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Spanish: A wolf in sheep’s clothing | ||
Tags: Difficulty | Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6442 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 57 of 73 14 July 2010 at 4:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
Which part of "usually gives a clue" should be read as "is absolutely without exceptions"? Spanish noun gender is not trivially easy, but it is still a lot easier than German or French noun gender. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| GauchoBoaCepa Triglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5422 days ago 172 posts - 199 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish | Message 58 of 73 18 July 2010 at 5:39am | IP Logged | |||||
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I've never found Spanish easy although my mother language has a noticeable proximity with it...the problem is that as time goes by studying Spanish gets harder and harder....if you decide to try to pick up the regional expressions and slangs...wow...it worsens.
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| zooplah Diglot Senior Member United States zooplah.farvista.net Joined 6371 days ago 100 posts - 116 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: German | Message 59 of 73 16 August 2010 at 6:06am | IP Logged | |||||
Spanish is definitely easier than German: no cases (other than the direct-object and indirect-object pronouns), gender is usually known by the ending, the definite/indefinite articles are easy to remember (un, una, el, los, la, las)[1], word order is fairly regular[2], plurals are also fairly regular[3], etc. Both languages have the subjunctive mood and imperfect tense. Spanish verbs are a nightmare, though. There are three conjugations, with some dissimilar rules between conjugations (especially in the stem-changing verbs), which is much harder than even German, which is fairly easy if you can get past the subjunctive, the imperfect, and the lack of a preterit. I believe it's really not that difficult, but requires more time and energy than most people can give (but that really goes for all languages). [1] Compare German ein, eine, eines, einem, einen, einer; der, die, das, des, dem, den. (I hope I didn't miss any :) [2] German is usually SVO, but VSO in a preceding subordinate clause and SOV in a following subordinate clause. [3] Compare Haus => Häuser (house => houses), but Maus => Mäuse (mouse => mice). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| zooplah Diglot Senior Member United States zooplah.farvista.net Joined 6371 days ago 100 posts - 116 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: German | Message 60 of 73 16 August 2010 at 6:27am | IP Logged | |||||
Are you honestly claiming that Spanish is easier than Esperanto? In Esperanto, there are no irregular verbs; nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs logically derive from each other; and the agglutination helps immensely. You use -em to mean an inclination, -ec to mean a state, etc., and you don't have to struggle with memorizing derivative forms that can't be guessed. In fact, I was recently struggling with my Facebook profile, as I wanted to try to translate my Esperanto profile into German and Spanish (both are so full of exceptions that it's hard for me to remember), and I came across a problem translating meminstruiteco to either. "figebovetarejo" - meh, in this case, I wouldn't interpret it as a yard; more of an overcrowded, unclean structure. Of course, unlike German, combining more than five nonterminal morphemes is extremely rare in Esperanto. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| zooplah Diglot Senior Member United States zooplah.farvista.net Joined 6371 days ago 100 posts - 116 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: German | Message 61 of 73 16 August 2010 at 6:41am | IP Logged | |||||
It's hardly surprising that Latin required that a preposition's object come after the preposition, but that's not true in the Germanic languages. Because of the influence of Latin on English, ending a sentence with a preposition is considered by some to be an error, but it's very common in colloquial English. "To whom do you speak" is formal in English and nowhere near Old English. It's definitely Late Modern English. Even Early Modern English would be something like "To whom dost thou speak?". Old English was a Low German dialect, so before the influence of Latin, one would assume that it would have a Germanic grammar. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| zooplah Diglot Senior Member United States zooplah.farvista.net Joined 6371 days ago 100 posts - 116 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: German | Message 62 of 73 16 August 2010 at 6:46am | IP Logged | |||||
It's funny that you should mention Borges. I just ran across this article today: http://gxirafo.blogspot.com/2010/08/borges-en-ido.html I really have no idea who it is. I know, illiterate me. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| zooplah Diglot Senior Member United States zooplah.farvista.net Joined 6371 days ago 100 posts - 116 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: German | Message 63 of 73 16 August 2010 at 6:51am | IP Logged | |||||
LOL, I don't think I'll ever get to that level, even in Esperanto. The funny thing is that when I see a transcript of an Esperanto speech, I can follow along, but just listening, I probably miss about half the words. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Khublei Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Yugoslavia homestayperu.net Joined 5350 days ago 90 posts - 141 votes Speaks: English*, Irish*, Spanish Studies: Russian, Khasi, French, Albanian | Message 64 of 73 16 August 2010 at 10:13am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'd been looking for this topic! First found it a few weeks ago but then it seemed to disappear.
I completely agree with this thread. I first started learning Spanish in Peru in 2007 and quickly (within 2-3 months) could converse easily with my colleagues. A few months later I was able to work totally in Spanish. But I never had to write/type anything, so I spoke fast to avoid anyone hearing my mistakes. It was only when I returned to Ireland in 2008 and took an college course in Spanish that I realised how much work I had to do on tenses I never knew existed. I now know I have a lot of work to do if I'm ever to get to C2 standard. My biggest issue is that I no longer need to speak Spanish, and I'd prefer to study more unusual languages (to us Irish) like Khasi, Hindi and Albanian. I still hope to do the C2 some day, but I know it'll be a struggle. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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