Idiosyncracies in Idiomas

Having recently started learning Spanish (I'm now about 6 weeks in to my evening class), and, indeed, working in a multi-national lab as i do, the little idiosyncracies of other languages have come to be something of a topic for discussion at lunchtimes and parties, and so on. Personally, I love learning other languages - and with now learing another language again, it made me realise how much that i missed doing it. I can't really put a finger on why i enjoy it so much - i find it both interesting and fun. Anyways, with me learning Spanish, and my Spanish friends (and other colleagues) wanting to improve their English, you can easily see why we talk about language a lot.

It's interesting, really, what we find difficult about learning other languages. For example, one main thing that all of my non-native English speaking friends find hard to get right in their heads (and, hey, most ENGLISH speakers have trouble with at times) is the fact that we often pronounce letters differently for different words. Such as cough, through, plough, thorough, though, tough, thought. All words using 'ough' but in all cases, the ough is pronounced differently. Another one that is a source of confusion is that we have a lot of words that are spelt differently but read the same (yet mean different things). Such as their, there and they're; or need , knead and need; steak and stake. The list goes on (we have found about 30 sets of words so far like this, and i'm sure there are more). For me, i guess, the hard things to learn about Spanish are the masculine and feminine aspects - LA silla, EL telefono (although what makes a telephone more masculine than a chair??). And although i've yet to reach it thoroughly, i'm told that Spanish grammar is hell to learn. Now, this just doesn't extend between English and Spanish. It works for others too. French, German, Bulgarian, Italian. And that's before we even get to the 'tonal' languages such as Japanese and Mandarin. I guess it just goes to show even further that we're all uniquely peculiar in our own ways. Particularly when it comes to language.