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If I hear "Spanish is easy" ONE more time | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| maaku Senior Member United States Joined 5573 days ago 359 posts - 562 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 49 of 137 02 June 2010 at 8:19am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Oftentimes in USA Spanish is easy.
The name of street I grew up is in Spanish. As are the names of all the neighboring streets, the town, the neighboring towns, and the state. My neighbors spoke Spanish. A third of my class spoke Spanish as their first language. Forms, signs, advertisements, public service announcements are all dual language with Spanish. More than half of the radio stations were Spanish. Service workers I interacted with on a daily basis were native Spanish speakers with minimal English. I can't walk down to the corner store for a slurpee without hearing Spanish. Even Sesame Street taught me Spanish words. By the time I got to high school, I probably had an active vocabulary of about 75 words, a passive vocabulary in the hundreds, and Spanish was easy. The only other language my school offered was French. By comparison I don't think I actually met a native speaker of French until I was an adult. And outside of the occasional line in a movie, I had no exposure to the language. Edited by maaku on 02 June 2010 at 8:24am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Wise owl chick Senior Member Ecuador Joined 5317 days ago 122 posts - 137 votes Studies: English | Message 50 of 137 02 June 2010 at 11:03am | IP Logged | ||||||||
This are cognates, but not always directly or trasnparently.The cognates in Spanish are more direct and transparent with English. Also, many in your list are general cognates with ALL the Germanic and Romance languages, therefore this can't demonstrate that German has more trasnparent cognates as Spanish. For example the first, "hound" this is der Bracke in German. The German word "Hund" = dog, all dogs including the little and big ones. "Murder" in German = der Mord, but the word which look cognate is der Mörder = murderer Some are cognates in proabably all or the most of the west European languages, not only German, for example: ozone, pirate, coma, debut, object, music, etc (it's many)
The same as above, for example: ENG: discussion ESP: la discusión GER: die Diskussion, but maybe more often das Gespräch or die Besprechung ENG: observation ESP: la observación GER: die Beachtung ENG: vocabulary ESP: el vocabulario GER: der Wortschatz
I don't say that German and English aren't close, grammatically they are more close as English and Spanish, but not with the transparency or difficulty of learning. German is more difficult and the cognate vocabs are not immediatley evdient (my opinion). German's beautiful, but the grammar is very complicated in comaprison with Spanish's. I want to read your method for know the genders, because often I don't know them in German :) Edited by Wise owl chick on 02 June 2010 at 11:15am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Wise owl chick Senior Member Ecuador Joined 5317 days ago 122 posts - 137 votes Studies: English | Message 51 of 137 02 June 2010 at 11:09am | IP Logged | ||||||||
In my opinion, Dutch (or possibly the Scandinavian languages) are the easiest for the English-speakers. Anyway, Dutch is very simple, for example, very logic orthography, no subjunctive, no cases, not many tenses or aspects, the native-speakers speak slowly, very few slangs, ideal for a lingua franca in Europe. I havn't an idea at all why the Dutch people tell that it's difficult to learn. They're wrong. Maybe they refer the pronunciation? It sound very ugly, but you can learn it and then it's completely logic and easy. I don't mean that I don't like Dutch, on the contrary, I think that it's fun. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| quendidil Diglot Senior Member Singapore Joined 6311 days ago 126 posts - 142 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English* Studies: Japanese | Message 52 of 137 02 June 2010 at 12:07pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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. As for arguments about it being difficult to attain native fluency, that is no different for any other language. While passive knowledge can be of great benefit (and in the case of Spanish, the learning curve for passive knowledge is comparatively less steep) you will need some amount of corrected practice before developing fluency, I daresay the amount needed is on the whole less for Spanish than many other languages. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Euphorion Hexaglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5339 days ago 106 posts - 147 votes Speaks: Slovak*, Czech, EnglishC2, GermanC1, SpanishC2, French | Message 53 of 137 02 June 2010 at 12:22pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Spanish is a VERY easy language! 1 person has 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 54 of 137 02 June 2010 at 4:55pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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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). 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| chalokun Tetraglot Groupie FranceRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5471 days ago 58 posts - 55 votes Speaks: French, Spanish*, English, Japanese | Message 55 of 137 02 June 2010 at 5:17pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
indeed you're right about those patterns of "irregular verbs":acocrding to classical Spanish grammar ,there's around 120 of those "patterns" & almost every group & subgroup of irregular verbs in Spanish is linked to one of this patterns. on the Spanish vs french thing, being native in both I would like to state some things here: most of the time when you got two simple sentences on French,you've got one complex sentences on Spanish:average sentence in Spanish is longer than in French. the differences between written French & Spoken French are greater than Between Written Spanish & Spoken Spanish(I don't mean there is no differences between Spoken & Written Spanish,there are a lot of differences but less than in French) Written Norm:in France, even among the Académie Française, people disagree when it comes to grammar grounds;meanwhile in Hispanic World,each Country has it own "norm" & the "real Academia" makes severals norms Coexists in a formal manner 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| chalokun Tetraglot Groupie FranceRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5471 days ago 58 posts - 55 votes Speaks: French, Spanish*, English, Japanese | Message 56 of 137 02 June 2010 at 5:28pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
it is also ResponsAbilité in French so the non pure vowel of English are here at work to deform Latin.... 1 person has voted this message useful |
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