French is a veeeeeeeeeery difficult language to learn, it's less about learning and understanding rules than just learning loads of things off. The problem is that every rule has an exception, and there's an exception to every exception (and an exception to that exception). You end up spending more time learning the exceptions than you do the actual rules. Really even a long period of immersion will never let you match native speakers. There's also the fact that so many things sound far too similar to be comfortable with (even today I got mixed up with 'je veux' and 'j'ai vu' - it doesn't help that the French speak so fast!). That said, it's a beautiful language and well worth the difficulty in learning. I'll always have a place in my heart for the Romance Languages.
English is similarly ridiculous in a lot of ways, though native speakers never really realise that. American English largely fixes the pronunciation issues of British English but I'm something of a purist so it's illogical spellings for me!
