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Why is Spanish singled out as easy lang? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| benzionisrael Triglot Groupie Spain Joined 4656 days ago 79 posts - 142 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese, SpanishB2 | Message 1 of 55 23 April 2012 at 10:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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As I mentioned in another post, when I was learning Spanish for the first time certain people said to me mockingly on several ocassions that the thought I was only learning "the easy language".
But why is it Spanish which is often singled out as the easy language? How does Spanish differ from other languages to be so easy as supposed by some? For me, singling out Spanish as the easy language is absurd. Portuguese and Italian are very similar to Spanish both gramatically and lexically to the point where they can be considered merely different versions of the same entity, and French for example has more recognizable cognates with English. Therefore it seems absurd to deem Spanish as the easy language. Also many Germanic languages are grammatically simple and closely related to English lexically. For example Afrikaans, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, etc... Although Spanish orthography is highly regular and its nominal inflection is relatively simple, its verbal system is quite complex having conserved several past tenses, fusional future tenses and condicional moods, compound tenses and several subjunctive paradigms. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5253 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 2 of 55 23 April 2012 at 11:08pm | IP Logged | ||
I'd be willing to wager that those people who say this to you haven't learned Spanish as a second language to a high level. I don't care what other people say about any language I am learning. I learn a language for myself. See this HTLAL thread: Spanish: A wolf in sheep's clothing for more illumination on the subject. 9 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ellsworth Senior Member United States Joined 4948 days ago 345 posts - 528 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Swedish, Finnish, Icelandic, Irish | Message 3 of 55 23 April 2012 at 11:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am kind of tired of these threads...
Spanish isn't an easy language. I know of no natural language that is easy to learn. However, it is much easier to acquire to an advanced degree than many other languages, so many people say it is an easy language, implying easier than others. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5121 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 4 of 55 24 April 2012 at 3:09am | IP Logged | ||
I'd also add that, at least if you're in the US, there's ample exposure to Spanish, even if the majority of the people don't speak it. That, I'm sure, adds to the "it's easy" school of thought. In my experience, people here actually have a somewhat decent passive knowledge of a good deal of vocabulary. But, as you point out, nobody really thinks about the grammar and its difficulty. If there's a decent amount of recognizable words, people are naturally going to think the language is easier, overall. R. == 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5299 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish | Message 5 of 55 24 April 2012 at 4:26am | IP Logged | ||
Have you learned those to your level in Spanish? 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Merv Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5264 days ago 414 posts - 749 votes Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 6 of 55 24 April 2012 at 5:13am | IP Logged | ||
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I think because it is a very accessible language. The script is Latin, there is no noun declension, it is phonetic, the
accentuation system is extremely simple and logical, producing the individual sounds is not too difficult, and there are tons of cognates with English and a whole slew of other European languages. It's a very logical language, that can be seen from the verbs and the accentuation system. Add to that a huge number of speakers to practice with and tons of learning materials available. That said, Spanish is not easy, and I dare say perfecting it is as hard as perfecting Russian or German as a non-native speaker. Can you handle the subjunctive to perfection? Do you get random (and rare) irregular verbs conjugated correctly on the fly? Do you always get the idiomatic phrasing out right? Perfecting anything, much less a language, is going to be tough. But going 60% of the way until you have some intermediate fluency and a decent vocabulary and can pronounce what your read and write what you hear correctly is likely much easier than getting to the same level in German, Russian, Thai, Hungarian, Japanese, Chinese, or even French (whose spelling and pronunciation is ridiculous). Edited by Merv on 24 April 2012 at 5:15am 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6934 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 7 of 55 24 April 2012 at 5:38am | IP Logged | ||
Schaum's outline of Spanish Grammar: 209 pages Schaum's outline of Italian Grammar: 368 pages Berlitz Spanish Grammar Handbook, 2004 edition: 239 pages Berlitz Italian Grammar Handbook, 2005 edition: 341 pages I can't but wonder if the Italian grammar may not be quirkier than the Spanish one. I am certainly reserving my judgment about them being "different versions of the same entity" (with regard to the level of difficulty) until I have actually studied enough Italian. Edited by frenkeld on 24 April 2012 at 8:32am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7147 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 8 of 55 24 April 2012 at 6:33am | IP Logged | ||
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May I add that it doesn't really contradict the perception when FSI's ranking of language difficulty for its students places Spanish at Level 1 (not necessarily the easiest of all languages, but nothing as divergent for us English-speakers like Korean).
The bottom line for me is that Spanish, fairly or unfairly, is singled out as an easy language for all of the reasons above in addition to the similarities that it bears to a handful of other Indo-European languages whose speakers have managed to dominate much of the world's affairs. We can argue without result over the non-linguistic aspects (i.e. politics and history) of this situation, but you've hit upon a common perception that doesn't seem likely to fade in my lifetime, benzionisrael. As to considering Portuguese and Italian different versions of the same entity, there're two things that I keep in mind (if no one else): 1) If we consider this "same entity", (Vulgar) Latin, then there's no argument BUT 2) remember that this entity started to fade into Old [insert name of modern Romance language of your choice] between 1000 and 1300 years ago. This means that a lot of changes have occured since then to reduce mutual intelligibilty in the family to a similar degree as seen in the Slavonic languages which also can be considered "merely different versions of the same entity". 6 persons have voted this message useful |
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