If I hear "Spanish is easy" ONE more time (Specific Languages) Language Learning Forum

If I hear "Spanish is easy" ONE more time
Tags: Stereotypes \| Difficulty \| Grammar \| Spanish
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Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages

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chalokun
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Message 57 of 137

02 June 2010 at 5:38pm | IP Logged

Silvance5 wrote:

tractor wrote:

Silvance5 wrote:

tractor wrote:

Buscar is a regular verb.

It's a stem changing verb, which I'd consider irregular. If you don't consider stem changing verbs as irregular, then
Spanish likely doesn't have more than 25 irregular verbs.

It is not irregular and it is not a stem changing verb either. The spelling of the /k/-sound changes depending on
the following vowel, and that change is completely regular.

Mover is a stem canging verb: mover > mueve

It's an orthographic change isn't it? Just like G ->Gu and Z ->C in subjunctive and imperative. And yeah, I used the term "stem changing" incorrectly, that was my fault. But my Spanish teacher always called orthographic changes "irregular."

it is a regular change BUT among the verbs ending in AR,this pattern is enough different of let's say Cambiar, enough to claim it as irregular or at least as an own subgroup of verbs ending in -ar;I would say the same of Comer & Conocer for instance;well when you don't stick to irregular & verbs ending in -ar -er & -ir, you would soon be able to count up approximatively 120 differnts patterns & knowing only the declension of COmer won't give you a hint of declension of Conocer so we could at least say they don't are parts of the same Subgroup.
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L1539
Diglot
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Speaks: English*, Spanish

Message 58 of 137

02 June 2010 at 5:39pm | IP Logged

One question I'd pose to the original poster is: Why get so riled up if some people say Spanish is easy and you disagree? I'm a pianist. In my judgment, even if someone has great talent, becoming a great pianist is much harder than learning a language (I'm not talking about achieving a career, just about playing the instrument at a high level). But if someone said, "It's easy to play the piano," I wouldn't get upset, I'd just think they were incredibly ignorant. It's not like they're saying "The Holocaust never happened" or something like that.
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frenkeld
Diglot
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Studies: German

Message 59 of 137

02 June 2010 at 6:01pm | IP Logged

tractor wrote:

If Spanish is such an easy language for English speakers, I wonder why there's hardly any post written in correct and idiomatic Spanish and without spelling mistakes in the Spanish sub-forum (bar those written by Spanish natives of course).

Perfectionists don't waste their time in the forums, they use it to study.

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tractor
Tetraglot
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Norway
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Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan
Studies: French, German, Latin

Message 60 of 137

02 June 2010 at 6:27pm | IP Logged

chalokun wrote:

Silvance5 wrote:

tractor wrote:

Silvance5 wrote:

tractor wrote:

Buscar is a
regular verb.

It's a stem changing verb, which I'd consider irregular. If you don't consider stem changing verbs as irregular,
then
Spanish likely doesn't have more than 25 irregular verbs.

It's an orthographic change isn't it? Just like G ->Gu and Z ->C in subjunctive and imperative. And yeah, I used
the term "stem changing" incorrectly, that was my fault. But my Spanish teacher always called orthographic
changes "irregular."

it is a regular change BUT among the verbs ending in AR,this pattern is enough different of let's say Cambiar,
enough to claim it as irregular or at least as an own subgroup of verbs ending in -ar;I would say the same of
Comer & Conocer for instance;well when you don't stick to irregular & verbs ending in -ar -er & -ir, you would
soon be able to count up approximatively 120 differnts patterns & knowing only the declension of COmer won't
give you a hint of declension of Conocer so we could at least say they don't are parts of the same
Subgroup.

Buscar is completely regular as long as you know how to spell. Buscar follows exactly the same pattern as other
completely regular AR-verbs, such as amar, cantar and cambiar. The only change is an orthographic change,
completely regular and necessary to maintain pronunciation.

Conocer does not follow exactly the same pattern as comer:
comer > como
conocer > conozco

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tractor
Tetraglot
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Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan
Studies: French, German, Latin

Message 61 of 137

02 June 2010 at 6:32pm | IP Logged

frenkeld wrote:

tractor wrote:

If Spanish is such an easy language for English speakers, I wonder why there's
hardly any post written in correct and idiomatic Spanish and without spelling mistakes in the Spanish sub-forum
(bar those written by Spanish natives of course).

Perfectionists don't waste their time in the forums, they use it to study.

If it were as easy as some claim, you wouldn't have to be a perfectionist to master it.
4 persons have voted this message useful

tracker465
Senior Member
United States
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Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch

Message 62 of 137

02 June 2010 at 8:47pm | IP Logged

quendidil wrote:

tracker465 wrote:

For me, however, it becomes incredibly annoying to hear so many people claim how easy Spanish is, when there are other languages which are constantly overlooked as being easy. Spanish may not have cases to deal with, but it makes up for it with the large number of verb tenses and conjugations. Once, my Spanish professor told the class that Spanish was easy and logical compared to many other languages, but my counter argument would be to ask how the verb conjugations are logical. Sorry I do not know how to make the accent marks on this computer, but are the following really so logical and easy: hablar: -o, -as, -a / -aba, abas, aba / -e, aste, -o / etc. Sure many of the verbs follow this pattern or with -er and -ir verbs their respective patterns, but the tenses and person numbers are designated merely by some random letters tacked onto the end of the word. I studied Latin for 3 years, and it was difficult. Just becomes Spanish dropped the cases does not make Spanish, or "sloppy Latin" as easy as some people like to imagine it to be.

On the contrary, I always hear Dutch people telling me that their language is so difficult to learn. I cannot understand why, as the language is comprised of simple spelling rules, simple conjugations, etc. Norwegian and Swedish also have very simple grammars, yet for some reason Spanish is always crowned as being such an easy language to learn, when in reality, I think some of these other languages would be much easier for a native English speaker. Hence why I become annoyed when I hear Spanish being hailed as "the easy language" for English speakers to learn.

So your issue here is with people saying Spanish is easy when other languages are easy? I don't see what the problem is here; your scale of comparison is too narrow, Spanish is usually easier for monlingual speakers of English than most non-Western languages and even among Western languages a number of other factors make it comparatively easier, including but not limited to geographic distance between countries speaking Spanish and English, availability of media, number of native speakers, cognates. Just because some of the other modern Germanic languages are arguably easier (at least in some aspects) to learn for an English speaker than Spanish is no reason to stop saying Spanish is easy - it is easy compared to Turkish, Mongolian, Urdu, Arabic, Icelandic etc.

But the thing which irks me is that Spanish grammar is arguably not easy compared to many other languages. I understand that Spanish is much easier to learn than Bulgarian, Arabic, or some Asian languages, for example, but easier than German, for instance? Vocabulary wise, I can understand that an argument can be made, but grammatically? The one point that everyone seems to avoid, when people argue against Spanish being easy is the number of tenses and conjugations. I just don't understand how the few German teneses and four simple cases make German so much more difficult to learn than a language, which has 14 or so tenses with dozens of conjugations to boot. Spanish may not have cases, but it certainly makes up for it in conjugations and tenses, and this just does not seem particularly easy in my opinion.

Many non-native speakers may "speak" Spanish, but how many speak it well?
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frenkeld
Diglot
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Speaks: Russian*, English
Studies: German

Message 63 of 137

02 June 2010 at 9:47pm | IP Logged

German is widely recognized as requiring longer than Spanish for an English speaker to master.

It appears that German's 3 genders, 4 cases, messy noun plurals, articles marked for gender and case, unusual word order, and whatever else German has, both in its grammar and otherwise, somehow suffice to offset the complexities of the Spanish verb tense system to an English-speaking brain.

Edited by frenkeld on 02 June 2010 at 9:56pm
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tracker465
Senior Member
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Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch

Message 64 of 137

02 June 2010 at 10:36pm | IP Logged

frenkeld wrote:

Reality is known to slay beautiful theories on occasion.
German is widely recognized as requiring longer than Spanish for an English speaker to master. It appears that German's 3 genders, 4 cases, messy noun plurals, articles marked for gender and case, unusual word order, and whatever else German has, both in its grammar and otherwise, somehow suffice to offset the complexities of the Spanish verb tense system to an English-speaking brain.

Not meaning any disrespect, but I just do not believe this for a minute. As an American, I would believe the argument that for American students of Spanish, it is a much easier language to learn than German or Dutch, for example, due to the fact of exposure. If I drive to the local Wal Mart I can probably buy a magazine in Spanish, for example. Throw in the large group of cognates shared among Spanish and English, for multisyllable words, and I understand that this would provide an English speaker with an advantage.

When it comes down to grammar, however, I believe that Spanish has a much more complex grammar than German, Dutch, or a large number of other languages. I tutored a friend at the university in German this spring, and he struggled with the cases, but when I began to quiz him on English grammar (direct/indirect object, subject, etc) he also had trouble picking out the parts of speech, regardless of the fact that German has cases and English has lost most of it.

I once heard that the first foreign language that anyone learns is more dificult to learn than any proceeding languages. I also have heard that to learn about the grammar of one's native tongue, one of the easiest ways is to learn a foreign language. Without knowing English grammar, German cases, Latin cases, etc will be obviously difficult and hard to understand. But if a person already has a good concept of English grammar and parts of speech, then the cases are not such a big deal. With that aside, the Spanish tenses can be incredibly complex and tricky, so it just astounds me that people seem to ignore this.

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