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Why the Spanish can’t learn English | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Akao aka FailArtist Senior Member United States Joined 5337 days ago 315 posts - 347 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Toki Pona | Message 25 of 33 21 July 2010 at 5:07pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
That is a logical fallacy. I'd rather avoid explaining the fallacy in depth, so in the simplest terms possible: Just because something goes one way does not mean it goes backwards the same way. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| egill Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5697 days ago 418 posts - 791 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 26 of 33 21 July 2010 at 8:39pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Right, cause both those posters were having an absolutely serious debate. Totally.
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| alfaiate Newbie Portugal Joined 5439 days ago 2 posts - 5 votes Speaks: Portuguese* Studies: Spanish, Swedish | Message 27 of 33 22 July 2010 at 2:48am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I found this article to be quite interesting but end up not agreeing with a lot of the ideas exposed there. It seems to me that the author is trying to make up excuses for the fact that Spanish people are in general simply not prone to learn other languages (due to cultural reasons) compared to other countries.
A long analysis is made about why Portuguese people are better than Spaniards in English. I might be a bit partial here :p, but I consider this to be generally true also when taking into account the rest of Latin Europe. As such, I doubt it has much to do with the vowel system as the author claims. Yes, ours might be way more complex than the Spanish one, but it's not similar to the English system. Also, there are a lot more than just vowel sounds and stuff like 'th' can be quite hard to master; in fact, compared to languages such as French, this argument doesn't hold also. Then he goes on, saying that it is because the movies are not dubbed. I confess that I thought for a long time this to be a perfectly valid explanation. It is, of course, true that you can learn a lot from hearing a movie in a foreign language. However, I don't recall learning THAT much unless I deliberately intended to do so. I mean, when I was younger, I had the subtitles and I generally turned the volume down and watched movies without my parents' interference. On the other hand, I'm quite positive that in Greece they also don't dub movies and I don't think Greeks are fluent English speakers... So, all this to say what? The reason why I think we as Portuguese might end up being better speakers is just because we feel ashamed not to be so. From my personal experience, I think the reason for a country to "be good" at a foreign language is mostly related to its size and languages proximity. In Portugal, being a small country, it's just more natural to have more foreign influences and people (either foreigners or natives) simply assume that you should have some command of English and Spanish. In Germany, there's the proximity. In countries like Sweden and the Netherlands, there's the size AND the proximity, so I guess this explains why they are probably the best English speakers. PS: I've read a lot before, but this is my first post here so... Hi everyone! Edited by alfaiate on 22 July 2010 at 11:57am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Louis Triglot Groupie Italy Joined 5731 days ago 92 posts - 110 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish | Message 28 of 33 22 July 2010 at 4:36am | IP Logged | ||||||||
What an excellent first post! Welcome to the forum, alfaiate. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Lemus Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6382 days ago 232 posts - 266 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Japanese, Russian, German | Message 29 of 33 23 July 2010 at 6:06am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I'm not saying this is how people actually attempt to speak Spanish nor would I suspect is John Smith claiming that every Spanish word can be found by removing an o from a corresponding English word. This was not meant to be a scholarly thesis, just a light joke. Edited by Lemus on 23 July 2010 at 6:07am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| John Smith Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6043 days ago 396 posts - 542 votes Speaks: English*, Czech*, Spanish Studies: German | Message 30 of 33 25 July 2010 at 7:35am | IP Logged | ||||||||
the exception that proves the rule If it is true that Spanish speakers cannot learn English it is also true that they cannot learn languages like German, Swedish, Greek, Russian, Dutch, Thai, Japanese, Chinese, Indonesian, Korean, Polish.... I believe that English is the easiest non-Romance language for Spanish speakers. Edited by John Smith on 25 July 2010 at 7:37am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6676 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 31 of 33 25 July 2010 at 8:49am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I think you're right. Keep in mind that the average Spanish people have problems with romance languages as well. I have friends who are native Català and Spanish speakers and they think that French is very difficult. I think it's more a question of attitude and beliefs. What do they think it is possible? That's the question. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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