About me : trying to learn German, Speaking badly 6 languages (French, English, Portuguese, Spanish , Chti and Picard) understanding Italian. I did study Arabic and Swahili but forgot every thing. At the age of 60 I have the impression that learning a language is more difficult than before, or may be because German is hard to learn (or both). Using Anki program extensively to learn German. Next language I’ll learn is Dutch.
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Hi. Chti and Picard, huh? So does that mean you are originally from northern France or are you a big fan of the réalisateur Dany Boon? 
Born in Saint-Quentin, (Picardie) that’s why 
Hello again,
I’m not sure this hast something to do with age. I’m only 36, I studied Russian at University for about 2 years only early 20ies and I found this to be the hardest language for me of all.
I’ve learned English and French successfully in school to a C2 (English) and B2 (French) level and never experienced the difficulties I had with Russian although I did nothing different with Russian.
I started Arabic and Spanish about 5 years ago… Spanish is fairly easy for me, but I did have some troubles with memorizing Arabic vocabulary in the beginning.
I’m not sure if it has to do with the languages themselves or if I had a bad approach/the wrong teacher or setting for Russian… I think it largely depends on our background, our knowledge of other languages and also if the teacher and learning style fits our own preferences. I only recently started taking private lessons on italki in Arabic and my speaking confidence has improved a lot more during those couple of weeks than during the past 5 years of group courses at a community college. Maybe I’ll give Russian another try some day 
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Arabic is hard to learn! Not so many word in common with German, English or French, so the learning curve is long I guess. The rest is also about motivation and opportunity to speak. The problem also is that most Arabs speak French ou English, so it’s difficult to really practice. I guess it is the same with Russian.
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Yes, I have a couple of friends from Jordan who speak English and German fluently, but I think it is also an advantage, because they can easily explain things to me when I don’t understand something. I never had anyone to practice Russian with… I only studied it at university, but I never found any Russian speaking friends and back then there wasn’t much material available on the internet either to actually practise using different material than the study book we got at university.
I don’t know, maybe if I started Russian again now with the right italki tutor and with all those other learning materials available on the internet, things would be easier.
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