YUSH..German
Hm, Well. I had problems with learning the time tenses. I think it's a bit difficult :/

Thanks for your comment! I took a year of German in college, I had trouble with tenses too. I guess they're not fun in any language

Yeah, Probably yes. No problem!

Los tiempos verbales y los verbos frasales, principalmente.

Most difficult part for me in English; pronunciation. I think grammar and vocabulary were relatively easy as you see English written everywhere all the time (at least here, in ads and papers and online too of course) and at school we mostly focused on those two as well. Should have had more speaking things or tests. I mostly used to have trouble with words starting with TH (three, the, those, that.. you name it XD) as we don't have any sounds like that in Finnish (my native language).

But still if I compare English with the other languages I speak, it's otherwise the easiest one (especially if I compare it with languages such as German where I keep forgetting a lot of the vocabulary and grammar whereas with English I get to see the language written everywhere and keep learning more words). But would definitely say the main "trouble" I ever had with English was about pronunciation. And still if I see some words I haven't seen before or that often, I might have no clue how to pronounce it as there's not many distinct rules about that whereas in some other languages I speak, including my native, everything is pronounced like it's written... if that makes any sense XD but basically the letters are always pronounced the same way, no matter the order they are in or the length of the word etc.

That's very interesting! Thank you so much for the comment :)

On a related note, I found when I was learning that it was difficult both to pronounce and hear certain sounds. For example there were a pair of sounds that sounded exactly the same to me. I could pronounce them properly by concentrating on the physical way I was shaping my lips etc., but they still sounded the same.

Apparently many people's brains have trouble distinguishing certain sounds if they have not heard them when they were young. For example, "l" and "r" can sound the same for someone who has not heard both growing up.

I'm kinda self taught in English, and the hardest part for me is talking (probably because I don't talk much even in my mother tongue :/).
But I also have trouble listening people talking in different accents, like the British accent. And, yeah, the time tenses weren't so hard for me since my mother tongue has the hardest time tenses ever (It is Portuguese by the way).

I tried learning Portuguese and had a very difficult time.

English is my first language, and I have had some classes in French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese. I think in general I find reading the easiest, then writing/hearing are pretty close, but speaking a foreign language is definitely hardest.

With writing you don't have to worry about pronunciation but you do need to remember grammar and vocabulary. With listening, it is more recognition of vocabulary and grammar so that is easier except you have to deal with pronunciation and people speaking too quickly. With speaking you have to deal with grammar, vocabulary, AND pronunciation! ugh

Hmm, well, from what I've heard, most people experience pain when it comes to learn the tenses, and the vast majority will just avoid talking in anything other than simple present and past (to avoid sounding like a tool, according to some) Pronunciation can also be tough depending on what your mouth/tongue is accustomed to articulate, like Spanish speakers, they tend to 'spit' out the words. (not being a hater here)

So i guess that's three points for tenses :p

Since I'm Finnish, the pronunciation is the hardest part for me. When I'm reading English, sometimes I have no idea how some words are pronounced. And since Finnish is really monotonic language and English is a total opposite for that... well I hope you get the idea.
But I really hope that I would get better at pronouncing English becouse I have a terrible Finnish accent.

I think one of the major issues with English is that we have borrowed so many words, but do not spell them phonetically but rather as they were in the original language so we do not have consistent rules.

I speak English and tiny tiny bits of French but I think honestly a challenge in learning a new language can come in the form of Lexical Gaps. Some languages have words for things, where others don't. Like some language doesn't have a word for shallow and instead says 'not so deep'. But of course not in English, as we have a word for it x3

http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/lexica.....aps-in-english

Like, here are some English lexical gaps. Might not be very helpful x3 but hey.

I'm Dutch and my main problem was, and is, spelling. I speak English a lot nowadays but I still can't get rid of my accent either- it's always there.
Actually , I had a lot of problems, pfft.

-Time tenses
-Not using too many words (we overuse words)
-an and a
-correct order
-phrases and tenses
-emotions. In english there are a lot of different words for one emotion. I'm not used to most.

I´m german and when I started learning english first I just had problems with grammar and vocabulary. My advice is, to learn the language not like school, learn it in life ^^ speak with people which speak the language. (and yes, it could be that my grammar is still horrible D: I keep trying ><)

I'm Spanish and I've been learning English since I went to school. I also took two years of French. When I started learning English I used to confuse words. Now I have problems with pronuntation and listening. I sometimes forgot that I'm reading English and I read some words like they were spanish ones.

I do speak English as a first language, but as a person who has studied French for many years I can say that verb tenses tend to be hard. Not so much past/present/future, but ones involving words like 'if', 'should', 'could', etc. tend to be harder. Like, "I could go to the store if I had more money", "I should clean the house", etc.

Also a lot of people I know who aren't native English speakers tend to have problems with a lot of phrases which are just said differently in their language. I used to have a neighbour who was a native French speaker who always said 'close' instead of 'turn off' ("Close the lights", "Close the TV", etc.). It's probably worth looking into what expressions don't translate from your character's language to English/vice versa.

Also pronunciation, as a lot of sounds are more commonly used in one language than another, particularly accents and such.

I'm french. I've lot of problem with english. But habituely I've no problem for convers with poeple. The REAL hard part...Is the expression.
Really! In english you've not the same Humor, the same Joke time... And sometimes I feel REALLY akward when I talk to native english person!

And the Passive/active form are really hard to me... Yeah. It seem idiot , but this is problematic x)

Spanish being my native language, I have no problems speaking it (okay well, sometimes xD) but I just need to broaden my vocabulary and learn new words. What's bad though is that I'm better in English than Spanish because I was taught English first and never Spanish. I had to learn that on my own. Grammar in Spanish was and still is my main enemy, because it's all backwards if you put it in English. But little words are easiest, while longer ones can be tongue twisters or make you loose your breath. It's also kind of hard to say it when you're looking at the words in Spanish because it's as if it's exaggerated.

English was exactly the same, grammar-wise. I'd mix words together in a sentence not knowing my grammar is wrong, and only sometimes I notice that it's wrong. Everything else was fairly simple. Spanish for me can be a pain, but English is what I mainly use because it's easy for me to communicate. :>

The hardest part for me is to talk fluently. Writing is most of the time no problem, because I have time to think about what I wanna say, but for example in a conversation, I often make breaks and say "uhh.." a lot of times between words or sentences. Plus I'm also really nervous in front of strangers and that makes it even worse.

But all in all i love English, I often intend to think in English and sometimes I can't find the words in my own language, haha.

Even though my first language is German, I speak and understand English almost equally to German and even "think" in English a lot of the time. If I were to name problems that Germans have with the English language, I think it's mainly pronounciation. Especially the "th" gives many Germans trouble, I suppose you've heard that specific "german accent" before. Apart from so called "false friends" grammar usually isn't a big problem (or shouldn't be) for us as English is a deal less complex in some regards and also from the same language family.
We also start learning English very early, which helps a great deal. I will probably never get rid of the accent that reveals me as a non-native speaker but other than that, my English is pretty much native-level (at least according to my English/American friends).
However, I actually have great fun learning languages. So far I've had French and English in school, Spanish for a year in Uni and Korean for half a year, and my major is Japanese studies... so yeah, languages are fun to me! Which makes it a bit harder to assess how others who are not as enthusiastic might think about it... I know my friends used to hate grammar stuff (I love it, actually) and learning vocabulary. If you were looking for typical mistakes that a German character would make in English, I think I could help you with that.
A lot of the problems with learning a new language probably come down to the other language being from a different language family. As far as I know, German and English (and several other European languages) are from the same family and thus have more things in common and are easier to learn respectively. Whereas if you start to learn Japanese or Korean, you are confronted with a completely different system (starting with a whole different "alphabet") but if you already know Japanese or Korean, learning the other becomes easier since you'd be familiar with the system...
I hope all of this makes sense to you somehow... I probably digressed far from what you were asking for xD Oh well

Haha no that is very helpful to read, thank you for the comment! I wish US schools were as good about teaching languages as European schools are, we pretty much can learn very basic Spanish and nothing else is even offered. The language families is a great point, I hadn't thought of that. Thanks!

English was one of the easiest languages to learn for me, specially compared to Spanish (My native language) But I think I'll always have some problems with pronouncing certain words like ·Doubt" or "Though" because most of the letters are mute or pronounced differently compared to other words x-x It just confuses me a lil' when the same letters are pronounced a different way or not pronounced at all :P