This is the eternal question, which has been generating debates for years. Linguists, college teachers, students, scientists, etc. We all have our opinion when asked what is the hardest part of learning a new language? Even for those who love grammar, and have easier understanding of rules and language structures, it's highly difficult to learn a new one.
The first reaction of those who begin is how difficult its the grammar. Too many rules unknown to them. Too many words to memorize. In all the countries of the world there are different colloquial languages, this means, words that are not officially part of the language but rather are derivations of other words or words that historically in a region have been used a lot and this has turned it into a jargon. It may be more difficult for a foreign person to learn the language of this country to understand a person speaking in their regional jargon.
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For example, in Colombia and Venezuela they speak Spanish but the word 'monkey' colloquially in Colombia means 'a blond woman' but in Venezuela it is normal and regular animal just monkey. Therefore, as example for a person who is learning Spanish, trying to understand what a Colombian speaks with a Venezuelan is very difficult since although they both speak the same language, with the same words they can be referring to different things with different meanings according to each country.
A very difficult part is learning to recognize, differentiate and understand all possible structures in a sentence. Generally, when you start a language course you start by learning the most common pronouns and verbs, but when you start teaching how to put together a more complex sentence where you have to conjugate a verb and use the verb at the right time, many people find this very difficult.
The correct use of the verb tenses can be complex due to the wide variety that these have, for example in English we have regular verbs that to change it in the past tense you only have to add 'ed'. And cases like this happen in most languages. Similar complications occur in the use of articles, adjectives, nouns, pronouns, etc.
Generally, many people encounter greater difficulties when referring to pronunciation. This happens because in some languages the phonetic differs from the writing and there are different rules for its pronunciation according to the type of word. For example, if a vowel is followed by a consonant, it must be pronounced differently if another vowel follows. A clear example is in French where the letter E has more than 3 types of phonetics. These phonetic rules are very difficult to learn.
We believe that other common obstacle is maintaining motivation. The truth is without sufficient motivation will be more complicated than already is. Some studies had proven that more than 60% of people who assign in a course to learn a new language, occasionally quit. And more than 35% quit after the first month.
What can we get from those statistics? A lot of people are learning, there is no doubt about that, but when they begin, is more hard than what they though it would be. Therefore, they believe that they can't with it, that it is too difficult for them. And when people are not definitely focus, motivated and really want to learn it, the statistics says that probably will quit in the way.
Another very common obstacle that people encounter is the typical 'memorized, but I don't use.' What we mean by this is the questions we always ask ourselves when we are learning a language, such as: how do you say this? How do you say that? This is because memory learning is not recommended. What happens is that students remember what has been explained to them in class, but if they do not have in their mind an expression of a real situation, in the future it will be difficult to improvise.
Another frequent obstacle is called 'I listen, but I don't understand.' This problem occurs when we have been taught in our courses with the same phrases and expressions and we find little new and challenging situations. So when we listen a native person talking it is a bit difficult for us to understand what they say despite knowing the language, and we lose the thread of what they say because they release too many words that we do not know. Something that will help us solve this obstacle is to start talking with people who have the language that you're learning as their native, since we will begin to improve our vocabulary, and to accustom our hearing.
The global technological advance that has occurred in recent decades has increased the difficulty in language learning due to the breadth of technical vocabulary for different areas of study. Some clear examples are computer science, medicine and scientific fields, and if a Spanish-speaking engineer would like to work in a foreign country in addition to learning the native language of that country, he should learn the technical language of his field.
Finally, we find another very common problem, and that problem has nothing to do with the language itself, but instead is a problem associated with the same person. This problem is called: 'lack of organization'. The lack of organization and discipline when drawing up a study schedule and fulfilling it is one of the main reasons why people abandon their goal of learning a new language. So if we focus, and maintain our organization, we will surely learn it.
In summary, all these factors are combined so that learning a new language is not an easy task. But on the contrary it requires that people strive to the fullest and apply techniques that facilitate their understanding. With this we do not say that it is something impossible and that you should not try, because always learning something new is something exciting and rewarding when you get it.
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