Gave up on learning Spanish
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Anonymous
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I've casually studied a handful of languages due to having family abroad and Spanish is by far the easiest. It sticks to conjugation rules most consistently, doesn't have noun cases, is generally phonetic. Italian isn't too far off Spanish. But as an American, Spanish is easiest to encounter and practice.
Dutch is okay but has funky vowels. Its also hard to practice because Dutch speakers will just immediately switch to English. Okay to learn to read, harder to Speak. Even going to the Netherlands regularly I don't use it. My family will very patiently let me practice at home. German grammar is a pain in the butt. |
Anonymous
| What is best program for learning Spanish at home? |
Anonymous
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This chart might help
https://effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty/ |
Anonymous
At least German has a consistent word order. |
Anonymous
Curiously, Spanish seems to have come from Spain. Last I checked, Spain is in Europe. YMMV. |
Anonymous
Try Mango Languages. Free access through Fairfax County Public Library. |
Anonymous
| Depends on how you interpret languages. Spanish is phonetic, but the preterite and how fast people speak it can get to some learners. French is less phonetic, letters that are silent, but I find the grammar easier. Brushing up on it now. |
Anonymous
German. |
Anonymous
It’s chinga tu madre. I went to HS in Arizona. Very very common phrase. The speaker in Pluribus very obviously spoke very bad Spanish. If you want a master class in Mexican swearing, watch Club de Cuervos. And then you can compare it to the swearing in Casa De Papel from Spain. |
Anonymous
The hardest part about Spanish is the fact that people in different countries have such different accents and often different words for the same thing. (Like if you use the Mexican word for peach in Spain, they will not know what you are talking about.). I also studied Russian and it is way way harder than the Romance languages. The rules are super confusing and then there are just so many exceptions to the rules. The only upside to Russian is that they have about 100 phrases that people say a lot, so if you learn some basics you can get pretty far. And the technical words are basically like legos — they are all word parts put together into really long words that are hard to say but if you know the different parts you can break it down easily. I was surprised to hear that Arabic is on the hard list — my friends that have taken it say formal Arabic is very consistent so easy to learn — but that there are a lot of variations on the different countries so perhaps from the state department perspective, that’s the problem. Irish seems to me totally impossible. And I think adult English speakers literally don’t have the right brain synapses to hear the various tonal differences in Chinese due to synaptic pruning. |
Anonymous
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Lots of people say Latin is easy. Since it’s a dead language it’s very regular, there’s no slang or colloquialisms, and the pronunciation isn’t really an issue.
Most of the teenagers that drop Spanish seem to pick up Latin. |
Anonymous
It's always the speed that native speakers talk that throws things in a loop. I had a great HS Spanish teacher and took 5 years of Spanish in HS and then a couple of college classes. This was over 30 years ago. I had fairly regular work trips to Mexico a few years back and was able to have basic conversations with my coworkers, but had to ask them to speak SLOWLY. Also, I found that I was able to piece together written Spanish and get the general gist of things surprisingly well. My main contact that I dealt with at our operation in Mexico would force me to speak Spanish with his reports and then have them speak English with me. It was fun practice for sure. Also, Spanish is Spain is very different than Spanish in Mexico. Spanish is Spain with the different tenses (vosotros) is very different for verbs and the lisping is tough at times as well. |
Anonymous
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I am able to get by in Japanese better than Spanish! As soon as a Japanese person sees my white face they speak very slowly and I can pick it up. Spanish is always spoken at breakneck pace.
I took both in college for fun. |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
| If you found Spanish difficult then maybe you should try English. |