Learning ABAP is not particularly difficult if you know other programming languages.
Let's first distinguish between ABAP and ABAP OO. ABAP is the old, procedural language and ABAP OO is its extension with classes.
ABAP has the usual control structures, like if-then-else or loops. Its syntax takes a bit of getting used to (I found especially annoying the part about putting or not putting spaces before parentheses), but is definitely doable.
There are some structures you don't find in C++ and C#, for example the grouping of functions in function groups, which have their own local variables, so if you call something that is in a different function group, things can get messy.
But generally, if you understand scope and namespaces, it shouldn't be a problem.
I found ABAP OO pretty straightforward compared to ABAP, because it basically only added the classes / packages that I knew from C++ / C# before.
How to learn them, I would propose the following for someone who is new to ABAP and wants a DEEP knowledge of it (see later the more functional aspects):
-buy yourself a proper ABAP book, e.g. something from SAP Press
-don't read it just yet
-start with a web course or a simple book, along the lines of "learn ABAP in 24 hours"
-start coding
-as you are coding, you will inevitably ask yourself: "how does this and that work? is the PERFORM using pass-by-reference or pass-by-value for passing the arguments?" Look those questions up in your proper ABAP book
-probably after a few months, you will be familiar enough with the language that you can read through the book without falling asleep
Just a caveat: It IS a useful skill to know ABAP programming, but even if you don't consider the other technologies SAP consists of (like workflow or PDF Forms, that don't have anything to do with ABAP), there are still a lot of frameworks that differ in their logic. So just like even though you know C++, knowing the Win32 framework does not mean you can start banging out code that runs under UNIX, knowing ABAP does not mean that you can work productively in a specific module right away. Unfortunately, SAP modules tend to use different frameworks, some of them more reused than others.
If you do not want a deep knowledge of ABAP, but want to understand the SAP modules functionally, you should consider using the products themselves in addition to programming and learning about the functional aspects.
I'm afraid there is really no quick way to learn how the "SAP World" functions; you need to have a bit of technical, functional and also architectural knowledge for that and since the modules are so vastly different from all those aspects, it takes a lot of time until you can have a vast overview of everything. But even with technical and some functional knowledge you would be well on your way; as they say, "in SAP, nobody expects you to know everything".
