I recently started learning French in preparation for my planned trip to France to watch the Euros next year. I use this website called Duolingo, which I found out about from a college friend who's using it to learn German. The site has other European languages as well (and even the man-made Esperanto), so I'll see if I can add other languages to my repertoire as I go along. For now I'll just focus on the French.
I'm always hearing about how French is such a hard language to learn - I do, in fact, have a few friends studying in France who can attest to that - particularly in terms of the pronunciation and the grammatical structure. It's true, of course, and especially when compared to the two languages I grew up speaking: Malay and English. I am coping, however. I like learning new things, and it also helps that I'm highly motivated to study French right about now.
Personally speaking, the pronunciations aren't too much of a big deal for me. It's just a matter of knowing which letter combinations produce which sound, and then speaking with your best impression of a French accent. I've heard a lot of English spoken in French accents over my life, and I love imitating accents, so enunciating the words isn't something I find burdening. I'm yet to have a native French speaker evaluate me though, so for the moment I'll just assume that my imitating of the audio voices on Duolingo is good enough.
As for the grammar, well, I'll admit that it is a bit difficult, but that's only because it's different from the languages I know. And even so, it's not too different: for example, pluralizing words is generally just a matter of adding the letter 's' at the end of a word's singular form, which is similar to English, but easier. The thing is, I think the reason people have problems with a foreign language's grammar is because they subconsciously (or even consciously) try to tie it to their own language.
I see why people try to find similarities (it makes the new language's grammar easier to remember, for instance), but the problem arises when they assume these similarities are the rule, rather than the exception. The main thing to remember is that all languages are different, and, though they share the same roots, they each have their own structure. Understanding this concept makes learning new languages easier since you learn them as being completely new systems, rather than basing them on ones you already know.
I have studied other languages in the past. In my private school days, Arabic was part of the curriculum. I hated it and was terrible at it, but it helped me to understand Arabic grammar, which, according to a friend of mine who studied Arabic at lower secondary level and is now in France, is even harder than French. Quranic recitation classes up until I was in secondary school helped out with my pronunciation. Equipped with this foundation, it probably wouldn't be too tough if I were to start taking up Arabic again in the future.
I also studied a bit of Mandarin many years ago, when my brother was taking Mandarin tuition in preparation for going to a Chinese kindergarten and subsequently a Chinese primary school. Our parents made me and my sister join in - I absolutely hated it. I found every aspect of that language difficult and annoying. Looking back, though, my parents were, of course, right to make me learn it and I wish I'd taken more interest in the classes. I can still pronounce Chinese names and words properly, though, so there's that.
Besides that, since coming to MIU, I've picked up some Tamil and Hindi words and phrases - hard not to, considering the people I'm surrounded with. I've been told that my Indian accent while speaking Hindi isn't bad either - unfortunately, the accent sometimes seeps into my Malay and English as well. Besides the aforementioned two, there are also many other languages being spoken here - at times it's like I'm a foreigner in my own country, which is even more ironic considering that my own native Malay is this country's official language.
All in all, from my experiences with studying languages, the most important things are interest and effort. I was terrible at Arabic and Mandarin because I was forced into them, and I didn't (and still don't) like being forced into things - though I do retain some of the knowledge, I would undoubtedly know more if I had actually been interested.
I'm doing all right with French at the moment because of my interest. France serves as my motivation, and hopefully it will continue to do so. I hope I'll still keep up my French after the trip, or even if the trip doesn't go ahead. I regretted not studying Arabic and Mandarin properly; I'm not about to go the same way with French.
