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If I hear "Spanish is easy" ONE more time | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| L1539 Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5360 days ago 27 posts - 55 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 73 of 137 03 June 2010 at 12:49am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I think this discussion has basically become pointless. Asking "Which language has the more difficult grammar: Spanish or German?" is like asking "Which is the better movie: 'The Godfather' or 'The Shawshank Redemption'?". There's no objective answer to either question.
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| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6945 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 74 of 137 03 June 2010 at 1:31am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Maybe you haven't found the right approach to these endings yet. I remember working through the three basic conjugation patterns first, and then through a number of specific irregular and various model verbs one by one, writing out their various inflected forms on a sheet of paper enough times for it to feel automatic. Knowing when to use a subjunctive can be tricky, of course, but I somehow never thought of the endings themselves as a big deal since then. Perhaps there is some type of drilling or exercises, made-up or from some popular workbook, that will crack this problem for you. Edited by frenkeld on 03 June 2010 at 1:53am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tracker465 Senior Member United States Joined 5354 days ago 355 posts - 496 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 75 of 137 03 June 2010 at 2:49am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Yes, I admit that I just need to put more effort into memorizing the Spanish verb endings so that the endings come naturally for all of the tenses (I can conjugate the various tenses I learned in my head, but quickly choosing a problem tends to make me act slower). I forget why the original poster became annoyed about people stating that Spanish is so easy, but this is the reason for me. I just don't understand the logic behind how a language can be considered so easy, if one has to dedicate so much effort into memorizing the verb endings for many tenses, just so that they come to one naturally and quickly. In this manner, languages such as German and Dutch are much simpler, and therefore, when I always hear about how difficult German is to learn compared to Spanish, it just surprises me, since (to me anyway) a few cases are not that big of a deal. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| chalokun Tetraglot Groupie FranceRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5474 days ago 58 posts - 55 votes Speaks: French, Spanish*, English, Japanese | Message 76 of 137 03 June 2010 at 10:16am | IP Logged | ||||||||
there si also another problem for me :it is the expression of nuances in the speech:i'm native in both French & Spanish & when it comes to translate let's say an history book in one language to another I still foun difficulties to fully describes nuances of the speech in the process of translation;one example :if simple past in Spanish must be rendered by "passé composé" in Frenchin oral speech, it has to be simple past in French in Written texts but not always,so you get very frustrated not being able to convey all the meaning & I am just speaking here of translation between 2 romance languages...so my question is how many speak it perfectly?MOst of speakers I hear from northern Mexico do not speak such a good Spanish to begin with or at least a correct Spanish but with very poor vocabulary compare to others parts of Mexico,I don't know if it is due to education or Spanish not being first language for some of them or being first language only for the last 2 or 3 generations. it happens to me once being in an hotel in Chicago,the groom try to speak to me in Spanish but it was pure cuban accent spoken by a foreigner ,I hardly understand nothing,he finnaly spoke to me in french because he was from Tunisia & he started speaking to me in french when I answer to him in Chilean Spanish that I notiiced a french accent in his cuban,& in his american English...I could have understood a true cuban with strong accent ,but not "an imitation" of this cuban accent... 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Euphorion Hexaglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5342 days ago 106 posts - 147 votes Speaks: Slovak*, Czech, EnglishC2, GermanC1, SpanishC2, French | Message 77 of 137 03 June 2010 at 1:23pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
That's right cos both movies are too bad :) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6945 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 78 of 137 03 June 2010 at 6:41pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Some resources. Workbooks: 1. Practice Makes Perfect: Spanish Verb Tenses - this link is for the reviews, the latest edition is at this link. A very popular workbook. 2. People talk about oral verb drills in the FSI Spanish courses. I haven't seen them, but others might be able to provide information about them. Verb reference tables: Presumably, you keep referring to them until it all sticks. 1. 501 Spanish Verbs. 2. The Big Red Book of Spanish Verbs: 555 Verbs Fully Conjugated. (There is also a newer edition.) 3. Verb conjugation tables in a dictionary. These vary in usability. I used an earlier edition of The University of Chicago Spanish Dictionary, which was not a good dictionary, but had very convenient conjugation tables in the beginning, with irregular forms in boldface. I kept that dictionary just for that reason. Roll your own: You can also do this yourself. I was going through Spanish for Beginners by Charles Duff, an old school textbook from the 1950's, but one aimed at self-learners. He has several chapters, 10 to 12, as I recall, where he just pours various conjugation classes and verbs at you. It's old school, but when you are done, you are no longer the same person. I supplemented his lists with tables from a dictionary (the U of Chicago one mentioned above), but mostly it was drill, baby, drill. I'd take a verb, make a full list of simple tenses (present indicative, present subjunctive, etc.) for the verb, one tense per line, and then write six forms on each line, 1st person singular, 2nd person singular, etc., until 3rd person plural. I'd write, and say it, sometimes first say it, then write. A couple of weeks of this type of drilling accomplished a lot. Some people like putting each form in a very short phrase or sentence to aid memorization (e.g., "yo hablo español" instead of just "hablo"). I didn't do it, but try and see what works best. Afterwards, when I ran into a verb form I'd forgotten, I'd write out or say out loud the whole conjugation pattern for that verb, all the tenses. This enhanced things further. One could drill first, and then go through a workbook, which will also teach the use of tenses, but see what works best for you.
Not to worry. Follow one or more of the above methods, and in a few weeks you can also come back and tell everyone that Spanish is easy. :) Edited by frenkeld on 04 June 2010 at 5:04am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5455 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 79 of 137 03 June 2010 at 6:50pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I'm not a native speaker of English, so I can't tell from my personal experience which language be easier for an
English speaker. However, since I have studied English, Spanish, Catalan, French, German and Latin, in addition to my native tongue Norwegian, I think I have a fairly good overview of both the Germanic and the Romance language families. Having read the other posts in this thread, I'm a bit puzzled by what people find difficult in language learning. In my opinion, it's not really the number of irregular verbs, the number of tenses or cases, the complexities in the conjugations and the declensions that make a language difficult. Obviously, the more cases, the more tenses, the more irregularities, the more difficult the language becomes, but what really makes the language difficult is how to put all this together into meaningful and correct utterances. Both the German and Spanish irregular verbs can easily be learnt by drilling and rote learning. The German and Latin declensions can be learnt the same way. Yes, it's extremely boring, but not difficult. Even a parrot can learn to conjugate the Spanish verb IR. What I personally find a lot more challenging than remembering the entire conjugation of the verb IR, is to actually pick the right form in a given situation. Fui or iba? Fui or he ido? Voy or vaya? Iba, fuese or fuera? Voy, iré or voy a ir? Había ido or hube ido? Iría or hubiera ido? Tense, aspect and mood make Spanish difficult. It's often said that Spanish is easy compared to, for instance, French. I think some aspects actually make Spanish easier in the beginning: the spelling is not difficult at all; the pronunciation is not too difficult either; the gender of a noun can usually be determined by the word ending. But as soon as you leave the beginning stages, Spanish grammar turns out to be just as complex as that of any other Romance language. As other have mentioned, according to the FSI ranking, Afrikaans, Dutch, French, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish and Swedish are all classified as category 1 languages (i.e. easy). German is somewhere in between category 1 and 2. Icelandic is category 2. I couldn't find the list at FSI's own web site, so the information above is from this one: http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/lang uage-difficulty I wonder why Icelandic is more difficult than German. And I also wonder how much experience FSI really has from teaching Icelandic. As tracker465 pointed out, it's probably more than just the Germanic vocabulary that makes German more difficult than category 1 languages. If it was, Norwegian, Swedish and Dutch should be just as difficult as German. So, it's probably the cases. Edited by tractor on 03 June 2010 at 6:52pm 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6945 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 80 of 137 03 June 2010 at 9:52pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
A substantial fraction of the choices one faces with tense, aspect, and mood are well-covered in an intermediate grammar course. Those who don't mind a bit of old-fashioned grammar study at the right point in their studies will do a better job of managing those choices. Edited by frenkeld on 03 June 2010 at 10:02pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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