Mark Twain wrote a hilarious commentary on how confusing the German language is as part of a book he wrote in 1880. Here's a link to the text of the commentary (a little bit of profanity, but used in an educational sense).

I may be fairly new to Twain's work and have an aversion to old books, but he's refreshingly modern in tone, has a great sense of dry humor, and says far better than I ever could why I'm not wild about learning another language. I'm sure people who learn other languages when young would have no problem, as well as those who accept having a good grasp or living among native speakers for years. For all I know Twain might be exaggerating a little, but he provides some German sources and I've seen the same sort of exceptions and multiple word forms in Spanish, so his observations sound genuine. However, for someone like me, it's quite daunting to spend a long amount of time only to be able to say a few canned phrases with confidence. I used to know a bunch of Spanish verbs and have some grasp of its grammar, but it's still not broad enough to carry any normal conversation for any length of time without looking in a dictionary.

The only thing I find odd in the text is the notion that roughly three months is enough time to learn a language, or have a firm grasp of it, or for that matter be qualified enough to speak about it. That was the length of my elementary Spanish course that tried to shove a semester of Spanish into one quarter (it was fast-paced but felt right). Even after that I could barely say anything. Were people back in the 1800s just really devoted to education and learning?