to talk a lot in pretty much every single language I know. 

It depends on what you mean by "tough". If you mean time consuming, listening is the toughest for me. If you mean intense, the first few hours of conversation is the toughest.

For me it's listening and speaking. Learning the grammar and vocab can be tough I have to admit, but using what you know is a whole different beast in my opinion. 

Listening to me has always been toughest, I guess I am more visual. Grammar has always been interesting to me, until you use it. Regarding what was/is most time consuming for me when learning a new language, it's applying all that I know into speaking and constructing sentences. The concept itself of time consuming always frightened me, so I never even try to speak until I am sure I can actually have a conversation. But listening has always been toughest, especially with French when native speakers speak very fast. The French grammar is really complicated, but once you master it, I love it. 

The toughest parts for me is when there are rules or concepts that don't exist in mine. Like the wide use of gender in French. That was just confusing for me because I can't anchor or associate it with anything from my native language.

Yes, I completely understand! We just have "the" and "a" in English for everything, not a masculine or feminine for things!

Kaila.S wrote:

Personally, verb tenses always trip me up. Not so much present or past tense, but once it gets to be like... future tense and things like that, I get frustrated! I'm not sure if other languages have these, but I purchased a 501 French verb book to try to help me... It helped when writing, but not so much with speaking!

What about you guys?

Same!