Mandarin

 I was doing some Mandarin in Duolingo.  Don't ask why; I don't even know myself. I guess the difficulty is part of why. The sound system and the writing, put together, are massively complex, or at least foreign to me, even though the grammar itself is not particularly daunting.  

I hear that there are tones and different ones, but I wouldn't be able to tell you which ones are which. 

Anyway, the first section was all: soup, hot tea, coffee, this is coffee, this is water, this is hot water, water and porridge, hot coffee and rice.  It was super easy.  Then the next section on nationality. I am Chinese, I am American, China, Japan, Japanese.  Also super easy.  A modest number of characters to be learned. 

And then the third section, all of a sudden, is way more difficult. It is not inherently more difficult, there is just more material introduced all at once. Professions, combined with nationalities. Far more characters. Words with two characters. More listening exercises in which you have to hear each syllable.  I'm an English teacher, how about you. Etc... 

So I go back first and review the first sections, everyday. 

Some things are like this. Anyone can make a note on the piano by pushing down a key. A simple child's song with one hand is easy. But then intermediate pieces take me a long time to learn.