Skill in languages has more to do with insight into grammar or linguistic patterns (such as that lovely Semitic root system) than with being able to memorize well. And you wouldn't be able to read in four languages if you weren't skilled in languages.

I don't know which dictionary you have, but shame on it. Your instincts probably went for the Latin gender, which usually is indeed the same if the words are so close.

The thing with English present perfect continuous or for that matter all the continuous tenses is it doesn't really have a equivalent in the neighbouring languages (at least not in Dutch, French or German - I don't know about the Scandinavian neighbouring languages, or the Gaelic ones). Sure, those languages have a way of expressing that you are doing an act right as you speak/write, but it's not a real tense, and it's not used as often. In French, I don't see how you can come any closer to "I have been studying" than "j'ai été en train d'étudier", but that's rather bizarre and nobody would say it.

So there are really only two options, imparfait or passé composé, and of those two the latter is obviously better. Obviously to me, anyway, but you said yourself too that imparfait looked wrong.

Of course, "I have been studying" carries a connotation that "j'ai étudié" does not, the connotation of "I did it for such and such time and I'm still doing it now". To get that "and I'm still doing it now" connotation in French, you'd have to find some other way... perhaps by using depuis and making the verb simple present? J'étudie français depuis juste deux ans. That works. Still not entirely the same, but the essentials are there.

Most people have that problem. We actually had Dutch grammar in a fair bit of detail in primary and secondary school, but even so one goes more by instinct than by rules, and in any case I think they largely cut it now.


Edit: Google says "j'ai été en train de" is apparently used sometimes, but it also gives a link to a grammar forum where someone explains why it isn't used, so, well. In any case, the examples on Google are of a different kind, so in this situation, it's a no in any case.