So I have solved quite a bit of help request here. As a native Chinese I find Chinese quite easily. The grammar is not so aggressive (other than 文言文 but even that's still better) like English. The words are harder to write smoothly, yes I feel you. My handwriting succ dic too. I believe my English writen looks better than my Chinese ones. Unlike my siblings and my relatives, I never had problem with pronunciation. (yes I use dialect every day) For Chinese, abbreviation differs in every community. 东三雪碧 ＝ 东马小三，雪菜碧池。Touma whore, Setsuna bitch. Which needed some time to get use to. Usually can be get it within days, and all the conplicated puns would be solved in weeks. For vocabulary, Proverb, idiom, poetry, Adage, Xiehouyu. (I think I missed one). This is where your foundation comes from. Usually native learn this during preschools. Like memorize 黄帝内经 (not in my era, but it's quite popular now. I only learn simple poetry like 慈母手中线，望庐山瀑布 some thing similar). Than you revise that in you element schools, things gets sirous after 4th grades. That's when they basically breath idiom. I remember buying a idiomnary for my friends girl. Some time big words poped out here and there in the test books, even I have to use my phone to search once few page. Highschool is where the perks of a native Chinese. Survey shows that highschools students reconise twice the character count compared to averaged adults. At roughly 6000 characters, it's insane and people in average language related job know about 4000 character. They are also proficient in 言文言. Yes so that's why may Web Novels writers are writing shits, they are just rushing the word count, randomly throwing out phrases on a whimps. 和谐/河蟹 read as internet censoring slang, basically words that invented to counter words censorship. E.G: 软妹币，又又飞，草泥马，沙雕。 Then we have wapanese, some time since when do we have 敬语 like -chan(酱) -kun(君) -san(桑)... Those are for hentai doujin Manga scanlation... There are also words like up主(my icon), 现充, 自宅警备员, 梗. Can be quite hard. And then we have English and Chinese combo to made up of double the difficulty. God who on earth invented those things. E.G.. 无fuck说 (无话可说), 深藏blue (深藏不露), 笑skr人 (笑死个人), book思 (不可思议). Unique cases 100% English "Facebook" = 非死不可. TLDR: Im doing a poll in finding what's most problematic in learning Chinese. Each people have 3 votes, I'm make a guide on top 2 voted issues. Kinda like a dictionary. Poll Deadline 14days from OP.
From the questions I've seen popping up a lot in the forums - comprehension. Knowing which characters are meant to go together as a phrase or verb in what situations. A lot of the "I need help" questions stem from not knowing how to start unpacking a sentence and then misreading it. One might place that under vocabs etc, but those are completely two different things. Just because you know a phrase exists doesn't mean you know when a combination of words is a phrase and when it isn't.
I just looked on mbdg.net, and 非死不可(Facebook) is a pun read "you must die". I didn't know it was a death sentence. I don't speak Chinese, but learning another language requires learning new syntax(if it's different) and learning new words. Learning to spell the new words is also a barrier, but that is different from learning the language.
<Shī Shì Shí Shī Shǐ> “Shí Shì Shī Shì Shī Shì, Shì Shī, Shì Shí Shí Shī.Shì Shí Shí Shì Shì Shì Shī. Shí Shí, Shì Shí Shī Shì Shì. Shì Shí, Shì Shī Shì Shì Shì. Shì Shì Shì Shí Shī, Shì Shǐ Shì, Shǐ Shì Shí Shī Shì Shì. Shì Shí Shì Shí Shī Shī, Shì Shí Shì. Shí Shì Shī, Shì Shǐ Shì Shì Shí Shì. Shí Shì Shì, Shì Shǐ Shì Shí Shì Shí Shī. Shí Shí, Shǐ Shí Shì Shí Shī, Shí Shí Shí Shī Shī. Shì Shì Shì Shì.”
Add on, yeah I forgot about 候文(sorobun) morden days, it's not that difficult to understand, but it's a pain to write them, technically it's not really common unless you translates tweet post or some bulletins boards. I'll add this as an additions, we'll I'm not really good at this too. Technically it's not even Chinese.