Why is Spanish such a difficult language to learn for English speakers?
I’m just gonna go ahead and answer this…… And it’s likely it will put to rest any future answers…This is because it isn’t all that hard!Okay, so I’m not fluent in Spanish, but I have learned enough to say that it’s NOT HARD for English speakers.If anything, French is harder. I took French before Spanish, which also makes Spanish easier. However, Spanish is just about the easiest language for an English speaker of an intelligible level to learn.Reasons:It’s Latin-based, just like English. It can be argued that all Latin (or Romance) languages (Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, etc.) are easier than English. This is because the Germanic and Greek aspects of language aren’t present (unlike English).Sure you need to memorize articles to make the noun agree, and conjugations. Just imagine people learning English….. these people have to keep all our homophones straight (There, they’re, their; to, too, two)Everything is said almost exactly how it’s spelt. You just might need to remember the Spanish alphabet.There are probably many other reasons Spanish is easy, I just can’t think of all of them right now. In fact, that reminds me; Category I of languages (easiest) for English-speaking diplomats to learn:
How difficult is it to learn to speak Spanish?
It's easy in some ways but hard in others. The pronunciation is easy so I guess that's good news for those trying to speak, also the grammar is straightforward in some places. It's an easy Romance language at least compared to French or Portuguese. BUT The sentence structure can be very different from English, gender and agreement will take some getting used to, and there are many many tenses for verbs you need to master. This includes the subjunctive which is usually quite challenging for English speakers because. You have to learn the subjunctive if you want to move beyond speaking like a child, or only stating facts...The good news is once you master the subjunctive you'll be able to apply it to any other Romance language you learn. In fact once you master Spanish you can learn Portuguese very easily, and Italian, and even French will not be as difficult. If you go to a Spanish speaking place and immerse yourself you can pick it up but if you want to learn it, I think you'll find it's easy at the beginning as you move up it becomes more intricate and challenging.
I can't learn Spanish, why is this difficult for me?
When I first decided to study French my experience was the same. Words sounded silly, nothing seemed logical, vocabulary was difficult to memorize, listening to a show or song with french subtitles did not seem to match what I was hearing. Your statement was the same as mine then “i cant learn French, why is this difficult for me?”About a year and a half later my company began discussions of opening an office in Quebec. By that point I could speak effectively in Spanish so further study was getting boring. The idea of learning French seemed much more interesting this time around and the upcoming office gave it a sense of urgency.When my French studies began the 2nd time around it seemed much easier. Things made immediate sense and within a few weeks I was having small conversations. My study methods were the same, my lack of resources was the same, but the 2nd time, I had more interest than sheer impulse.To answer your question, you cannot learn Spanish while you are making it a job. The moment you relax and enjoy the language it will come naturally. Your method of study should match what you enjoy. Those who enjoy reading find focusing on learning vocabulary and translating and eventually constantly reading is the best way to start. Those who enjoy music find studying the words they hear and singing the songs themselves a great way to start.Think you can and you can.
Why am I having so much trouble in Spanish 1?
You're probably too analytical, and trying too hard. If you find yourself trying to translate everything word-by-word, you're overanalyzing. This is hard at first, but is the key to a language: you have to think in that language. Read the English, then relax and say the image or thought directly in Spanish. It takes practice, but it will come. Yes, you have to study vocabulary, but cover the English translations and say the Spanish words out loud. Think of the meaning of the word as you say it, not the translation. Only peek at the English as a last resort. Say your verb congugations over and over [ voy vas va vamos van ] as fast as you can so that the ending forms become automatic and you don't have to analyze which ending means what. Do it all the time in your head, like while you brush your teeth, not just while staring at the books. It'll become another part of your thinking if you try to make it automatic, and not analytic.
Why do people think learning Spanish is so hard?
I’m a “glass half full” kind of gal, so let’s start with reasons why learning Spanish is easy, compared to, say, Chinese or Arabic.Spanish uses the Roman alphabet.It has mostly phonetic spelling.It only has one difficult sound, the trilled /r/, which many learners can already pronounce.It’s related to English, which means that the two languages have tons of cognates (related words) and somewhat similar grammar.In fact, when people say that learning Spanish is hard, they are mostly thinking about the challenges of learning a second language as an adult, not about Spanish specifically.They have to master new sounds, or sounds that are somewhat different to those of English. For Spanish, this includes shorter, ‘purer’ vowels, and softer consonants in general, as well as the trilled /r/.They have to memorize lots of new vocabulary. This isn’t as simple as learning perro for ‘dog’, gato for ‘cat’, and so on. Some of the biggest hurdles in learning any new language, including Spanish, are vocabulary-related, such as the two Spanish words for ‘to be’ (ser and estar), ‘for’ (por and para), and ‘to know’ (saber and conocer). There are about a half dozen ways to say ‘to become’, and four or so ways to say ‘you’ (depending on dialect), a fact that affects verbs as well as the pronoun ‘you’ itself.They have to learn new grammatical concepts. For Spanish, the biggest of these are masculine and feminine nouns, multiple verb conjugations (with tons of irregulars), and complex object pronouns.What hurdles 2 and 3 come down to is accepting that Spanish is its own language and not just a word-by-word translation of English. Spanish strategies for how to express meaning (e.g. The chocolate pleases me rather than I like chocolate) are equally valid to those of English. The more the learner can revel in these differences instead of resenting and rejecting them, the more progress she or he will make.¡Buena suerte!
Is learning Spanish harder than learning English?
Yes. I think most of the people who answered here simply don't know the answer because they are native speakers of English. A native speaker acquires the language in a different way, and has no way estimating how hard the language is when acquired as a second language. I'm not a native speaker of neither English nor Spanish, but I do speak both quite fluently - I think that enables me to answer the question quite easily. As a person who had to learn both of these languages as foreign languages I'm telling you: Spanish is much harder. The grammar is much more complicated - many more tenses, aspects and moods. The morphology is much more complicated too. Spanish is not a very hard language, compared to other languages I've learned (like Russian and Arabic), but it surely is much harder than English. One thing is very important to remember: I'm talking about relative difficulty. Learning a second language is ALWAYS hard. All the languages are hard. By saying that Spanish is harder than English I'm not saying that English is easy - it is not. Even after many years of learning and practicing English, my English still isn't perfect. And yet - In Spanish I have all the problems I have in English, and many more.