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Because so many people seem to claim that chinese grammar is easy, or that it has no grammar, i made a list of things i find frustrating.
First, i want to point out that a language cannot have a grammar. All languages have grammar, just with different levels of complexity. Second, compared to some things, chinese does have less grammar, or an easier grammar, or it would seem. But there are a lot of corner cases as you get further in. I'm not going to talk about most of them here.
Instead i'm going to talk about things that tripped me up from the very beginning.
The first of these is quite a big point, but comes from the fact that these days people try to fit the chinese grammar into a western linguistic theory, which doesn't work super well because the distinction between nouns, verbs, and adjectives is often much less defined than it is in a lot of indo-european languages. This means the writing system ends up with some confusing parts like 的 地 得 having distinct particles. I can't say for certain whether this is due to western linguistic influence, as i've found it quite hard to look up. However, i do know that a huge number of chinese people on the internet do not seem to know the difference between them. In use, i don't think there is really a difference between them either beyond the type of word they are modifying.
Second thing, chinese seems to have an adjective rhythm that isn't talked about. Not just in adjectives---lots of words are two syllables in most contexts for the sound, but with adjectives it seems that whether or not a 很 is necessary seems to come down to whether it's one syllable or not. I'm not certain about this, but it's what i've noticed in speech.
Next, why can't i say 不有？
Next, chinese does have a plural form, just for pronouns.
Next, when and when not to use 的. This also seems quite dependent on the speaker. It's common to say it's not necessary for close relations, like parents. Then there are some set expressions which might not or might have unexpected 的s, and some long noun phrases with lots of modifiers will only use one 的, and some people might add lots of 的 in the same phrase.
Next, measure words, which for a lot of them fall into the same arbitrariness of grammatical gender in other languages. Except that sometimes it's acceptable to use 个, and sometimes it's not.
Next, for my english mind, the fact that 以后 is in the future and 以前 is in the past is totally opposite to my perception of "looking back" and "looking forward".
Next, 了 is overloaded. It has a lot of grammatical use. Made worse by the fact the word 了 has the same character smh
Next, time phrases that do or don't take measure words. A lot of them don't because they are themselves measure words, but then 月 needs a measure word to distinguish it from month names.
Finally, location complements where the word order is just different from everywhere else. That is, 我住在英国 not 我在英国住，or 我走到公园 rather than 我到公园走.