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If I hear "Spanish is easy" ONE more time | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5021 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 113 of 137 06 September 2012 at 7:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm interested in this, because generally my experiences in Spain were very different. What parts of Spain were you in? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5782 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 114 of 137 06 September 2012 at 11:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Rural Andalusia.
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| Hiiro Yui Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4716 days ago 111 posts - 126 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese | Message 115 of 137 14 October 2012 at 3:54am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm learning Japanese and in comparison Spanish and the other european languages are easy. That doesn't mean people who learn them are beneath me in value. It just means the challenges they face reaching native-like proficiency are less than mine. I know nothing of the Spanish subjunctive, but how hard could it be? Some people say "learning Spanish to a high level isn't easy", but of course Japanese also has high levels. "Spanish has a lot of conjugations, and many of them are irregular", but Japanese has that, too. You can't necessarily guess how to conjugate Japanese verbs based on how they are spelled. "The distinction between ser/estar, por/para...", but there are distictions in Japanese that are also hard to master.
I have a deep-seated hatred for Spanish because of how it's basically forced on us Americans from childhood. I don't like the very sound of it. We have to learn a foreign language in school, but I never had the chance to learn non-european ones. When reading, so much of the meaning can be guessed that I came to hate the way those who learn them are seen as smart by monolingual Americans. On TV, characters who speak fluent Spanish are constantly treated by other characters as geniuses, and these shows sometimes seem to be trying to teach Spanish words to the audience by translating a word, then using the Spanish word throughout the show. It makes me so angry they don't push asian languages like this. I don't think I should have to learn Spanish to a high level to prove that it's easy for me. A few years ago, the anger I felt when my Puero Rican coworkers would speak to me in Spanish became so overwhelming that I just said "whatever" and started asking them to teach me some. I think I made quick progress. I know the infinitive of some words and can conjugate them into the progressive form (I usually ignore irregularities), but the past and other conjugations still haven't been taught to me. It's like pulling teeth trying to get people to teach this stuff one by one. Me: Komo se dise "jo komo" en ra pasada? Them: ???. Me: komo se dise "jo komo ajeru"? Them: Oh, "jo rty34q89rt". Me: Okay, komo se dise "tu kome" en ra pasada? Them: ???. Me: Nevermind. Kual es ra infinitivo de "perudiendo"? Them: ???. Me: komo se dise "jo no kiero peru... perudie..."? Them: Oh, "peruderu". (I know it's not really fair to fault them for not knowing grammar terms, but it's hard to get them to teach me the unconjugated form) A big problem I have is the men don't pronounce anything clearly. Everything is slurred and consonants aren't pronounced, but Japanese has these kinds of speakers, too. The amount of rote memorization needed in european languages is much less than in Japanese, so I tend not to be as impressed by their multilinguals as I used to be when I was a monolingual child and didn't understand how much the difficulty of foreign languages can vary. Saying that all languages are hard will likely lead to more "Spanish-speaker worship" among Americans. Just to mess with my hispanic coworkers' heads, when Haitians are near I have them teach me some Haitian Creole. You should see my coworkers' faces. "How many languages do you know?" they ask. "Just English." Ha. If you're having trouble learning what is from my perspective, an easy language, just think about all the other skills you have over someone like me. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| anamsc2 Tetraglot Groupie United States Joined 4558 days ago 85 posts - 186 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Catalan, German Studies: French | Message 116 of 137 14 October 2012 at 5:42am | IP Logged | |||||
Are you referring to Dora the Expolorer? 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4888 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 117 of 137 14 October 2012 at 6:53am | IP Logged | |||||
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Hiiro, Spanish is spoken by 12% of Americans at home. No other language even breaks the 1% level. And
the US has the fifth largest Spanish-speaking population in the world. (source: Wikipedia). It's hard for me to understand how it's 'forced' on school children. It's our country's de facto second language. Of course it's going to be more popular than Japanese on tv and in the schools. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5452 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 118 of 137 14 October 2012 at 8:07am | IP Logged | |||||
Not even English? :-) 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gala Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4549 days ago 229 posts - 421 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 119 of 137 14 October 2012 at 8:36am | IP Logged | |||||
You certainly shouldn't fault them, as the questions you're asking are not far from gibberish. WTH is "ra pasada"? If you're trying to say "the past," that's "el pasado." Spanish has 5 commonly used past tenses/past tense constructions, BTW. I can't even guess what "ajeru" is supposed to be. Edited by Gala on 14 October 2012 at 8:41am 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5129 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 120 of 137 14 October 2012 at 8:41am | IP Logged | |||||
I get the feeling that was your intention with your entire post here too. R. == 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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