Main figure of Spanish Language
Difficulty
Spanish is objectively an easy language. It lacks the many difficulties of complex languages like Russian or Japanese. It has way less exceptions than French or English. Apart from the difficulties of word gender and conjugation, Spanish grammar is straightforward.
Spanish is objectively an easy language. It lacks the many difficulties of complex languages like Russian or Japanese. It has way less exceptions than French or English. Apart from the difficulties of word gender and conjugation, Spanish grammar is straightforward.
The difficulty is only if you already speak another Romance language, such as French, Italian, Portuguese, Latin or Romanian. See 'transparency' for more on this.
Pronunciation
Spanish is easy to pronounce. There are only two challenging sounds:
Rolled 'R': like Italian, Spanish uses manly 'R's that sound like an old tank cranking up. If you get some proper instructions as to tongue position, there is no reason why you should not master this sound after a few days. I like pronouncing those rolled 'R' - they are great fun.
'J' or Jota: this sound found in other languages, such as German 'Ach' or Scottish 'Loch'. It is not hugely difficult to master and you absolutely need to get it as raucous ad the native speakers if you want to speak correctly.
English speakers often have difficulties with the highly regular word intonation in Spanish. In contrast to English, where words are 'sung' in a way that defies understanding, Spanish is spoken like a machine gun, with only one syllable per word spoken stronger, usually the one before last. I strongly caution English speakers not to speak Spanish words with English intonation. You will sound like fools and people will probably not understand what you say.
If you wish to hear these two sounds in one word, ask a native Spanish speaker to say 'Guadalajara', 'naranja', 'ejercicios' or 'Borgès'.
Grammar
Spanish presents few grammatical difficulties. The main difficulties, shared with other Romance languages, are:
Word genders: All nouns are either masculine or feminine . For instance, the famous phrase Arnold Schwarzenegger line, 'No problemo!', is an error in Spanish. The word problema, despite its ending in -a, is a masculine. Students of Spanish tend to 'correct' the felt gender of the world problem (masculine) with a more masculine-sounding -o ending. However, the correct phrase is 'No problema!'. I got myself scolded by the Dominican wife of the owner of a favorite restaurant of mine when I tried my Spanish on her with this innocuous phrase, so I remember it. But there are scores of such mistakes you can make in Spanish. You just have to deal with it if you don't want to sound like a moron.
Conjugation: Unlike English, Spanish verbs take many, many different endings depending on the tense, mood and person doing the action of the verb. If this is your first Romance language, it will take some study. If it is your first language with a strong conjugation, it will take more study. It is not immensely difficult and with a good language program and dedication, you should be able to overcome this difficulty.
The subjunctive mood is a key point to master in Spanish as in other Romance languages. You absolutely need to have this one right, even if it looks a bit alien, otherwise your Spanish will sound awkward.
Vocabulary
There are quite a lot of Spanish words you will recognize if you speak English. If you speak another romance language, most words will look familiar after a few weeks of study. When learning a Spanish word, you need to remember its gender. It is a must so don't get lazy on this.
You need to pay attention to the few but important false friends or false cognates. There are not so many of those pairs of words that look very similar in two languages, but if you do not study them properly you will sound like a fool.
Transparency
Learning Spanish should be seen as an investment.
Not only will you speak this beautiful and ubiquitous language, but you will receive a deep discount on other fine languages from the Romance family:
Should you want to learn French, Portuguese or Italian, three important languages, or even mess with Latin, Catalan or Romanian, you will learn them in 50% to 80% less time than it took you to learn Spanish. Those languages have very similar vocabularies, with many words derived from Latin, and almost the same grammar. Learn the dreaded but all-important subjunctive tense and you can use it in all these languages. The differences in grammar are minor and you'll need to concentrate mostly on differences in pronunciation, idioms and vocabulary.
If you do not already speak another Romance language, learning one is an absolute must. Spanish makes good candidate for a first Romance language, because if you stop after you have learned Spanish, you will be stuck with a useful language. If you start by Romanian because you like Vlad Tepezsch, you will still benefit from the 'discount' should you want to later study other, more important Romance languages, but in the meanwhile you will be stuck with a language that is spoken in few countries only. It's like buying one DVD for $19.99 and getting an 80% discount on every other DVD in the store. Or a lifelong all-you-can-eat buffet. French is a close competitor for a good first Romance language.
Click for a list of languages related to Spanish with percentage of lexical similarity and relative grammatical difficulty.Spelling
Spanish has the most logical spelling you can find. You speak like you write and you write like you speak. If you know one, you know the other. This is the simplest orthographic system there is and it won't cause you much difficulty.
The main problem is remembering when to write the accents, which is not always easy if you do not have a Spanish-language keyboard. But if you write using a software with a spell checker, it will correct those by itself.
The fine gentlemen who designed the Spanish language were nice enough to include in each and every word a sign to tell you where to accentuate the word when accent is not on the antepenultimate syllable. If you ever meet the people who engineered the monstrous English orthographic system, or that of Arabic or Russian, make sure to let them know how you feel. Spanish is the gold standard of user-friendly orthography and language lovers can only wish other languages will follow suit.
Time needed
If you already speak another Romance language, 6 months of regular one-hour-a-day-sessions or 200 hours should see you fluent in Spanish. This is what it took me and I had absolutely no prior knowledge of the language. Adding advanced vocabulary and getting to speak with great fluency will get easier and easier as you progress. Once you have assimilated the few but important differences between Spanish and the other Romance language you speak, the rest is very similar.
If Spanish is your first foreign language and your mother tongue is not a Romance language, you should be reasonably fluent with 300 hours of study. In my opinion, an hour of serious study every day for a year is more than you need.
Pronunciation
Spanish is easy to pronounce. There are only two challenging sounds:
Rolled 'R': like Italian, Spanish uses manly 'R's that sound like an old tank cranking up. If you get some proper instructions as to tongue position, there is no reason why you should not master this sound after a few days. I like pronouncing those rolled 'R' - they are great fun.
'J' or Jota: this sound found in other languages, such as German 'Ach' or Scottish 'Loch'. It is not hugely difficult to master and you absolutely need to get it as raucous ad the native speakers if you want to speak correctly.
English speakers often have difficulties with the highly regular word intonation in Spanish. In contrast to English, where words are 'sung' in a way that defies understanding, Spanish is spoken like a machine gun, with only one syllable per word spoken stronger, usually the one before last. I strongly caution English speakers not to speak Spanish words with English intonation. You will sound like fools and people will probably not understand what you say.
If you wish to hear these two sounds in one word, ask a native Spanish speaker to say 'Guadalajara', 'naranja', 'ejercicios' or 'Borgès'.
Grammar
Spanish presents few grammatical difficulties. The main difficulties, shared with other Romance languages, are:
Word genders: All nouns are either masculine or feminine . For instance, the famous phrase Arnold Schwarzenegger line, 'No problemo!', is an error in Spanish. The word problema, despite its ending in -a, is a masculine. Students of Spanish tend to 'correct' the felt gender of the world problem (masculine) with a more masculine-sounding -o ending. However, the correct phrase is 'No problema!'. I got myself scolded by the Dominican wife of the owner of a favorite restaurant of mine when I tried my Spanish on her with this innocuous phrase, so I remember it. But there are scores of such mistakes you can make in Spanish. You just have to deal with it if you don't want to sound like a moron.
Conjugation: Unlike English, Spanish verbs take many, many different endings depending on the tense, mood and person doing the action of the verb. If this is your first Romance language, it will take some study. If it is your first language with a strong conjugation, it will take more study. It is not immensely difficult and with a good language program and dedication, you should be able to overcome this difficulty.
The subjunctive mood is a key point to master in Spanish as in other Romance languages. You absolutely need to have this one right, even if it looks a bit alien, otherwise your Spanish will sound awkward.
Vocabulary
There are quite a lot of Spanish words you will recognize if you speak English. If you speak another romance language, most words will look familiar after a few weeks of study. When learning a Spanish word, you need to remember its gender. It is a must so don't get lazy on this.
You need to pay attention to the few but important false friends or false cognates. There are not so many of those pairs of words that look very similar in two languages, but if you do not study them properly you will sound like a fool.
Transparency
Learning Spanish should be seen as an investment.
Not only will you speak this beautiful and ubiquitous language, but you will receive a deep discount on other fine languages from the Romance family:
Should you want to learn French, Portuguese or Italian, three important languages, or even mess with Latin, Catalan or Romanian, you will learn them in 50% to 80% less time than it took you to learn Spanish. Those languages have very similar vocabularies, with many words derived from Latin, and almost the same grammar. Learn the dreaded but all-important subjunctive tense and you can use it in all these languages. The differences in grammar are minor and you'll need to concentrate mostly on differences in pronunciation, idioms and vocabulary.
If you do not already speak another Romance language, learning one is an absolute must. Spanish makes good candidate for a first Romance language, because if you stop after you have learned Spanish, you will be stuck with a useful language. If you start by Romanian because you like Vlad Tepezsch, you will still benefit from the 'discount' should you want to later study other, more important Romance languages, but in the meanwhile you will be stuck with a language that is spoken in few countries only. It's like buying one DVD for $19.99 and getting an 80% discount on every other DVD in the store. Or a lifelong all-you-can-eat buffet. French is a close competitor for a good first Romance language.
Click for a list of languages related to Spanish with percentage of lexical similarity and relative grammatical difficulty.Spelling
Spanish has the most logical spelling you can find. You speak like you write and you write like you speak. If you know one, you know the other. This is the simplest orthographic system there is and it won't cause you much difficulty.
The main problem is remembering when to write the accents, which is not always easy if you do not have a Spanish-language keyboard. But if you write using a software with a spell checker, it will correct those by itself.
The fine gentlemen who designed the Spanish language were nice enough to include in each and every word a sign to tell you where to accentuate the word when accent is not on the antepenultimate syllable. If you ever meet the people who engineered the monstrous English orthographic system, or that of Arabic or Russian, make sure to let them know how you feel. Spanish is the gold standard of user-friendly orthography and language lovers can only wish other languages will follow suit.
Time needed
If you already speak another Romance language, 6 months of regular one-hour-a-day-sessions or 200 hours should see you fluent in Spanish. This is what it took me and I had absolutely no prior knowledge of the language. Adding advanced vocabulary and getting to speak with great fluency will get easier and easier as you progress. Once you have assimilated the few but important differences between Spanish and the other Romance language you speak, the rest is very similar.
If Spanish is your first foreign language and your mother tongue is not a Romance language, you should be reasonably fluent with 300 hours of study. In my opinion, an hour of serious study every day for a year is more than you need.
No comments:
Post a Comment