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If I hear "Spanish is easy" ONE more time | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5452 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 17 of 137 30 May 2010 at 3:11pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
If those books taught the basic orthographical rules, time could be spent on truly irregluar verbs instead of verbs such as buscar and proteger. If you know how to spell, buscar is just as regular as amar and cantar. Edited by tractor on 30 May 2010 at 3:11pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Silvance5 Groupie United States Joined 5493 days ago 86 posts - 118 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, French | Message 18 of 137 30 May 2010 at 3:15pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Yeah, I guess you can't really call them irregular if they follow an easily identifiable pattern. I wish my German verbs would follow a pattern >.<
Edit: I deleted the post you quoted before you finished posting, because I noticed that my textbook didn't have them as irregular. Just my workbooks. Edited by Silvance5 on 30 May 2010 at 3:16pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| lynxrunner Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States crittercryptics.com Joined 5921 days ago 361 posts - 461 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Swedish, Haitian Creole | Message 19 of 137 30 May 2010 at 4:03pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
The working language of this community is English, not "the language you're learning". Not everyone on this community can read Spanish, so why make a post in Spanish? I'm certain you'll see such posts written in the Language Learning Logs where you can post in whatever language draws your fancy, but in seriousness that's a pretty poor reason to assume that Spanish isn't easy.
I take the stance that the OP made: Spanish is, compared to other languages, easier, but it's still difficult to learn by virtue of being a living language that is constantly changing. Unless you are learning closely related languages (like Spanish and French), language learning definitely involves a lot of work. It may involve more work for a language like Arabic or Mandarin, but it does not make the road to Spanish any less bumpy. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| L1539 Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5357 days ago 27 posts - 55 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 20 of 137 30 May 2010 at 4:39pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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A couple of points.
I definitely agree that Spanish is not an "easy" language to learn for native English speakers (by the same token, English isn't easy for Spanish speakers!). At the same time, I think it is clear that on average, it is one of the least difficult ones for them. It's very hard to believe that if all other factors are equal--individual ability, motivation, etc.--an English speaker will find Spanish almost as difficult as Mandarin or Navajo. Several people here have said there is no such thing as an "easy" language. I actually think this is somewhat questionable. It depends on what you mean by "language." For example, there are some varieties of speech (particularly in parts of the world where there are "dialect continnua") that are typically not mutually intelligible at first. Yet after a few days or weeks of exposure, they become so. Do these count as separate languages? Some people would say yes, others no. If they are counted as languages, then it does seem that learning one is generally pretty easy for speakers of the other. Norwegian and Swedish are considered (officially and by many people) to be separate languages. I don't think one can argue that it's particularly hard for speakers of one to learn the other (according to most people, the two are in large measure mutually intelligible without any study at all). Finally, while it's true that it's not easy to learn a language as different from one's own as English is from Spanish, it must be acknowledged that for some people, it's much easier (or at least much less difficult) than for others. Just like with math, music etc. Some people become fluent in multiple languages very different from their own, while others who have equally favorable learning circumstances and motivation seem not to be able to learn another to save their life. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6942 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 21 of 137 30 May 2010 at 4:45pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
An English speaker will find it easier to make rapid initial progress in Spanish not only compared to Mandarin and Navajo, but also compared to French and German. Just one of those things. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| L1539 Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5357 days ago 27 posts - 55 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 22 of 137 30 May 2010 at 5:03pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Many people say that Spanish is only relatively easy for English speakers at the beginning stages, that it gets much harder later on. In some ways, I find the opposite to be true. The basic, everyday vocabulary of Spanish (and French) is very different from English, and the grammar is quite different. But the more "sophisticated" vocabulary--much of the legal and political terminology, for example--is very similar to English. Therefore, after getting a decent grasp of grammar and a rudimentary vocabulary, an English speaker can actually progress faster in these languages in terms of learning what's necessary to talk about things and express ideas than they did at the beginning. 8 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Wise owl chick Senior Member Ecuador Joined 5317 days ago 122 posts - 137 votes Studies: English | Message 23 of 137 30 May 2010 at 5:21pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I agree.
I don't understand about the bus and the old ladies, and I want to know who are the snobs? For sure some visitors of this forum are snob, I think as well, but I think that in comparison, Spanish is easy but I'm not one of those snob. In my opinoin, Spanish is truly not a diffciult language in comparison with the others, therefore to say that it's the easy choise in school is accurate. Spanish's definitely much easeir as Ancient Greek, Latin or German, which are the other foreign languages which you can chose.
You refer the anglophones who say this when another perosn can't speak English, or not very good? Or you mean if you don't speak Spanish? I think that it's not just to criticise at all about the languages which a person can speak or not. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6942 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 24 of 137 30 May 2010 at 5:37pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I don't think of it so much as getting much harder later on, rather, some of the tasks that need to be accomplished past the beginner/intermediate stage are no longer obviously easier for Spanish than for other comparable languages. You need to develop good listening comprehension. That just takes a lot of listening. You need to learn to express yourself idiomatically, in a way that sounds natural to native speakers. That takes a lot of practice speaking and/or writing, and getting a lot of input that provides models for expressing yourself naturally. There are finer points of grammar and usage that must be studied if the language is to be used professionally, or if one just wants perfection. As far as vocabulary goes, there is still plenty of it that is not based on cognates. Edited by frenkeld on 30 May 2010 at 5:38pm 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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