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Similarly and for the same reasons, they have a lot of trouble combining the Spanish R with the Spanish G or J sound. Spanish words such as "jarra," "Jorge," or "rojo" tend to be very difficult even for Lusophones who are advanced Spanish speakers. But I agree that Portuguese is a lot more phonetically complex than most (if not all) Western European languages.
Seems to be back up (Europe/NL).
It gets even worse. Harvard Housing charges students "market rates" [0], i.e. they don't even subsidize what they are not paying in taxes off their own students' rent.
[0] http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2014/01/harvard-housin...
+1.
I don't think conjugation is such a problem. I'm learning Spanish at the moment and learning the various endings is actually quite easy.
Did you get to Subjuntivo or Pretérito vs. Imperfecto yet? Unless you already speak Portuguese or Italian, that's when the verbs get tricky :)