Why is Spanish singled out as easy lang? (Specific Languages) Language Learning Forum

Why is Spanish singled out as easy lang?
Tags: Easiness \| Spanish
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IronFist
Senior Member
United States
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Speaks: English*
Studies: Japanese, Korean

Message 25 of 55

29 April 2012 at 9:04pm | IP Logged

Spanish is considered "easy" because, along with what outcast said,
most high schools in America offer Spanish, French, German, and
Latin.

Of those, Spanish is the easiest for beginners who take the requisite
2 years in high school.

Therefore, everyone leaves high school with the idea that Spanish is
easy.
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Zireael
Triglot
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Poland
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Message 26 of 55

30 April 2012 at 4:07pm | IP Logged

I think the belief in the ease comes from the fact that it is similar to Italian and French, but has less spelling/pronunciation variation and less irregular verbs.
Also, it certainly is easy for someone who knows at least some Latin, being its descendant.
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Марк
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Russian Federation
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Message 27 of 55

30 April 2012 at 4:11pm | IP Logged

Zireael wrote:

I think the belief in the ease comes from the fact that it is similar to
Italian and French, but has less spelling/pronunciation variation and less irregular
verbs.
Also, it certainly is easy for someone who knows at least some Latin, being its
descendant.

But instead has much more verbal forms in the spoken language. And about irregular verbs
I'm not sure. "Regular" Spanish verbs have many variations. For example, juego, como.

Edited by Марк on 30 April 2012 at 4:12pm
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Itikar
Groupie
Italy
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Message 28 of 55

30 April 2012 at 8:19pm | IP Logged

Sincerely I think verbs are more difficult in Spanish than in both Italian and French.
Fr. penser --> je pense
It. pensare --> (io) penso
Sp. pensar --> (yo) pienso
Moreover for example the simple past in Spanish is essential, whereas in Italian and French this tense is absolutely optional (although not so dead as some grammarians claim).

Pronouns, syntax, orthography, word order, prepositions then are of course another matter.
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L1539
Diglot
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United States
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Message 29 of 55

01 May 2012 at 4:28pm | IP Logged

Camundonguinho wrote:

Spanish is difficult because there is no single universal variant. It's uniform only in the most formal register (but this variety is not used much in daily life). There are just too many things that sound weird or unnatural in Spain, but are perfectly fine in Argentina, or in Mexico or in Cuba. The English language is becoming more and more unified (because of Hollywood and popular music), the Portuguese language too because of the Brazilian influence, but in the case of Spanish...Differences are getting bigger and bigger. If you want to speak Spanish fluently, you have the embrace the colloquial Spanish. But, watching soap operas from Spain, Mexico and Argentina...I can clearly hear the differences, and they are huge. Not in the sense of ''getting the meaning'', but in the sense of ''sounding natural/native''. So, sooner or later, you have to specialize: Spain, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina...You have to focus on one variant only and stick with it. Otherwise people will always correct your Spanish. ;) in Spain, many people won't even understand you if you speak like an Argentinian, they don't know that NAFTA is gas/petrol and that COLECTIVO is a bus ;) or that PARO means a strike and not unemployment, and FRUTILLA is not a small fruit, but a strawberry ;) If you use LABURAR with Spaniards they will say ''stop using lunfardo'', but at the same time, they use their local slang words (like CURRAR; the Castillian words for LABURAR; or MOLAR = to be enjoyable/cool) and they don't even consider them slangy ;)

There are grammatical differences as well:

Llámame nada más llegar a casa (Spain) = Llamame apenas llegues a casa (Argentina)
Call me as soon as you arrive/come home.

The differences between varieties of Spanish need to be kept in perspective. Spanish is actually remarkably uniform for a language spoken by hundreds of millions of people over an immense geographical area. Other languages are spoken over a far more narrow area, by far fewer people, and yet have regional differences greater than Spanish (from what I've read, Japanese is one example). I don't think it's valid to say that differences in dialects are a difficulty particular to Spanish.

And while it's true that if you don't master the regionalisms of your particular area of choice, you won't sound like a native, it should be acknowledged that relatively few people who learn another language ever sound totally native-like. Think of immigrants to the U.S. who learn English. Even those who become professionals (lawyers, doctors etc.) usually have ways of phrasing some things and make some word choices that sound strange to a native. I don't think sounding completely like a native is all that important.
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polyhotch
Diglot
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Venezuela
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Speaks: Spanish*, English
Studies: French, German

Message 30 of 55

08 May 2012 at 11:23pm | IP Logged

Saludos a todos!
Hi to everyone!

It's true, I've heard people on the Internet claiming that Spanish is an easy language, I am a native Spanish speaker and even though I like the logical parts of our language like its phonetic spelling and some other things, I have to say that our verb system is quite difficult for many foreigners, even to Italians and Portuguese speaking people, languages that are very close to ours in many ways. I have a lot of friends from different nationalities (Italians, Portuguese, Chinese, Arabs) who have been living for many years in our country, and they can't still speak it to the level of total native like usage, in both pronunciation and general use of the vocabulary. I have heard only a few foreigners achieve this in very few occasions, most of them came here when they were kids, usually under 10 years old. Most native Spanish speakers don't have problems understanding and speaking to other Speakers of the language no matter the nationality, but it's true as someone mentioned it before, the use of slang and regional vocabulary sometimes poses a small problem to mutual understanding, but hey, that happens in every language, even in small countries with homogeneous ethnic populations. So, it's just a natural thing due to the size of the Spanish speaking world and the multiple racial and cultural influences every country has. I hope this contribution can help a little bit, any other questions regarding to the Spanish language, I'll gladly reply it. Saludos!

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atama warui
Triglot
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Japan
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Message 31 of 55

10 May 2012 at 4:45pm | IP Logged

outcast wrote:

I always come back to my example of German vs Spanish. German is a frontloaded language grammatically, Spanish is a backloaded one.

To achieve simple fluency in German, you MUST achieve working proficiency in three genders X four cases (12 possible definite/indefininte article combinations), a dozen ways to form plurality, a quirky word order compared to other western European languages, a fairly complex system of assigning case to prepositions, relative pronons, prepositional verbs, and have no choice but to know by heart the gender of nouns or else the whole rest of the case system brakes down and will not be understood. Add to that some quirks like weak nouns. All those things you must learn as a beginner-intermediate student.

You only have to know 2 tenses: Perfect Tense and Present Tense. That's all a native uses in speech. There are more tenses out there, used in the media or if we want to sound educated, however, for conversational fluency, some passive understanding is sufficient.

German ain't frontloaded at all. If you think so, go back to your textbooks and take a second look :)
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Volte
Tetraglot
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Switzerland
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Message 32 of 55

10 May 2012 at 6:13pm | IP Logged

atama warui wrote:

outcast wrote:

Having three genders that you can't entirely guess from word endings is front-loaded, as is having a case system. Having a case system that interacts in bizarre and idiomatic ways with various prepositions is definitely front-loaded.

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