I just wanna tell about my experience in learning my second eastern language and contrast it with my second western language.
Whether one is Asian or not, I find that learning a new Asian language is quite a difficult task. I'm not saying this because I don't work hard enough; I'm almost always on top of my work.
I'm actually a fob, a cool fob with no accent, that is. So Chinese is my native language and now I'm learning Japanese 2 in college. Yeah, I've heard people make statements indicating the correlation between Chinese and Japanese, both kanji-wise and culture-wise. It's true those are like 70% similar, but that's minor freebie. What about everything else... hiragana, katagana, vocab, grammatical structure, and such. It's a common assumption. And some people show that "no wonder" facial expression toward your foreign language status. Honestly, I still have to work hard to achieve my level. Although I'm on my second year of learning Japanese, I still find it hard even demand some of the simplest questions in full Japanese sentences. Asian languages are much more complex than Western languages: alot of the words are so specifically used and used under occasional circumstances; and if and when the learner becomes fluent with an Asian language, there are still many patterns to express the same idea.
I'm not gonna say English is an easy language for novice, but I picked it up rather quickly. While in high school, I took French for 4 years. I dun wanna just emphasize on French, I'm sure if I were to take Spanish or German, it'd turn out the same. French, haha, it's flat out easy (not the conjugations and the imparfait though), because the sentence structure and the way of thinking is like that of English. By the end of the first year, I could easily handle by myself dining in a French cafe as if I were in France.
Now for the contrast. I'm sure you're already aware of the differences, but here are more obvious ones. By the time when I was in French 2, my teacher made everyone in the class speak French and French only, otherwise points would be taken away. Now in Japanese 2... um... didn't happen, cuz there are stuff we haven't touched. I was in French Club for all 4 years, I would learn about French songs, do French activities, watch French movies and stuff. In Japanese Club, we learn about Japanese cultures, were informed of Japanese events coming up which were pretty cool, (no, we don't watch anime) and another thing that upset me was that we would correct the incorrect sentences... wtf like we dun do enough in class or something... or is it because somebody wants to show he or she is smarter than the rest of us. I've learned etiquettes of French, or perhaps Western dining. If you think that's alot to handle, you should read about proper manners when dining in an authentic Japanese cuisine. I'm not gonna list them here. Anyways, in order to not be rude, there is alot to be expected. I was even surprise when I first read it because it involves mind games and tradition.
Lastly, I wanna thank you for reading this haha, cuz writing it kinda made my day Plz dun get me wrong, I don't dispise the Japanese language or its ancient custom in modern practice; I just wanna measure its language's difficulty. I luv Japanese, I luv anime, I luv J-pop, J-movie, Japanese femininity. I especially luv their creativity in the entertainment industry

I agree, the latin-based languages are much easier to learn than Asian-based. The similarities to english is why they are easy to learn.

But its much easier for an Asian person to learn an Asian language than it is for a westerner. Our tongues are more suited for the pronounciation.

Is that true? That our tongues are suited for pronounciation? Thats very interesting!

Chinese was really hard to learn for me, I think a reason its so hard is because you can't "sound" out words. Like in English. you have to actually know each character.

It's true, non asian languages like french and latin are very similar to english. but for the asian languages, its harder to learn if your first language was for example, english.

true, its easier for a asian person to learn english than it is for an american to learn some asian language...guess that means us asians should feel lucky.

I do think that latin languages are easier to learn than asian languages. I'm taking french now. when I see my friends who are taking japanese, I just don't seem to get why they can "get" it faster than me though.

thats true asian language is harder. its cool that your are takin french three of my friends are takin french and they think its easy and me and one of my friend we're takin spanish and we got A's

I think Asian languages are harder, but only if your native language is western. My first language is English and I studied Spanish for about 3 years before I was able to function in Spanish-speaking countries. Then German for about 1.5 years before moving to Germany. I'm living in Korea now, studying and living with the language, and six months in I'm still struggling with basic conversation. Thank goodness it's not all hanja, though!

As long as you are determined to learn any language and you discipline yourself I believe you can master any language.

The best way to learn it quick is to go directly in the country without any helpas I have done.

So I were able to learn it quick ^^