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If I hear "Spanish is easy" ONE more time | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6945 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes  Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 65 of 137 02 June 2010 at 11:10pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The FSI places many Indo-European West European languages besides German in Category I, languages like Russian, Hindi, etc, in category II, and German in a separate category between I & II. It just takes longer - according to their experience with many students - to reach the FSI equivalent of the C1 level in German than in Spanish. I prefer their data to us trying to address this issue theoretically. Also, in the American schools the idea that French and German are harder than Spanish has been around for a long time, a century perhaps, if not more. It has nothing to do with recent immigration from Latin America.
Nobody ignores it, apparently it's just not enough to offset the challenges of German. Edited by frenkeld on 02 June 2010 at 11:19pm 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 66 of 137 02 June 2010 at 11:39pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
But I guess my point is as follows: I am not trying to dispute the information you have provided, and yes back when I was in high school, Spanish had been deemed the easy language of the three which were offered, Spanish, German and Latin. At this point I had studied Latin and (along with the better portion of the class) did not understand much, and was hopelessly confused due to the number of cases, conjugations, etc. My Latin teacher always told the class that the reason we struggled so bad was because we did not understand our English grammar, and in retrospect, I understand clearly the point he was trying to make. Without understanding grammar, how can one understand what a subject, object, etc is, and without this knowledge, how can one understand how to use the cases properly? Naturally it would be difficult. I suspect that the majority of the people who are studying languages in high school do not have a strong background in grammar, and as a result, they would find the German cases more difficult than the caseless Spanish. At a high school level, learn a few of the more important Spanish tenses, and poof....the student has fulfilled his or her requirements without touching the more tricky and obscure aspects of the language. With a language such as German, one is immediately hit in the face with cases, so for someone without an understanding of grammar, it might prove to be more difficult. But seeing as we are on a language forum, I would like to think that many people who are trying to teach themselves other foreign languages, just might have an understanding of grammar. That being the case, the idea of a mere four cases (three more important ones) really does not seem to be enough, in my opinion, to make German so much harder than a tongue like Spanish, which makes up for its lack of cases with its unending pile of tenses. I think that the difficulty lies not so much as to German having cases and Spanish not, but due to the fact that many people just do not have a solid understanding of the grammar, which leads to an understanding of the cases. Now when the number of cases increases, of course the language is going to become harder to learn, such as Russian or Bulgarian for instance. But just subject, direct object, indirect object and possession: that is pretty basic. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6441 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 67 of 137 02 June 2010 at 11:47pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
You're free to believe it or not, but that has no bearing on if it's true.
Perhaps my perspective can be of some use in this. I'm exposed to a lot more German than Spanish, living in Switzerland, and have never been exposed to large amounts of Spanish; I've spent quite a bit of time in Germany. I can get German materials very easily, both online and offline. German is harder.
Having a conjunctive mood is tricky for an English speaker; both German and Spanish do. Other than that, English has quite a lot of 'tenses'* as well, and they're not all that different from those of the Romance languages. Romance languages are a pain to get right. Germanic languages are still harder, for native English speakers. I've studied French, Italian, German, Dutch, and dabbled small amounts in Spanish, Portuguese, and Swedish, so I'm fairly comfortable saying this. * Technically, these languages only have 3 tenses (past, present, and future), following Comrie's use of the word, which I think is much more conceptually clear than mixing in aspect, mood, etc under the label 'tense', which most textbooks unfortunately do... but we can continue to use 'tense' in this muddled sense in this discussion.
Native speakers of any language don't automatically know how to identify parts of speech; that's something which needs to be learned.
Yes.
Yes.
German kids manage it... but yes, knowing the grammar of your native language helps with foreign ones.
Here we strongly disagree. The basic conceptual idea of case is very easy. Getting them right is not; there are many odd little details. The way the cases of numbers vary in Russian in otherwise-identical sentences based on the size of the number.
The German tenses can also be tricky, as can the cases and word order. Spanish tenses are somewhat harder than German tenses, but it's still the easier of the two languages grammatically. Spanish vocabulary is also significantly easier to learn than German vocabulary; in general, more complex/abstract words in English resemble Spanish much more often than German. Vocabulary is more time-consuming than grammar, in the end, because there's so much more of it. 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 68 of 137 02 June 2010 at 11:52pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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It is a very unidimensional view of language complexity to reduce Spanish to its verb tenses and German to its cases. It is the overall complexity that counts, not its individual components.
As for the American (or any other) students not knowing grammatical terminology, they used to know it 100 years ago, but the opinion on the relative difficulty of Spanish, French, and German was the same. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6441 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 69 of 137 02 June 2010 at 11:54pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Some people on this forum say that Russian cases are easier than German ones, because they largely make more sense - German has to lump together things (somewhat arbitrarily) which Russian has separate cases for. Subject, direct object, indirect object, and possession are simple. Knowing that you need to use accusative or the dative based on location vs motion with some prepositions, while always using one or the other with others, is already an ugly and illogical snag. Getting this consistently right, with declensions varying based on arbitrary noun gender, in conversation, is not quick to learn. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| tracker465 Senior Member United States Joined 5354 days ago 355 posts - 496 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 70 of 137 03 June 2010 at 12:15am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
I am not going to suggest otherwise with vocabulary, as I know this to be true (thanks William the norman!) but the although part of the difficulty, obviously it isn't a large enough part since the FSI groups the other Germanic languages with the Romance languages at level 1. Dutch has much of the same word order as German, the Scandinavian tongues add their definite articles on the end, etc. The languages just do not retain case, which makes it seem that this is one of the reasons that German is grouped by FSI as being a higher difficulty than the Romance languages or these other Germanic languages. As a native English speaker who has formally studied both German and Latin, and is currently enrolled in Spanish classes, I feel qualified enough to state my thoughts. Latin was the first foreign tongue I learned, and it was a mess, and I did not understand my English grammar at this point. With German, I learned my grammar, and after one semester had little difficulty with Nominative and Accusative case, or the present and perfect tenses. After two semesters I learned Dative and then Genetive cases, as well as simple past tense, and then the rest of the tenses such as future, I taught myself without difficulty. Other than some declensions of adjectives, I never really had much problem with determining the case to use. With Spanish, however, it is quite the feat for me to even hold a conversation, when it comes to switching back and forth between different tenses, since the endings are numerous and illogical. Just my thought on the matter, think we will have to agree to disagree on this one. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| tracker465 Senior Member United States Joined 5354 days ago 355 posts - 496 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 71 of 137 03 June 2010 at 12:20am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The nice thing about languages is that what is easy for some may be difficult for others. To say that Spanish is easier to learn for an English speaker is not a truth, it is just an opinion which many hold as truth. If I was to suggest to a polyglot in the making (native English speaker) which languages to learn first, second, etc, I would suggest something like the following order: Afrikaans --> Dutch --> French/German --> Spanish/Scandinavian --> Italian/Scandinavian --> Romanian/Scandinavian --> Slavic tongue/whatever, etc. Not really a truth, just my own opinion on the matter. For everyone, different things will be easier than others, but that doesn't make one true and one not. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ruskivyetr Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5483 days ago 769 posts - 962 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian, Polish, Modern Hebrew | Message 72 of 137 03 June 2010 at 12:27am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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I don't understand why German is classified as more difficult than Spanish. In my opinion, I would have to say
German grammar is somewhat simpler/easier than Spanish grammar. As someone who was technically native in it, I can't really say this, however when I do grammar studies now, I find it much easier than any Spanish I ever studied. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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