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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Sir Nigel Senior Member United States Joined 7104 days ago 1126 posts - 1102 votes  2 sounds | Message 17 of 67 12 October 2005 at 3:11am | IP Logged | ||
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I think a lot of unknowledgeable people claim Spanish is "so easy". Some of them probably say that because they think English is so difficult (as we've mentioned above). While orthography is a dream come true, verb tenses are a monstrous beast that never wants to be learnt. As rated on this website, the difficulty of Spanish is close to English so like any language it just takes time.
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| cbashara Senior Member United States adventuresinspanish. Joined 7129 days ago 186 posts - 188 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 18 of 67 26 October 2005 at 8:46am | IP Logged | ||
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When I say English (my native language) is a hard language to learn I am saying it to give respect to anyone who tries to learn it as a foreign language. It has a lot of inconsistencies, orthographic difficulties and irregularities that (in my very limited experience) do not exist to the same degree in other languages. However, I would not say it is the *hardest* to learn. That is very subjective! In addition to that, as others have mentioned, the exposure to English is tremendous. I believe this alone makes it more accessible. It also has relatively simple verb conjugation (something that plagues most people learning romance languages). Also, as I have mentioned in earlier posts, it is easier to *get by* with a less than perfect accent because we are used to a variety of them. We hear our language spoken in many many different ways. It is also a somewhat flexible language. As for Spanish, my target language, I find it both easy and maddening at the same time! I love the pronunciation and the cognates to English. However, gender, verb conjugation, and articles challenge me everyday! Another factor is how native speakers treat someone learning their language. I have had nothing but postive experiences both in Spain and Latin America when I use my disjointed Spanish. This was not the case in France. That makes the language very intimidating, thus harder to learn in my opinion. I would have to say for me the hardest languages appear to be those with completely different alphabets and tonal emphasis. Boggles my mind a little bit.
Edited by cbashara on 26 October 2005 at 8:47am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7103 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 19 of 67 26 October 2005 at 10:18am | IP Logged | ||
Yes. I would have to concur that the French do not take kindly to "disjointed" French. I well remember my first attempts in the face of withering contempt. This proved excellent motivation for me to improve. On the other hand, my brother-in-law's French is quite simply excruciating to behold. The advantage is he has a skin as thick as a rhinoceros so he carries on murdering the language regardless - seemingly oblivious to the Gallic derision in front of him. The disadvantage is he's made no effort to improve and his French is as bad now as it was when I first met him about 10 years ago. Andy. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6949 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 20 of 67 21 November 2005 at 1:24am | IP Logged | ||
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A person continues learning a language his entire life, even if it is his native tongue. For example, in high school I spent a lot of my free time for two years or so studying new vocabulary for the SAT's. Even yesterday I had to look up the word "undulate". I learn new words and idioms in my naive language all the time. A person who has been learning a language since birth, and continues to learn it still, could understandably look at a 20-year old just starting out and think, "there's no way that person will be able to catch up and make it to the point I'm at now". Furthermore, if I had been learning a language such as Spanish since birth, and if 20 years later I felt like I were learning it still, and I went to a website and saw that this same language recieved two out of five cacti for difficulty, I would naturally think that this person is underestimating the difficulty of my language.
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| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7376 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 21 of 67 21 November 2005 at 9:59am | IP Logged | ||
If it's any consolation the French - especially the Parisians - pick on just anything that is not like them, including non-French native French accents such as Swiss, Canadian or Belgian. The Belgians get the rawest end of the deal as they are stereotyped as being very, very stupid. I'll try to post some accounts of how I learned to tame the Parisians - very entertaining experience it was. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7103 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 22 of 67 21 November 2005 at 10:05am | IP Logged | ||
Now that I would love to read! Andy 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bart Triglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 7160 days ago 155 posts - 159 votes Speaks: Dutch*, French, English Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese, Swedish | Message 23 of 67 21 November 2005 at 1:24pm | IP Logged | ||
The French speaking Belgians ARE stupid! (just kidding ;)) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sir Nigel Senior Member United States Joined 7104 days ago 1126 posts - 1102 votes 2 sounds | Message 24 of 67 21 November 2005 at 6:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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Moi aussi ! Je veux l'écrire.
I must say it was very interesting to go to the French/Dutch speaking area in Belgium. It almost felt like no language in particular was preferred. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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