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Let's start this with a question “is Chinese hard to learn”?
For most people, especially Western learners, the answer is often "yes” without any hesitation.
In fact，I think Chinese could be easier than French or German: there are no verb changes, no plurals, and just a simple tense. Chinese just needs a different way of thinking and comprehension. I think the reason why people say that is really hard is mainly because they haven’t found the right way yet, and are still using the ways of learning for western languages.
Having said this, there are reasons why people keeping saying that Chinese is hard to learn. First , Chinese is not like other languages such as French or Japanese that has an alphabet system, which means that each character needs to be learnt separately. The order of writing characters is even a big headache for native Chinese people.
Besides, another reason why chinese is hard to learn is the pronunciation and intonation when speaking and this is, as far as I can see, the biggest problem for foreigners learning Chinese. Mandarin Chinese has different tones for each character, which may also change in different phrases. Therefore many foreign student find they have trouble in communicating with people in Chinese - they may know the right word but in wrong tone.
The things mentioned above are what really matters to become good at Chinese. Some students I know are not concerned about the order of writing and the tones of pronunciation; but actually these are the marks of being an expert or not, and that’s why they’ll never make it. Compared with other languages, the grammar of Mandarin Chinese is not so important because the grammar rules of Chinese are insanely straightforward with very few inconsistencies or exceptions!
So, taking note of the key points and with strong perseverance，you could start the journey of learning Mandarin - Good luck!
