Italian is actually not that difficult to learn...I'd say easier than Spanish and much easier than French. Learning the rules is the biggest part, but that's with all romance languages. Yes, Italian has FOURTEEN (14!!) tenses, but I don't know one single Italian who knows them. In fact, Italians in the north don't even use past simple; only in the south do they use it. Italians here use past participle, present, and future tense.
It's strange because if you want to say, "I went to the bar" in Italian in the north, you have to say "Io sono andato al bar." If you are in the south, you say, "Andai al bar". I think...I've never used simple past in Italian. So in effect, everyone from the north says "I have done, I have gone, I have blah blah blah" instead of "I did, I went, I blah blah blah".
I know. Weird.