Many people consider Chinese to be one of the hardest languages to learn as an English speaker. For some, that is in itself a reason to learn the language, since the looks of amazement you get from others hearing you speak one of the world's toughest languages to learn should be a reward in itself. Having said that, I will go through some of the key aspects of what makes Chinese so hard to some, and how I deal with those issues.

1. The tones

This is the initial frustration for most people trying to learn Chinese. How can mài mean "to sell" while mǎi means "to buy"? How can I possibly be expected to remember the tones for every new word that is taught? What happens when people are emotional? Don't the change in tones from being emotional class with the original tones of words?

Initially, I too had to struggle to come to terms with the tones for new words since it was so easy to mix them up. However, what you find overtime, is after your vocabulary gets past a certain point and you