For me the trickiest thing to wrap my head around is that Mandarin is heavily tonal, and I've never had to deal with that in my life, making it a difficult thin

For me the trickiest thing to wrap my head around is that Mandarin is heavily tonal, and I've never had to deal with that in my life, making it a difficult thing to introduce my brain to. Some words mean 5 different things depending on how you vary the tone throughout the word; I'm no stranger to simple variation as I had to deal with emphasis and inflection while learning Spanish, but Mandarin is a whole other kettle of fish. I'm more than happy to accept that maybe I didn't put enough effort in or am generally poor at languages (only speak two), however I struggled to learn a handful of words per month.