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Spanish Grammar vs German Grammar | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| brian91 Senior Member Ireland Joined 5443 days ago 335 posts - 437 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 1 of 8 09 May 2010 at 5:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hóla and Guten Tag,
this summer I plan on taking up the beautiful language of Spanish. I will aim for a vocabulary of about three- thousand words (God willing, this will be achievable). But, having been put off grammar from learning Irish grammar (which I dislike even more than German grammar) and German itself (since 2003), I'd like to know from people who have studied both languages where they compare and contrast. I know quite a few people here who study both languages, and need your perspective. - Brian 
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| guapocondinero Newbie Germany Joined 5331 days ago 7 posts - 9 votes | Message 2 of 8 09 May 2010 at 6:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I have studied Spanish with assimil with English instructions. Occasionally, I translated the sentences into German. I noticed more similarities between German and Spanish than between English and Spanish. The most striking aspect would be the concept of reflexive verbs.
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| tracker465 Senior Member United States Joined 5351 days ago 355 posts - 496 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 3 of 8 09 May 2010 at 9:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I personally find German grammar to be easier, despite what many people will tell you. Below I will list the good, the bad, and the ugly.
SPANISH: The Good: -In Spanish, one doesn't have to deal with noun cases. "El libro" stays "el libro" and does not change depending on the location in the sentence. Definitely a nice switch from Latin! In German, one has to decline the article, and this can be tricky. -In Spanish, the gender is much easier to determine. Plurals are also more uniform. -Not related to grammar, but in Spanish, the more abstract words will be easier to memorize and learn than in German, for an English speaker, since we grab most of our abstract words from French. This is nice, since I personally find it easier to memorize smaller words, such as "cat" than higher-concept words. The bad: -I really do not care what anyone else claims (such as my university Spanish professor), the amount of Spanish tenses is very annoying and can be difficult for a non-native to learn. One has to determine which tense to use, and then also determine the correct way to conjugate for each tense. Very Latin-esque. -Irregular verbs. Every language has them, and they remain annoying no matter which language they appear. -Ser vs Estar - Another nice complexity for the English speaker. GERMAN: The Good: -Less tenses. The German tenses are much easier to learn than those in Spanish. -Irregular verbs. German irregular verbs are really not so irregular, since they correspond nicely to those same verbs in Dutch and English. Really really nice. The Bad: -Plurals are more difficult to determine, though after awhile, one begins to notice patterns and plurals become easier to guess. -Declining nouns and adjectives. This can be very annoying, and in this way, German is harder than Spanish. One should remember, however, that the German declensions are nothing compared to what one would have to do for many other languages. Personally I find German to be easier than Spanish, depsite what many of my friends and professors claim. The tense situation just over complicates Spanish. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Smart Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5338 days ago 352 posts - 398 votes Speaks: Spanish, English*, Latin, French Studies: German | Message 4 of 8 10 May 2010 at 12:20am | IP Logged | |||||
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Being fluent in Spanish and studying German, I can say that Spanish will be very easy for you. Grammar is much simpler, and the language itself is soft/easy on the eyes :)
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| canada38 Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5494 days ago 304 posts - 417 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Japanese | Message 5 of 8 10 May 2010 at 2:13am | IP Logged | |||||
I hope I can see that when I take German class this September. Of course it is subject to personal opinion, but I do not see any beauty in the written German language like I do for Romance languages. I hope I prove myself to be incorrect!! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tracker465 Senior Member United States Joined 5351 days ago 355 posts - 496 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 6 of 8 10 May 2010 at 2:42am | IP Logged | |||||
No offense, but this is the crap I hear all the time at the university, and it is always the perception among my peers, but there does not seem to be any claims to back it up. ;) I would be curious as to why you find Spanish easier than German, grammar wise, because maybe I am just missing something. Disregarding the difficulty of learning vocabulary, I honestly believe that the German tenses are much easier to learn than the Spanish... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_verbs#Tenses http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_verbs I just cannot fathom how people believe that Spanish really is easier to learn than German, from a grammatical perspective. Both languages have tricky prepositional uses, so the only thing that might cause trouble would be the cases and grammatical gender, but as there are only four cases in German, it seems that this would not even be a big deal, if one has an understanding of the underlying grammar. Oh, and for what it's worth, someone else's opinion:
http://french.about.com/cs/teachingresources/a/spanishiseasi er.htm Edit: I realize the article above is Spanish vs French in terms of simplicity, but I guess my point is that it talks about the myth of Spanish being so easy, something that I just cannot believe, having studied both German and Spanish. The idea of not being cases and having many cognates with English make Spanish easy, yes, but when one starts messing with the tenses, conjugations, it gets very messy, very quickly. Edited by tracker465 on 10 May 2010 at 2:45am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| mspen1018 Triglot Newbie United States Joined 5330 days ago 36 posts - 44 votes Speaks: English, German, Sign Language Studies: Persian, Spanish | Message 7 of 8 24 May 2010 at 11:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
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my issues with German as an assimilation taught bilingual who studied grammar recently because I never
realized that the dialekt my family spoke was different from Hochdeutsch and assumed conversational fluency was good enough... was the massive amount personal pronouns and the situations that they could change at the drop of a hat, the anal retentive rules that I always just "got it" with grandma because it made up for the lack of emotional expression but when explained in English, it is hard to grasp. the fact that in German there are words that mean many different things and in some cases switching between different definitions do not matter but in others are specific to certain situations that are long and do not need to be related in any way. the cultural norms of Germans being very low context makes it make sense to me on that level. My Spanish teacher is a German immigrant to Argentina and he would answer me in German in class and everyone else thought he was mean and yelling at me but I knew he wasn't and he helps me get Spanish better that way. I think the lack of emotional expression culturally is why Mozart, Beethoven and Bach to name a few are bred from that ideal and is just foreign to people, so it seems negative but Germans are the nicest people in the world and of the rotten things that each nation has a history of doing to people, Germany is front line to make an example to not let that happen again. the Spanish culture is more emotional and it seems simpler than English which is my dominant Muttersprache and American Sign Language to those of us who learned from repeated contact with a deaf person and not classes usually make the odd faces and noises that may seem odd to people but is part of that communication. get into Adjective endings and relative pronouns in specific situations in German grammar and you will go nuts and I can speak fluent conversational "native sounding" German and that is insane. Word order is messy sometimes too in German. I am new at Spanish but so far it seems easy 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| manuelram16 Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6079 days ago 20 posts - 24 votes Speaks: English, Spanish* Studies: French, German | Message 8 of 8 02 June 2010 at 7:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Spanish being my native language, being fluent in English and learning German I can honestly tell you that Spanish is helpful to learn Italian & French but I don't see any similarities between Spanish, English or German that would make learning one them easier.
It took me 3 months to achieve a "tourist" level of French, and so far it has taken me 3 years to achieve the same in German. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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