So here are two things I believe to be true: 1. Learning a language is not an academic exercise, it's a social one. If you're an introvert, learning a second l

So here are two things I believe to be true: 1. Learning a language is not an academic exercise, it's a social one. If you're an introvert, learning a second language is (IMHO) going to be extremely difficult because the activities most likely to make that happen aren't ones you're likely comfortable with. Worse, you'll be less inclined to do those activities because you'll feel hamstrung by your inability to communicate. It's difficult to get to a point where you have a sufficient vocabulary to understand what's said or say what you want; and 2. This is particularly difficult for English speakers for two reasons. First, so many speak English or are learning that it's hard to be in a situation where you can't revert to English. This makes progress more difficult. The second reason most other languages will have integral concepts that will be difficult for you to acquire because there's no English equivalent. Some examples: - Gender of (non-person) nouns; - Declension of words by gender, case, article and/or number; - Agreement of adjectives; The above is rather Indo-European centric of course. Asian languages tend to have different characteristics that make them difficult: - The writing system; - The importance of tone; - Replacing grammar with context. Nowadays most native English speakers do not know any grammar. Like at all. Ask the average high school graduate what a noun is and you're more likely than not to get a confused look. To me this is a strength of English because you can obviously learn the language, including reading and writing, without "cruft". For example, word order in English is stricter than, say, German because in German you can denote case by declension and you can't do that in English. Likewise Spanish typically drops the subject because it's obvious from the conjugation of the verb.