Tottenham Hotspur defender Emerson Royal admits that learning English is proving a challenge for him.

The 22-year-old, who signed from Barcelona on deadline day, has experienced a difficult start to life in the Premier League.

Emerson is hoping that he can soon pick up the language and improve his integration with the team.

"English is a little harder to learn," Emerson Royal told Globo Esporte.

"Spanish was different, a little more like Portuguese, you could get a bit of a sense of what people wanted to tell you.

"Not here, if you don't know, it's hard to understand, because you have no idea what people are telling you. The first few days were very complicated because I didn't understand anything at all.

"Today I can understand a lot, I can communicate, not 100%, far from it, but now I can communicate more with people, I understand more things.

"Now I'm going to study more too, it'll be easier. So I think that language is now a problem, a difficulty, but in a short period of time I'll work it out fine.

"The strangest thing, in the beginning, is the weather. It's not that cold now, but you can see that it's much colder here than in other countries I've been in.

"And also the language, the language is a little complicated, I don't speak English yet. But when you arrive, different language, complicated to get used to.

"But I will work on that, the language and working to adapt as quickly as possible to the cold. But for the rest, food, at the club, which has players I've played with, like Lo Celso, has South American and Brazilian players, so for me it's more relaxed in this sense of adaptation."