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Language is a complex phenomenon that separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. It is known to be the golden key that enables us to express our feelings and thoughts, and simultaneously provides us with the ability to cross cultural boundaries. While several regions of the brain are dedicated to its processing and management, according to the twentieth century's leading linguist, Noam Chomsky, the mechanism of language acquisition formulates from innate processes. In other words, we are genetically programmed to learn and implement this specialized form of communication.

Learning any language can present certain challenges for people. Whether your native tongue is English, Portuguese or Chinese, there may have been obstacles along the path of acquisition. Certainly, the challenges of language learning are different depending on whether it is the mother tongue or a foreign language. In this paper, we will assess the challenges of learning Spanish for non-native speakers.

Spanish is not considered to be one of the more difficult languages to learn, but that doesn't classify it as being easy, either. Like any foreign language, this romance tongue has its challenges to overcome. Some of the more common of these are verb conjugation, nouns and adjectives with gender and count, along with preposition use.

The first notorious challenge in learning Spanish is the management of prepositions. It is said that a person is not fluent in a language unless they know how to manage its prepositions. Spanish is no exception. The two most difficult prepositions for most foreign speakers are "por" and "para" which mean "for". Since this cannot be summarized even in a few pages, how about just a little sample? If I want to say to my little sister, "I'm very happy for you", I construct "Me alegra mucho por ti". But, if I want to say to my teacher, "Here, this is for you", I would utter "Aqui, esto es para usted". Changing the personal pronoun from "ti" to "usted" had nothing to do with the distinction between "por" and "para", it has to do with the action.

Moving on to the next challenging of the bunch, nouns and adjectives with gender and count can be a headache for native English speakers, as the articles and modifying adjectives must be in agreement with the noun. Spanish categorizes all nouns into either feminine or masculine, and singular or plural. The corresponding definite or indefinite article that is employed with a particular noun depends on the gender and count

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