What are the hardest things about learning: English vs Spanish?
The Hardest things about learning English
1.Vowel sounds change from word to word (Why?);
1. Contractions (Aren't strange to us);
2. The auxillary verb “do” (nothing like it in Spanish) for example "What do you do?" in Spanish is odd "Qué hace usted hace";
3. Negatives (i.e. using not instead of no and again that "do" word pops up often);
4. Making the “er” sound (my Colombiana simply cannot make this sound);
5. Sentence structure (how odd our placement of adjectives, adverbs, direct objects,etc.)
6. Understanding spoken english
The Hardest things about learning Spanish
- Verb conjugations (only the 3rd person singular changes with many english verbs)
- Feminine versus Masculine (why assign gender to inaminate objects)
- Recognizing how “Se” is used (not always clear in more complex sentences whether reflexive, general expression, passive, etc.)
- So many demonstratives (fem. masc. sing. plur.near, far, more far)
- Sentence structure (Strange for us english speakers)
- Understanding the different accents
I am curious about what others find the most difficult.
15 Answers
Most of what can be said as being difficult in one language, it can also be said for the other language. If prepositions are hard for Spanish learners it as hard for English learners and so forth.
To start speaking the language, it is also one of the fears people have to deal in both languages, and I guess it happens with any other language. We have to learn how to curb that fear/insecurity.
Most people I know, Spanish or English at one point or another they state "I understand more than I can speak it"
Ain't that the truth? 
La mayoría de lo que se pueda decir que es difícil de un idioma, también se puede decir del otro. Si las preposiciones son difíciles para los que aprenden castellano, lo es tan difícil para los que aprenden inglés.
Comenzar a hablar el idioma es también uno de los miedos con el que tenemos lidiar en ambos idiomas, y creo que pasa con cualquier otro idioma. Tenemos que aprender a controlar ese miedo o esa inseguridad.
La mayoría de la gente que conozco, castellana o inglesa, en algun punto dicen "Entiendo más de lo que lo hablo"
¿Verdad? 
It can be summarized by considering just one word:
English: beer
It only has one syllable, but it uses that stretched-out vowel sound with three different sounds in it, including the always difficult schwa, and ends in the swallowed "er" sound which is really tough for non-natives.
Spanish: cerveza
It has three syllables, and includes the really hard middle of the word r sound (even harder to get right than rolled rrs for me) right next to the v--neither of these sounds exist in English, so that's a really tough combination.
Kind of a toss up which one is harder, but just doing this analysis makes me want one.
Can I bump this thread?
Direct and indirect object pronouns. Oh my goodness!
Where to put them in a sentence, and that I have to remember to put them there.
Identifying object. vs. subject
I'm not worried about conjugation, I think it's just a matter of learning it bit by bit and getting used to it. I still make a lot of mistakes but it's very logical and not difficult to understand so it's nothing to worry about for me.
I'm only beginning and I'm sure there's loads of difficult things ahead. o.O
Poco a poco!
Oh and I don't think "radical stem changing verbs" are THAT radical.
I keep waiting for the day they're going to teach us about "conservative stem changing verbs".
Well, here I go commenting on an ancient thread:
For me, it has to be the indirect and direct object pronouns in the same sentence..."se lo da"...nothing on earth is more ambiguous. To make matters worse, they add a prepositional phrase for clarity (why not just use it in the first place).
Anyway, they're not giving my much choice so I'm trying to use them. And understanding them in a sentence is completely different than trying to translate in your head as you're hearing them.
The irregular verbs in different tenses can be a challenge, but for me they're just memory.
It seems strange to me that the "articles", the most basic vocabulary, should cause so many problems - for learners of English and Spanish.
You nailed most of my grievances with Spanish. Prepositions, pronouns placement is tricky. Sometimes Spanish reads like formal English because you can't put prepositions at the end of sentences.
Learning spanish for me was hard as a whole, but I wanted to learn spanish to be able to speak to my dear friends who do not know english very well. After learning all the ins and outs of spanish - conjugating verbs, remembering vocabulary and idiomatic expressions, reviewing extensive reading comprehension passages in spanish, and even PRONOUNCING spanish - the hardest part for me was to actually start SPEAKING spanish. I remember when I first started speaking spanish, I did not reflect what I wanted to say because I felt I had to settle for something different in order to say what I thought was gramatically correct. I would always pause to correct myself even though I knew what I was already saying was just fine, so in the spur of the moment, I could be quite terse. I don't have that problem now, and I have my friends and SpanishDict to thank for that. Talking to my friends in spanish and using spanish chat rooms really helped me to remember to have fun while learning spanish! I guess the hardest part of learning spanish is to say what you need to say - if you know it, then SAY it. Also, it's great to know general rules and vocabulary, but you need a nimble mind to apply those rules to unfamiliar problems. I'm brushing up for an AP spanish test and I'm going to ace it! YEAH!!!
How about get and phrasal verbs in English?
Spanish: getting used to saying marica and huebón every three words 
Spanish
Many "linked verbs" and learning which preposition to use for each.
Idioms, idioms, idioms.
Many of the answers have addressed the difficulty of learning spanish and I agree with all of them but, as a native English speaker I recognize the difficulty of learning English. There are no set rules for pronunciation. How do you pronounce through. thru. OK, rough is ru, right? No, that is ruf (with the short u). OK, how do I know when to use the short u as opposed to the long u. You just have to know. OK, so trough must be pronounced as either tru or truf (with either a long or short u). No, trough is pronounced as trof (with a short o). Do I need to go on?
I find many of the same things already mentioned. But my main down fall is pronouciation.
Mismo alfabeto, distintas pronunciaciones. "No es lo mismo escribir que hablar".
I do agree with the very first post. My brain is having a hard time changing the structure of how I think in english to how I need to think in spanish. Lots to memorize when in comes to the different article , conjugations,etc.
For me it can be summed up in one word ,"population" .
I am surrounded by 22 million English speakers every day,
and 35 Spanish speakers on a good day.
I'm having difficulty with oral comprehension. It's my understanding that Spanish uses 30% more words, on average, as English. Also, the words are longer because every letter is pronounced rather than just slurring over parts of words (e.g., "tion" as /shun/ vs "cion" as /si on/ which I'm sure makes it difficult for Spanish speakers to learn English). So I find that Spanish speakers tend to also speak faster (for the most part) than English speakers because they are trying to convey their thoughts in a "reasonable" amount of time. It means less time to try to pick up statements before the speaker is already moving on to the next one.
Also, the fluidity of the language, in particular if one word ends in a vowel and the next one starts with a vowel. "Para averiguar" to me sounds exactly like "paraveriguar" and I have a lot of trouble determining where one word stops and the next one starts. Also, phrases like "va a hacer" with three "ah" sounds in a row makes it difficult to hear whether there is an "a" in the middle - or just makes me feel like a sheep when I'm saying it with all of the "ah" sounds 
