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Spanish: A wolf in sheep’s clothing | ||
Tags: Difficulty | Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| noriyuki_nomura Bilingual Octoglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 5340 days ago 304 posts - 465 votes  Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Japanese, FrenchC2, GermanC2, ItalianC1, SpanishB2, DutchB1 Studies: TurkishA1, Korean | Message 65 of 73 19 August 2010 at 9:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, I don't really know where to write this, guess I will write in this thread.
Tomorrow is my big day for the DELE B2 exam, and I must say that, I am really kinda nervous and worried. As many of you here have stated, Spanish grammar can get really complex the more you advance...furthermore, I solely used the Assimil Spanish programs (the A1-B2 level and 30% of the B2-C1 level of the Assimil programs) to prepare for the exam, along with the Preparacion el Diploma de Espanol B2 book from Edelsa publishing company. Actually, I am worried about the oral part the most...sob sob... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| galindo Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5207 days ago 142 posts - 248 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, Japanese Studies: Korean, Portuguese | Message 66 of 73 23 August 2010 at 8:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Wow, to hear Spanish described in this thread makes it seem kind of scary. It's one of my native languages, so I never really thought about it in terms of conjugations and noun genders and subjunctive/indicative until I started learning another language.
One of the things I do once in a while when I want to practice composing sentences in Japanese is think about how I would explain Spanish grammar to a Japanese person. Honestly, it seems like Japanese grammar makes more sense, or at least is better suited to my thought processes. I'm interested in learning Portuguese and Italian, and even though I know that those are technically way easier for someone like me than Japanese is, it still kind of puts me off when I read things that make Romance languages sound complicated. On the other hand, I know that with those languages I could learn a lot just from reading and listening, whereas with Japanese you can't do that until you know a lot of kanji. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| JimC Senior Member United Kingdom tinyurl.com/aberdeen Joined 5547 days ago 199 posts - 317 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 67 of 73 04 August 2011 at 5:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Ok, that was quite a thread! I am studying Spanish and that is the only language I plan to learn, so I can not comment on the relative difficulty of various languages.
However, I would say that the statement that "Spanish is an easy language to learn" is like saying that a certain aircraft is an easy one to fly" It may be true in comparative terms, but does not mean that the task is easy. I planned to learn Spanish as I regularly visit the country and did not want to be a typical Brit who just spoke louder and added o at the end of every word. When I started, I just wanted to be able to cope in everyday situations like ordering food or travel tickets or asking for directions. I have achieved that but want to go further now. The more I learn, the more I reliase how little I know. If I had truely appreciated when I started the amount of work that would be involved I never would have started. So for those who say that Spanish is easy because it is easier than X, Y and Z languages, I can only say that I have found it to be hard work. Jim 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Carlucio Triglot Groupie BrazilRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4858 days ago 70 posts - 113 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishC1, Spanish Studies: Mandarin | Message 68 of 73 07 August 2011 at 4:39am | IP Logged | |||||
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For me as a portuguese native speaker Spanish is the easiest language to learn, and one of the hardests to master, i know many people who have been living in Spanish countries for years and they still speaking portunhol. Edited by Carlucio on 07 August 2011 at 4:40am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Carlucio Triglot Groupie BrazilRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4858 days ago 70 posts - 113 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishC1, Spanish Studies: Mandarin | Message 69 of 73 07 August 2011 at 4:44am | IP Logged | |||||
Funny, that a common mistake for portuguese native speakers as well, our word for population is população and everybody says populacion in portunhol. Edited by Carlucio on 10 August 2011 at 6:08pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4949 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 70 of 73 07 August 2011 at 6:34am | IP Logged | |||||
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To answer the original question, I have said the following in other topics (after thinking long and hard about it).
Spanish is relatively easy to learn in order to make (intelligible) conversation. Compared to say, French (due to it's pronounciation, perhaps we can drop Portuguese, Swedish, etc here too), or German and Dutch (some quicks that take time to get used to in their syntax), where many perhaps need more time to practice because the sounds or grammar are more intimidating. Spanish is super easy to read having a nearly perfect alignment of written/oral sound representation, straight-forward pure vowels, and predictable SVO structure. So going from novice to a basic proficiency in Spanish may to many be --relatively-- painless. An entirely different proposition than SPEAKING Spanish CORRECTLY. Spanish speakers tend to be very tolerant of foreigners' mistakes, so perhaps foreigners CONFUSE that leeway with ''oh, I got this down''. However, "Hola, necesito que envia estos cartas a el oficina del correo" IS NOT CORRECT Spanish! Is the point being made gotten across? Absolutely. Does is sound pretty? Not at all. Yes, many foreigners speak Spanish so. I still understand them and won't correct them, so again maybe that is where people fail to realize they are FAR from mastering. Spanish uses more verbal tenses than any other romance language. It uses the present (yo trabajo), imperfect (yo trabajaba), preterite (yo trabajé), future (yo trabajaré), present perfect (yo he trabajado), past perfect (yo había trabajado), and future perfect (yo habré trabajado) REGULARLY for different grammatical contexts. The anterior preterite is used by highly educated people (yo hube trabajado). It uses the conditional (yo trabajaría), and past conditional (yo habría trabajado). It uses the present (que yo trabaje), and two imperfect subjunctives (interchangeable colloquialy, but not interchangeable in highly educated people- que yo trabajara, que yo no trabajase). The future subjunctive and postfuture subjunctive are no longer used in speech, not even by most highly educated people (que yo trabajare / que yo hubiere trabajado), though still used in legal writing. Portuguese for example tends to avoid the future tense entirely, in many regions the conditional (substituted by the imperfect), it never uses the anterior preterite, does not have two imperfect tenses in the subjunctive (the ''-ara'' imperfect subjunctive of Spanish became an indicative tense in Portuguese that is almost no longer used), and restricts the use of the present perfect. In Portugal the gerund also has fallen into disuse, not so in Brazil. However, it does use the future subjunctive and personal inflected infinitive. To know how and when to use such an arsenal of verbal tenses requires a long time and even conscious learning, even for natives. Bottom line, you can reach "getting by" in Spanish with less up front ''deposit'', than French or Portuguese (phonetically those languages force you to get your vocal trac trained otherwise you won't be understood), or German (grammatically German forces you to learn all the cases and verbal placement rules upfront, you can't avoid them or people will not understand you). But in order to properly speak it, ultimately a great deal of effort and attention to detail must be applied. Edited by outcast on 07 August 2011 at 6:49am 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Merv Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5273 days ago 414 posts - 749 votes Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 71 of 73 07 August 2011 at 6:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
I would tend to agree with this. Spanish is underrated due to the easy/easier sound production and more easygoing nature of native speakers (i.e. like Russian and unlike French, the speakers won't give you a hard time for mispronouncing things just because). As I've studied it more and more, and practiced the various tenses etc, I've seen that it's by no means easy to convey the subtleties of time, habituality, etc. The vocabulary is vast (lots of Latin, Arabic, native Iberian, Greek, etc.). I just took up French and off the bat I can see many ways that it's easier. To be sure, French pronunciation is a lot harder, but the commands seem to be a piece of cake compared to Spanish, not to mention por/para, ser/estar, lack of spoken preterite, much less vigorous used of the subjunctive, etc. One question: what's the distinction in usage between -se and -ra endings of the imperfect subjunctive? I tend to prefer -se, but I don't know how the highly educated, per your post, pick one or the other to use in any particular context? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4949 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 72 of 73 07 August 2011 at 7:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hi,
I have direct experience with German. I coudn't really write much in this language until I had pretty much mastered the cases. For that you need to master the gender of the NOUNS (which are rather unpredictable), otherwise you will get the articles wrong anyway. You also need to know he personal pronouns for each case and person. And then it is not just grammatical function: the cases are used for different situations like definite time vs indefinite time, predicate adverbs stating an opinion, the vocative, etc, all require a specific case. And then the prepositions: to memorize what case they assign, and the two-way prepositions which force you to understand the concept of movement within a noun vs to or from a noun (on the bed vs onto the bed!), which confuses many. Basically you have to learn by practice, practice, practice when to use what case in ALL THOSE dozens and dozens of situations and circumstances. Otherwise, either you said the wrong thing entirely, or people get flustered. When you are a beginner you think misplacing a ''den'' for a ''dem'' looks like such a minor transgression, but it can affect meaning. German is a very precise language in terms of spatial-orientation and grammatical assignment. Anyway, what does all this add up to? German's ''admission fee'' is much higher up-front, than say... Spanish. Which makes German deservedly a ''harder'' language. You have to learn many rules right from the get-go or you won't go far at all. That's not even mentioning verb position and rules of prefix separation, relative clauses, etc. But then something happens: once you really get deep into German, you realize that besides some obscure rules that most German speakers don't even know exist anymore, there is not much else after the early advanced stage. My advanced German book is mostly about writing skills and a few odd grammatical rules, but most of it is just a review of what I had already learned in basic and intermediate. German verbs (for a Spanish speaker), are incredibly easy to construct. Tense usage is super easy: present for most situations, present perfect for a past event, simple past for writing and after ''Als''. Subjunctive II for polite requests, in Wenn-clauses contrary-to-fact, with ''Als ob'' and a few other set phrases. Subjuntive I for reported quotes. Compared to Spanish, those are so few rules I have them easily memorized. And that's it. Now Spanish has no case distinction, and its nouns are very easy to assign gender because of their ''o'' and ''a'' markers. Once you learn a few of the basic verbs, then you can start talking and writing without making much of a miskake, unlike German. And as mentioned, you can get the pronounciation very quickly compared to French or Portuguese.So many may find the beginner's stage ''easy'' compared to other tongues, and the intermediate stage ''not as easy but with some work manageable''. Then many get into advanced Spanish, and as so many here have mentioned, they realize there is so much more still to learn. I would dare to say that Spanish is a bit backloaded compared to the other major western European languages. As mentioned French and Italian have much simpler subjunctive structures, French has no copula and Italian a very limited one. Portuguese does not make distinctions between the past participle use in the passive (uses ''ser''), while Spanish does. Which is why many foreign speakers use ''ser'' incorrectly as in: "Es permitido entrar al teatro". In English, German, French, Italian and Portuguese this is acceptable but in Spanish it is not, as it makes a distinction between past-participles used in the passive voice vs those that are only predicate adjectives in the active voice. Just to name a few things I tell people about and are amazed at how complex Spanish verbal grammar can be. Which is what I think most of use can conclude here, the Dragon of the Spanish language is the verb. As per the 2nd question: The issue of usage comes down to the nature of the action: perfective vs imperfective AND the time of the action, also perfective vs imperfective. That was the fundamental split in Latin. Spanish has preserved that to some degree, much more so when the language is spoken properly. I shall describe it to you in the indicative, it's much easier to understand than trying to explain it in the subjunctive (even for a native like me): You may know that the preterite (yo trabajé) is a perfective tense: the action happened once, it was completed and now it is over. When you say "Yo trabajé mucho (ayer)", you are saying you performed the action of working ONE time, and at ONE specific time, which was yesterday. "Ayer" can be ommitted which is why I put it in parentheses; the verb being in the preterite still makes it understood the action happened at one specific time (could have been yesterday or ONE specific time 30 years ago). So the action itself is perfective (it was totally completed), and we also know it was done at a specific time in the past and it was not interrupted by something else. (keep these two concepts separate, you'll see why). The imperfect is (yo trabajaba), not surprisngly, imperfective: the action may have happened many times over and over again, and in the imperfect one does not know if any specific time is implied or a completion of the task. So when you say "Yo trabajaba mucho", you could be saying you performed the action of working 2 times or 2,000 times, and you are also saying that the time it happened is vague, unimportant or simply not specific. You could have worked hard last week or 30 years ago. You are also leaving vague whether you finished it, suggesting it could have been interrupted by some other event. So you see the difference?? There are two aspects, the nature of the action and the time of the action. Both can be perfect (in the preterite), or both can be imperfect (the imperfect, duh). BUT... What about if you want to SPLIT perfectiveness? You can't do that with the simple tenses. That's when the compound tenses come in handy. With compound tenses in Spanish, you can literally "split" perfectiveness. Compare the following: Yo había desayunado y fuí al trabajo. vs Yo hube desayunado y fuí al trabajo. Now, a lot of Spanish speakers have lost the ability to discern that two different things are implied in these sentences. Which is why it is a bit sad the anterior preterite is not used more often (of course, I do, specially in writing). So what is going on in those two sentences? In the first, "había trabajado" is in the Pluscuamperfect or Past Perfect, and "fuí" in the preterite. What this is telling you is the following: The action of having breakfast "había desayunado" was COMPLETED (perfective), but the time it happened is undefined (imperfective). You have now succesfully split pefectiveness! Remember with the simple tenses is all or nothing: preterite is perfective for both action and time, the imperfect is imperfective also for both action and time. With the Past Perfect you can say the action was perfective, but the time is not. What this means is that in that sentence, "Yo había desayunado y fuí al trabajo", you ate your breakfast, the action was done. But WHEN was it done in relation to ''fuí al trabajo"? 15 minutes before? One hour before? Five hours before? One can't tell. So... the Past Perfect here not only allows you to split perfectiveness of the action "había desayunado" itself, but it also allows you to keep the two actions in that sentence as independent, removed, not affecting or influencing one another. In other words, the two actions have separate or different times of reference that don't affect each other. In "Yo hube desayunado y fuí al trabajo", you are LINKING both actions to the same time reference, that DO affect each other. This sentence is invariably saying that the act of having breakfast and going to work are linked, are sequential, and that they are so by design. The sentence says it was your specific intention to eat breakfast first, and then soon after go to work. So to sum up, the anterior preterite links the action to another action as an inseparable pair, and also indicates ''immediacy'' of the 2nd action after the first. The proof or smoking gun for all that I just said? Compare: Yo había desayunado. vs Yo hube desayunado. The first sentence can STAND on it's own. You had breakfast (perfective action, complete), but at an uncertain time. You split the perfectiveness of action and time. You CANNOT say ''hube desayunado'' on its own. It makes no sense, it must be LINKED to another action. The first sentence has a separate time reference, the second one does not, it has to have another action tied to it. Yo hube desayunado y fuí al trabajo. Sorry for such a long explatation, but now with that you can visualize the "ra" imperfect subjunctive and the "se" form as a lost split between imperfective vs perfective action, in a hypothetial situation: Me gustaba que visitaran todos los veranos. vs Me gustó que visitasen todos los veranos. Besides the fact there is an unwritten suggestion that the "ra" subjunctive should be used with the imperfect, past perefect and simple conditional, and the "se" subjunctive with the preterite, anterior preterite, and past conditional (thus spliting the six tenses into three for each past subjunctive), educated people still see hints of perfectiveness in the "se" forms. It is an incredibly subtle concept that takes quite a while to assimilate, but those are basically the major points on how to split the use of the two subjunctives. Also, it is another unwritten convention that in a sentence with an affirmative AND negative, you use "ra" for the affirmarive verb and "se" for the negative. A famous saying to show this usage is: Si lloviera no habría sol y si no lloviese habría sed. Cheers. Edited by outcast on 07 August 2011 at 10:52pm 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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