Anonymous wrote:Anglos trying to learn Spanish is a form of cultural appropriation.

Sì. Ich lerne Deutsch.

Anglos trying to learn Spanish is a form of cultural appropriation.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I recommend Arabic. It’s basically Spanish but harder but strangely, I found Arabic much easier to learn and I dont even have Arab ancestry

Only because Arabic and Spanish sound similar?

For a native English speaker Arabic is a throaty language to try to learn.

Best to always have plenty of H2O on hand when attempting to speak it!!
Lol!

Spanish is actually one of the easiest languages to learn imo as it has the same Alphabet as the English language plus it is a phonetic language too.

I tried learning Japanese as well as Arabic……and failed big time! 😀😀

Spanish is one of the easiest languages for English speakers to learn. This link has some analysis of which ones are relatively easier vs. harder. But that said, some people just aren't that good at languages...so...
https://www.fsi-language-courses.org/blog/fsi-language-difficulty/

Anonymous wrote:Any recommendations for another language that I could learn? I felt like Spanish was way too tricky.

Wow you are a special kind to either give up so easily or just being that challenged to learn a language that comes from the same mother as English.

Fact and food for thought, either for you or your offsprings if you have:

Between 2035-2040 there’ll be the same, if not more, Spanish speakers here in the USofA thank English speakers. Whether you like or not. Haha. Deal with it. And get with the programa, amigo!

Anonymous wrote:I recommend Arabic. It’s basically Spanish but harder but strangely, I found Arabic much easier to learn and I dont even have Arab ancestry

Only because Arabic and Spanish sound similar?

I don't think switching languages will help you here. You need to try a different method of learning.

I would urge you to try again with Spanish. Spend more time on it, watch Spanish TV channels, listen to the radio, there's plenty of Spanish tv shows on Netflix with subtitles.

Read kids books in Spanish (the library usually has a section)

As an adult, learning a language is different from when you're a kid. When you're a kid there are those who find it easy and those who find it hard. Unless you're competing with a polyglot, it's all about persistence and intent as an adult. If you WANT it you'll learn it.

Interesting. My son is completely fluent in Arabic although being raised in the US in an English only household.

He had straight A's in HS in Chinese at a private school and can get by in Mandarin but he really went towards Arabic.

It's harder because they don't have the same alphabet, are character driven etc.

I always find it funny when there are close-to-troll posts talking about what's in the Qu'ran when I have no doubt in my mind that they don't even know how to properly open the book.

I like to watch movies in Italian, French and Spanish with English subtitles and repeat the dialogue out loud as they say things

Just pay attention. I learned "chingas-a-tu-madre-cabron !!!!" from the apple TV show Pluribus. I absolutely looked that one up lol

I also liked learning "va te faire foutre !!!" which was something they definitely didn't teach me in any classroom

Language is fun

I was a romance languages major in college and in the end had like 8 years of French (including HS), 3 years of Spanish and 1 of Italian.

I felt like I came out of college with a certain skill set, they just came easily to me and kept my GPA up.

I originally learned a lot of Spanish just growing up in NYC, all the signage on the subways is bilingual and there were so many PBS kids shows that taught Spanish in fun ways.

Spanish is endemic to the US, it was here before English.

You're probably already speaking some Spanish without even realizing it. Every time you order a burrito or a taco or a chimichanga, amigo

If you think Spanish is too hard, then any other language is also going to be hard as well. So maybe you would do better with learning American Sign Language.

If you want to understand the structure of language then learning Latin is really fantastic for understanding English grammar. Once you learn Latin then Spanish will be way easier as will any Romance language.

The state department has a list of the Easiest to hardest language to learn for English Speakers:

Category I Languages: 24-30 weeks (552-690 class hours). A typical week is 23 hours per week in class and 17 hours of self-study.

Languages close to English.

Danish (24 weeks)
Dutch (24 weeks)
Italian (24 weeks)
Norwegian (24 weeks)
Portuguese (24 weeks)
Romanian (24 weeks)
Swedish (24 weeks)
French (30 weeks)
Spanish (30 weeks)

Category II Languages: Approximately 36 weeks (828 class hours)

German Haitian Creole Indonesian
Malay Swahili

Category III Languages: Approximately 44 weeks (1,012 class hours)

“Hard languages” – Languages with significant linguistic and/or cultural differences from English. This list is not exhaustive.

Albanian Amharic Armenian
Azerbaijani Bengali Bulgarian
Burmese Czech Dari
Estonian Farsi Finnish
Georgian Greek Hebrew
Hindi Hungarian Kazakh
Khmer Kurdish Kyrgyz
Lao Latvian Lithuanian
Macedonian Mongolian Nepali
Polish Russian Serbo-Croatian
Slovak Slovenian Tajiki
Thai Turkish Turkmen
Ukrainian Urdu Uzbek
Vietnamese
Category IV Languages: 88 weeks (2200 class hours)

“Super-hard languages” – Languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers.

Arabic
Chinese – Cantonese
Chinese – Mandarin
Japanese
Korean

Esperanto