I am 30 years old. Is it hard learning another language?

it is very very hard, why not start with mandarin?

Cantonese has 8 tones made up of slight highs and lows at two levels. Like any Chinese dialect, it has very simple grammar, almost a simplistic building block structure. There are no declensions, no infinitives, no conjugation, and no tenses outside present and past.

Cantonese seems to be easer for English speakers to pronounce as compared to Mandarin.

Learning any Chinese dialect has its challenges in the need to restructure the way you see the world. Sometimes things must be much simplified from how we would think, such as trying to say a simple conditional sentence like "I would like to go if I could." This sentence is virtually impossible to express in Chinese. However you can say things like "He fixed my bike broken." LOL Things are simplified to a great degree and a lot is left to the understanding of the listener.

This is just the opposite challenge that the Chinese speaker faces when they want to learn English. They have to learn to be more precise in their use of language.

Learning a language at 30 all depends on your interest and willingness to apply yourself. Nothing is impossible that you put your mind to. However, if you really want to learn Chinese you would best find an environment to immerse yourself in. It is a very different world in there.

I didn't start learning Chinese until I was 27 and I now speak like a near native. Go for it!

I heard it's really hard... my friend says it's very hard and she's half Chinese :X

Hello I grew up in Hong Kong I'm naturally a native speaker of Cantonese. Having studied linguistics I do know Cantonese can be difficult to learn as we have a more complicated intonation than Mandarin. Mandarin speakers always find Cantonese harsh on their ears and just gibberish. And I do admit it doesn't sound harmonic as French.

But Cantonese is a lot more fun to learn than Mandarin as we have an enormous vocabulary of slangs - mostly cruel, smutty but so accurate that it puts a smile on your face. You can't find this in Mandarin (I speak both Cantonese and Mandarin). We often combine Cantonese with English to form new slangs it's fun too.

I'm now teaching my Australian boyfriend Cantonese and he being a monolingual finds it fun. I make cue cards with simple nouns and grammar for him.

It's never too late to learn! good luck
If you need any help with Cantonese I'm happy to help

PS. comment to user China Guru - in Cantonese we do have past, present continuous and future tenses - but we don't express that in verb conjugation but instead add a past/present continous and future tense MARKER to indicate the tense. We also have articles like English but it's often omitted when it's 'one' (eg. one car) as it's understood (there're exceptions but that's another story)

it really depends if you have learnt another language, and if you have language skills. i think that if you are determined enough, you will make it. i currently am doing about 4 languages, and i am fine. it is easier to learn cantonese though, if you understand chinese, as it kind of sounds the same.