It takes time

It takes time to get used to anything. You could think of it as a journey from 'here' to 'there'. The greater distance between the two points, the more time it takes to get used to the difference. A small difference would take less time. A large distance would take more.

As far as languages go, they lie different distances from each other. Again, some are close to what we are used to, but others are distant. It could be a difference of only a letter or two (as in the spelling of color/colour, center/centre) or some marks above or below certain letters (diacritics). At the other extreme the alphabets (or other writing systems) could have almost nothing in common.

Certain languages have common ancestors e.g. Dutch and German. Or a language may have fed into another (e.g. French into English).

There may be other 'extras' to get used to. There may be different verb tenses, noun cases or masculine, feminine and even neuter nouns. Perhaps the articles are missing, or there may not be plural forms. The adjectives may follow rather than precede the words they describe. The verb may come at the end of the sentence. Prepositions may be 'post'. There might not occur breaks between words. The writing may go from right to left, or from top to bottom.

Letters may be lost, added, or broken into fragments. There may be different alphabets, syllabaries, or the vowels may be missing entirely. Letter written in a cursive manner may be difficult to decipher. Then there's Chinese and Japanese. There may be tones, stresses and unusual phrasing and/or pronunciation that doesn't come naturally to you. Body language may play a huge role.

There may be elision. Sentence fragments. One word sentences.  It may all look like telegraphese! To extract meaning, you may need to build up an insider's knowledge of the language and culture too.The conversational objectives may be completely different. Perhaps communication is not about exchanging information, but about forming bonds between people, or about hiding what one really feels! The whole point of a language may be to avoid giving offense!!

Getting used to a language may be easy . . . or not.