As a Clojure noob I can see 'map' and quite a few other functional things seeming seeming like magic to programmers who aren't used to the paradigm. Until you get used to thinking that way and using the tools, they seem a lot less intuitive.
I can't speak a speck of German. The words look so long and intimidating and I find that if I try to pronounce them I get lost from the beginning to the end. The worst part is that sometimes German words look like something in English and when I try to use them in sentences my German speaking friends giggle at me. German definitely seems less intuitive as a spoken human language.