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¿Es difícil el idioma español?

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gmads
Mexico

¿Es difícil el idioma español?

Post by gmads »

¿Tú, qué opinas, es el español más difícil que el inglés, más fácil, o es similar?

Durante tu aprendizaje, ¿cuáles son los temas que más trabajo te han costado?


:hash:  ㆍespañol ㆍgeneral ㆍdebate

Last edited by gmads on Sun May 07, 2023 7:49 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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richardkeo2
United States of America

Re: ¿Es difícil el idioma español?

Post by richardkeo2 »

El español no es tan difícil para los gringos. Los gringos no están preparados para entender la estructura de las lenguas romance.

You can't just say that a person who only ever spoke English, who then begins to learn Spanish, is having all of their difficulty because of Spanish per se. When you don't have the burden of learning Spanish AND ALSO a totally different grammatical system at the same time, the Spanish part alone is not really difficult.

The Romance languages have grammatical forms that have no parallel to what a native (solo) English speaker would understand, so not only do they have to learn the particularities of Spanish (usted?! qué v. cual?!?!), but they also have to deal with the (brand new, to them) notion that verbs can (must, in fact) change structure based on tense, aspect, mood, person, number, and to some extent voice.

Then there's the fact that determiners change structure based on number and grammatical gender, and also that there is no necessary correspondence between grammatical gender and (putative) real-world gender:

"Ese perro es más gordo que el mío."

We don't actually know whether the dogs are male or female or whether "I" am male or female in this sentence. It's just that "perro" is a grammatically masculine word, which is the only reason to use "el mío" instead of "la mía". Compare this to, say, Russian, where the noun would possibly change based on whether a cat is male (кот) or female (кошка). Or to English, where we don't even conceive of the word "cat" as having a grammatical gender (even though it does, according to Old English, and it is masculine).

I can attest to it not being Spanish's fault because I learned Latin before Spanish. I had to get my head around all that stuff already with Latin, which has a more complex verb conjugation system than Spanish, and also a complex noun/adjective declension system that Spanish got rid of. I became proficient in this totally different mode of grammatical thought before I attempted Spanish. Now that I'm studying Spanish, it's mostly just a vocabulary game with an emphasis on memorizing prepositions. The grammar is intuitive enough, judged from the perspective of Romance grammar in general.

wayfarer

Re: ¿Es difícil el idioma español?

Post by wayfarer »

Spanish is easy. Probably the easiest popular modern language for an English speaker to learn.

John238922
Australia

Re: ¿Es difícil el idioma español?

Post by John238922 »

I tend to agree with [mention]wayfarer[/mention]. I think Spanish is easier to learn than at least French.

  • fewer commonly used idioms, e,g "il y a", " ne ... pas"

  • Many readily recognisable words in common

  • generally, simple "what you see is what you get"

.

John238922
Australia

Re: ¿Es difícil el idioma español?

Post by John238922 »

I don't agree with [mention]richardkeo2[/mention] about the absence of grammatical concepts in English, at least for those of us who were formally taught grammar.

In school I was certainly taught:

  • the difference between 'what' and 'which' (qué/cuál)

  • tense, mood, person (eg do/does), mood, person, voice etc of verbs

  • the genders of nouns

.

For later generations where grammar was not taught, or who were taught that grammar doesn't matter, I guess its a new world to discover that grammar does matter.

Chrisinom
Germany

Re: ¿Es difícil el idioma español?

Post by Chrisinom »

This is a very difficult question without an easy answer. All foreign languages are difficult to learn. It is generally said that English is pretty easy but that's not really true with its enormous quantity of words, the many varieties around the world and the lack of grammatical consistency. Besides the similarity to your mother tongue pointed out by richardkeo, it also depends on what type of learner you are. People who like thinking logically will find German, which is said to be difficult, pretty easy. If you learn a lot by hearing a language, Italian is the language for you. I myself learned English for seven years at school, studied it at university and taught it for 46 years. I studied learning Italian as an adult and I understand written Italian texts more easily than English ones.

CJ54321
United States of America

Re: ¿Es difícil el idioma español?

Post by CJ54321 »

For the most part, nouns do not have gender in English. Sure, a few words like actor/actress, executor/executrix, and fiancé/fianceé remain (although that last one was borrowed directly from French). But there is no gender for article adjectives in English, so "the" is always used for definite and the "a/an" distinction for indefinite is solely based on whether the word that follows begins with a consonant sound or a vowel sound. That at least means for anyone learning English they won't have to expend much energy on figuring out what articles to use with which words. (I won't even get into the challenges I've found in learning German and its articles).

As to spelling and pronunciation, English definitely lacks the consistency that makes certain other languages (Spanish, for example) so much easier in that regard.

I'm not sure what exactly constitutes a "popular" language, but I would contend that Norwegian is an easier language than Spanish for an English speaker to learn. However, I would agree that Spanish would probably be more practical to know, for most people.

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gmads
Mexico

Re: ¿Es difícil el idioma español?

Post by gmads »

richardkeo2 wrote: Fri Jul 08, 2022 1:20 am

El español no es tan difícil para los gringos. Los gringos no están preparados para entender la estructura de las lenguas romance.

Creo que quisiste decir que el español no es tan fácil, precisamente por la diferencia gramatical entre el inglés y el español.

richardkeo2 wrote: Fri Jul 08, 2022 1:20 am

You can't just say that a person who only ever spoke English, who then begins to learn Spanish, is having all of their difficulty because of Spanish per se. When you don't have the burden of learning Spanish AND ALSO a totally different grammatical system at the same time, the Spanish part alone is not really difficult.

I'd say that to speak of any language is also to speak of its morphology, phonology, semantics and syntax. All these elements are fundamental and determine a language. What is the "Spanish part alone," the way it sounds?

richardkeo2 wrote: Fri Jul 08, 2022 1:20 am

The Romance languages have grammatical forms that have no parallel to what a native (solo) English speaker would understand, so not only do they have to learn the particularities of Spanish (usted?! qué v. cual?!?!), but they also have to deal with the (brand new, to them) notion that verbs can (must, in fact) change structure based on tense, aspect, mood, person, number, and to some extent voice.

We're now getting to the core of the question, the grammatical aspect. Yes, as you exemplify, Spanish has a more complex grammatical structure.

richardkeo2 wrote: Fri Jul 08, 2022 1:20 am

Then there's the fact that determiners change structure based on number and grammatical gender, and also that there is no necessary correspondence between grammatical gender and (putative) real-world gender:

"Ese perro es más gordo que el mío."

We don't actually know whether the dogs are male or female or whether "I" am male or female in this sentence. It's just that "perro" is a grammatically masculine word, which is the only reason to use "el mío" instead of "la mía". Compare this to, say, Russian, where the noun would possibly change based on whether a cat is male (кот) or female (кошка). Or to English, where we don't even conceive of the word "cat" as having a grammatical gender (even though it does, according to Old English, and it is masculine).

While there is only one gender for most animals (there is no "cisna" nor a "balleno"), a few do have two genders to correspond to their sex, like dogs (perros, perras) and cats (gatos, gatas). Of course, unless one needs to specify the sex of the animal in question, the masculine gender is generally used, and that is why we say "ese perro," because its sex is unimportant at that moment, not because Spanish lacks the feminine gender for a dog or a cat.

When referring to small birds, regardless of their type, the generic word "pájaro" does have the corresponding feminine "pájara." A few cases are similar to English, where an ending is added: tigre, tigresa; gallo, gallina. Others have a radically different word: caballo, yegua; toro, vaca. For most animals, the terms "macho" and "hembra" are added to differenciate their sex: la ardilla hembra.

richardkeo2 wrote: Fri Jul 08, 2022 1:20 am

I can attest to it not being Spanish's fault because I learned Latin before Spanish. I had to get my head around all that stuff already with Latin, which has a more complex verb conjugation system than Spanish, and also a complex noun/adjective declension system that Spanish got rid of. I became proficient in this totally different mode of grammatical thought before I attempted Spanish. Now that I'm studying Spanish, it's mostly just a vocabulary game with an emphasis on memorizing prepositions. The grammar is intuitive enough, judged from the perspective of Romance grammar in general.

Yes, romance languages derive from Latin, which was even more complex because of the cases (the declension system). Even when compared to Italian, Spanish is easier, starting with the fact that Italian has three genders: masculine (il cane), feminine (la gata) and neuter (lo studente).

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gmads
Mexico

Re: ¿Es difícil el idioma español?

Post by gmads »

wayfarer wrote: Fri Jul 08, 2022 1:56 am

Spanish is easy. Probably the easiest popular modern language for an English speaker to learn.

Yes, from the top five (not including English, of course), I'd also say that Spanish would seem to be the easier one to learn for an English speaker: Mandarin, Hindi, Spanish, French, Arabic.

If one takes into account the following four most spoken languages: Bengali, Russian, Portuguese and Indonesian, Portuguese would also be a very easy language to learn, followed by Indonesian, according to The Foreign Service Institute. Regarding Indonesian, there does seem to be some agreement on it being an easy language to learn.

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gmads
Mexico

Re: ¿Es difícil el idioma español?

Post by gmads »

John238922 wrote: Fri Jul 08, 2022 6:54 am

I don't agree with @richardkeo2 about the absence of grammatical concepts in English, at least for those of us who were formally taught grammar.

In school I was certainly taught:

  • the difference between 'what' and 'which' (qué/cuál)

  • tense, mood, person (eg do/does), mood, person, voice etc of verbs

  • the genders of nouns

.

For later generations where grammar was not taught, or who were taught that grammar doesn't matter, I guess its a new world to discover that grammar does matter.

I don't think he actually said that. Anyway, those of us who have formally studied English know from experience there was no way to escape learning its grammar, just as we needed to learn it in our own native language.

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gmads
Mexico

Re: ¿Es difícil el idioma español?

Post by gmads »

Chrisinom wrote: Fri Jul 08, 2022 8:48 am

People who like thinking logically will find German, which is said to be difficult, pretty easy.

Wow! Really? Who would have said it! At one time I started learning it, but I never advanced much, being a self-learner back then, regarding languages, was not that easy. For some time now I've been considering adding it to my Duo's list.


Is German Hard to Learn? Here are 10 Reasons Why It’s Easy.

You Need to Learn Long German Words
When you come face-to-face with a word like “viertausendeinhundertsiebenunddreißig” (4137), it’s a terrifying sight. It’s the linguistic equivalent of Frankenstein’s monster.

It is indeed a "terrifying sight!" Understatement of the year! :D

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gmads
Mexico

Re: ¿Es difícil el idioma español?

Post by gmads »

CJ54321 wrote: Sat Aug 13, 2022 2:13 pm

As to spelling and pronunciation, English definitely lacks the consistency that makes certain other languages (Spanish, for example) so much easier in that regard.

Indeed! Dealing with the grammatical aspect of English is relatively easy, but that is more than compensated when having to deal with its spelling and pronunciation.

Image

CJ54321 wrote: Sat Aug 13, 2022 2:13 pm

I would contend that Norwegian is an easier language than Spanish for an English speaker to learn. However, I would agree that Spanish would probably be more practical to know, for most people.

I would have also thought the same! However, The Foreign Service Institute says that both Norwegian and Spanish take the same time to learn.

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pawndemic
Germany

Re: ¿Es difícil el idioma español?

Post by pawndemic »

gmads wrote: Tue Jul 05, 2022 8:51 am

¿Tú, qué opinas, es el español más difícil que el inglés, más fácil, o es similar?

En mi opinión, como alemán, el inglés es menos difícil que el español. Para mi la gran diferencia en el aprendizaje entre inglés y español era que ya del principio entendía acústicamente las palabras ingleses muy claro, o sea si incluso no entendí una palabra fue capaz de aislar la palabra y pude buscar en el diccionario o, más tarde, en internet. El español, por otra parte, era una masa indefinida para mi. Ni siquiera pude aislar la palabra que no conocí. Por ello, llevé mucho tiempo para entender algo en la tele español o en series o películas españoles o mexicanas.

gmads wrote: Tue Jul 05, 2022 8:51 am

Durante tu aprendizaje, ¿cuáles son los temas que más trabajo te han costado?

Creo que la gramática básica del español no tan difícil. Lo que más me cuesta es el subjuntivo y el uso adecuado de los tiempos verbales. Todavía cometo muchos errores en estos campos. Tampoco facilitar el aprendizaje del español que en cada pueblo tienen otras palabras o expresiones. Muchas veces, cuando tengo preguntas sobre palabras o expresiones durante la lectura de mis libros españoles, mis contactos españoles me responden que no lo han oído nunca eso tampoco :D

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Chrisinom
Germany

Re: ¿Es difícil el idioma español?

Post by Chrisinom »

@“viertausendeinhundertsiebenunddreißig”
That's a very bad example of the long words in German. First of all, I've never written a number like this as a word, and even here I've copied and pasted it. Moreover, four thousand one hundred and seventy three is not so much better, once you know the numbers in German. Of course you can create words of indefinite length in German, but we hardly do that and make fun of it ourselves. One often quoted example is "Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaft", which is the steamship company on the Danube. You can add the captain, his widow, her pension, its calculation etc., but I'll spare you that. Compound words of two elements like steamship company exist in other languages, too, and they are as difficult to learn as Kühlschrank.
The biggest problem of the German language are the three genders and especially the neuter nouns. Friends of mine who speak German well often make mistakes. Yet the example of *Mädchen" given in this forum again is a bad one. It's the same as the Italian "il donnone" (a very big woman) which has the male article for a woman. It's masculine because all the nouns ending in -one are masculine. Likewise the German suffixes - chen and - lein to form diminuitives make nouns neuter. Die Frau - das Fräulein (miss) , das Frauchen (mistress, female pet owner. A male pet owner is das Herrchen).

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gmads
Mexico

Re: ¿Es difícil el idioma español?

Post by gmads »

pawndemic wrote: Sat Aug 13, 2022 11:21 pm
gmads wrote: Tue Jul 05, 2022 8:51 am

¿Tú, qué opinas, es el español más difícil que el inglés, más fácil, o es similar?

En mi opinión, como alemán, el inglés es menos difícil que el español. Para mi la gran diferencia en el aprendizaje entre inglés y español era que ya del principio entendía acústicamente las palabras ingleses muy claro, o sea si incluso no entendí una palabra fue capaz de aislar la palabra y pude buscar en el diccionario o, más tarde, en internet. El español, por otra parte, era una masa indefinida para mi. Ni siquiera pude aislar la palabra que no conocí. Por ello, llevé mucho tiempo para entender algo en la tele español o en series o películas españoles o mexicanas.

Claro, comparten una raíz, tal como nosotros con el italiano.

"era una masa indefinida para mi" ¡La mejor descripción que he visto! :D Totalmente acertada, así lo vivimos mientras vamos adquiriendo vocabulario y nos vamos acostumbrando a los sonidos.

pawndemic wrote: Sat Aug 13, 2022 11:21 pm
gmads wrote: Tue Jul 05, 2022 8:51 am

Durante tu aprendizaje, ¿cuáles son los temas que más trabajo te han costado?

Creo que la gramática básica del español no tan difícil. Lo que más me cuesta es el subjuntivo y el uso adecuado de los tiempos verbales. Todavía cometo muchos errores en estos campos.

Sí, me imagino. Hasta donde entiendo, la gramática alemana es más difícil que la española.

Supongo que entre el alemán y el español varios de los tiempos verbales deberán ser los mismos, como el presente y el pasado simple, o varios de los tiempos compuestos, por ejemplo.

En cuanto a la estructura de los verbos mismos, quiero imaginar que son como en inglés, es decir, se usan auxiliares. ¿Es así? ¿O se cambian por medio de terminaciones, como en español?

pawndemic wrote: Sat Aug 13, 2022 11:21 pm

Tampoco facilitar el aprendizaje del español que en cada pueblo tienen otras palabras o expresiones. Muchas veces, cuando tengo preguntas sobre palabras o expresiones durante la lectura de mis libros españoles, mis contactos españoles me responden que no lo han oído nunca eso tampoco :D

!Cierto! Si bien compartimos un mismo idioma, cada país hispanohablante tiene sus propias palabras y expresiones. Incluso, una misma palabra puede cambiar de significado. Sin embargo, me imagino que lo mismo debe suceder con el alemán: El idioma alemán en el mundo.

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gmads
Mexico

Re: ¿Es difícil el idioma español?

Post by gmads »

Chrisinom wrote: Sun Aug 14, 2022 2:44 pm

@“viertausendeinhundertsiebenunddreißig”
That's a very bad example of the long words in German. First of all, I've never written a number like this as a word, and even here I've copied and pasted it. Moreover, four thousand one hundred and seventy three is not so much better, once you know the numbers in German.

Ok. Yes, that sounds logical.

The longest Spanish word, but not recognized by the RAE, is hipopotomonstrosesquipedaliofobia :o

Chrisinom wrote: Sun Aug 14, 2022 2:44 pm

Of course you can create words of indefinite length in German, but we hardly do that and make fun of it ourselves. One often quoted example is "Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaft", which is the steamship company on the Danube. You can add the captain, his widow, her pension, its calculation etc., but I'll spare you that. Compound words of two elements like steamship company exist in other languages, too, and they are as difficult to learn as Kühlschrank.

I didn't know that, I mean, that German allowed to actually join such a series of words. I just searched about this: derivational synthesis. I knew that German is famous for its long words, but I thought they were mostly related to technical areas, something that I think tends to happen in many languages.

Chrisinom wrote: Sun Aug 14, 2022 2:44 pm

@“viertausendeinhundertsiebenunddreißig”
The biggest problem of the German language are the three genders and especially the neuter nouns. Friends of mine who speak German well often make mistakes. Yet the example of *Mädchen" given in this forum again is a bad one. It's the same as the Italian "il donnone" (a very big woman) which has the male article for a woman. It's masculine because all the nouns ending in -one are masculine. Likewise the German suffixes - chen and - lein to form diminuitives make nouns neuter. Die Frau - das Fräulein (miss) , das Frauchen (mistress, female pet owner. A male pet owner is das Herrchen).

So Mädchen is a bad example of how German genders are a problem?

I guess that any language with genders ends up having inconsistencies, like "la mano" in Spanish.

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Chrisinom
Germany

Re: ¿Es difícil el idioma español?

Post by Chrisinom »

Mädchen is a bad example because it follows a rule. It's different from la mano (also Italian), which is the exception of a rule. Another problem of the gender in German is that there aren't endings that determine the genders (which, remember, are three) like the -o and -a endings in Spanish and Italian. An example: das Haus (casa), die Maus (ratón), der Graus (horror). The ending is the same, the gender isn't. There are just a handful of rules with regard to endings for words that are derived from foreign languages like -um (das Museum) or -anz/-enz (die Toleranz, die Lizenz). Otherwise there are rules for certain suffixes (like the -chen and -lein), but that's about it. For the rest, you must learn the words with their articles.

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gmads
Mexico

Re: ¿Es difícil el idioma español?

Post by gmads »

Chrisinom wrote: Tue Aug 16, 2022 3:51 pm

Mädchen is a bad example because it follows a rule. It's different from la mano (also Italian), which is the exception of a rule. Another problem of the gender in German is that there aren't endings that determine the genders (which, remember, are three) like the -o and -a endings in Spanish and Italian. An example: das Haus (casa), die Maus (ratón), der Graus (horror). The ending is the same, the gender isn't. There are just a handful of rules with regard to endings for words that are derived from foreign languages like -um (das Museum) or -anz/-enz (die Toleranz, die Lizenz). Otherwise there are rules for certain suffixes (like the -chen and -lein), but that's about it. For the rest, you must learn the words with their articles.

I imagine this having to memorize articles along with the word is kind of an exception within the language: most concepts follow rules, don't they?

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Chrisinom
Germany

Re: ¿Es difícil el idioma español?

Post by Chrisinom »

Yes. German originally was a synthetical language (a language that uses inflection or aglutination to express syntactic relations within a sentence). English, which is a Germanic language like German and a close relative), once used to be synthetic, too. Yet, present day English is analytic: There is only very little inflection and word order is crucial for understanding the meaning. One example: You can only say "a dog bites a man" but not "a man bites the dog" (unless the one who bites is a man). In German you can say "ein Hund beißt einen Mann" as well as "Einen Mann beißt ein Hund", the biter is in both cases the dog. Thus the sentence construction is much more flexible than in English where you have to stick to the subject - verb - object word order.
The reason why English turned into an analytical language is simple: Germanic words have an emphasis on the first syllable and thus the inflectional endings become weaker and tend to disappear. The same process is on the way with regard to German: The endings begin to disappear (once the dative of der Mann was dem Manne, today it is dem Mann) or a whole case like the genitive is getting lost, at least in the spoken language: Most people say "Das Auto von meinem Freund" instead of "Das Auto meines Freundes" or, even worse, "meinem Freund sein Auto" . The same thing happens to the verb endings: People say "ich geh" instead of "ich gehe", the infinitive becomes "gehn" instead of "gehen".

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