How difficult is Spanish?

Alun

OK, I'm a native English speaker, but lived in Holland and Germany for ages and speak German quite well and Dutch near fluently. I also did French to a pretty high level and have a smattering of Swedish and Russian as well as having done Latin at school.

So, I've a pretty good idea of grammar and am used to learning languages and what to look out for, so how difficult would Spanish be for me to learn, do you think? Are there any peculiarities that would make it difficult that I wouldn't already be aware of from my other languages?

What about pronunciation? It all (I'm talking about Spanish Spanish rather than South American Spanish) seems a bit 'breathy' to me as an outsider, but is it that difficult to master?

Reason is I might be going there for a week or two in November/December and would like to be able to at least have a smattering of the language before I go.

mink_man

trés difficile

Alun

mink_man wrote: »

trés difficile

Pourquoi?

(And by the way it's "très difficile" -- accent grave )

allandanyways

Alun wrote: »

I've a pretty good idea of grammar and am used to learning languages and what to look out for, so how difficult would Spanish be for me to learn, do you think? Are there any peculiarities that would make it difficult that I wouldn't already be aware of from my other languages?

To be honest, I think once you have mastered one language, it's not hard to master another. I have more or less fluent Spanish (and a first class degree in the language) and without any tutoring or professional teaching, I can read Italian fairly easily and understand spoken Italian if I'm concentrating on it. Although Dutch and German are completely different to Spanish, once you have the technique of learning any language down, it's more than easy to pick up another one.

There are some grammar forms that English speakers struggle with (subjunctive for example)* and the past tenses can be confusing but it's all stuff that you will conquer in time.

What about pronunciation? It all (I'm talking about Spanish Spanish rather than South American Spanish) seems a bit 'breathy' to me as an outsider, but is it that difficult to master?

Don't worry too much about pronunciation. What a lot of English speakers do is try to speak Spanish with a "Spaneeesh aksent-a" (you know what I mean, exaggerated accents) but when Spanish people speak English, they hardly try to do an English accent, do they? Attempting a "Spanish" accent will mess up your pronunciation and it doesn't sound nice, to put it bluntly.

With Spanish, it's learning that you just have to change the way you read words, and putting your learning of the English alphabet behind. The letter h is silent in most cases and the ñ gives a "nyuh" sound (sorry for the makeshift phonetic pronunciations). You are very aware of using your tongue to make c's softer and rolling r's. It's something you get used to though. When you learn Spanish, a big part is listening to native speakers speak Spanish (whether it's via cd or podcast). This will help you realise how words should be said.

Overall, I think you are in a great position to learn Spanish. I have heard people say that it is easy if you already have French, and I know there are some similarities in the two languages, some verbs and words are quite similar, but really, every language is different.

How do you plan on learning Spanish? Are you taking a course or teaching yourself?



*to Spanish speakers, I know el subjuntivo isn't really a grammatical form, but it is easier to understand it this way, I think.

allandanyways

It shouldn't be too hard if you're already used to learning languages. There's nothing particularly different about it, the imperfect subjunctive can be terrible but you won't have to worry about that yet. I reckon you could have a good stab at a basic conversation after a month or two.

allandanyways wrote: »

Don't worry too much about pronunciation. What a lot of English speakers do is try to speak Spanish with a "Spaneeesh aksent-a" (you know what I mean, exaggerated accents) but when Spanish people speak English, they hardly try to do an English accent, do they? Attempting a "Spanish" accent will mess up your pronunciation and it doesn't sound nice, to put it bluntly.

Hmmm, I don't agree with this. I think you definitely should attempt to pronounce the language as the natives do, or as close to it as possible. Speaking it with an English accent will cause the most problems with comprehension and just sounds awful. There's no need to sound exactly like Antonio Banderas or whatever, but I'd make an effort to copy the way people talk on your CD/DVD or whatever you're using to learn. And yeah, Spanish people DO try to do an English accent, they usually just fail miserably.

I definitely recommend using an audio/audiovisual method alongside a course book. The Linguaphone or whatever is grand but I think you don't really take in all the grammar that way.

allandanyways

Armani Sticky Technique wrote: »

Hmmm, I don't agree with this. I think you definitely should attempt to pronounce the language as the natives do, or as close to it as possible. Speaking it with an English accent will cause the most problems with comprehension and just sounds awful. There's no need to sound exactly like Antonio Banderas or whatever, but I'd make an effort to copy the way people talk on your CD/DVD or whatever you're using to learn. And yeah, Spanish people DO try to do an English accent, they usually just fail miserably.

I don't mean abandon all attempts at correct pronunciation. I have a Dublin-ish accent (mellowed by living in Kildare now) and I wouldn't be speaking Spanish with a Dublin accent, but I don't go out of my way to exagerrate a Spanish accent when speaking. As I said before, the most important thing is to get the phonetics right, soft c's, silent h's, v's pronounced like b's, the hard j, etc.

There were plenty of people in my final year who had gone to Spain on Erasmus, realised that you made just as much if not more sense when you lost the Spanish accent and focused on pronouncing the words right. What I'm saying is, don't get too caught up in trying to copy the accent totally, just get the phonetics right. I have met more Spaniards than I can count who just speak English with a Spanish accent, not sure if any of them have ever tried to speak it with an English accent, and these are professionals in universities.

Plus, with accents, it gets confusing when it comes to differentiating between Andalucian accents and Madrid accents and Basque country accents etc- which one is the right one? They're all right of course, but all very different. So which one should the learner copy? Hence my point about focusing on pronunciation.

allandanyways

allandanyways wrote: »

I don't mean abandon all attempts at correct pronunciation. I have a Dublin-ish accent (mellowed by living in Kildare now) and I wouldn't be speaking Spanish with a Dublin accent, but I don't go out of my way to exagerrate a Spanish accent when speaking. As I said before, the most important thing is to get the phonetics right, soft c's, silent h's, v's pronounced like b's, the hard j, etc.

I don't see why it has to be 'exaggerated' though. Why not try to sound as Spanish as you can?

There were plenty of people in my final year who had gone to Spain on Erasmus, realised that you made just as much if not more sense when you lost the Spanish accent and focused on pronouncing the words right. What I'm saying is, don't get too caught up in trying to copy the accent totally, just get the phonetics right. I have met more Spaniards than I can count who just speak English with a Spanish accent, not sure if any of them have ever tried to speak it with an English accent, and these are professionals in universities.

But surely pronouncing the words right results in a Spanish accent? I don't think I've really met anyone who sounded like they were trying too hard and ended up mangling the words. The people who were considered to have 'bad Spanish' on Erasmus were those who spoke with heavy accents.

Plus, with accents, it gets confusing when it comes to differentiating between Andalucian accents and Madrid accents and Basque country accents etc- which one is the right one? They're all right of course, but all very different. So which one should the learner copy? Hence my point about focusing on pronunciation.

I've never really thought about it, I tend to pick up the accent of wherever I am. I had a Catalan accent when I was younger because I lived there, when I went back as a teenager, I picked up the Andalusian accent. I think the advice usually given is to pick an accent you like and model your pronunciation on it.

allandanyways

Armani Sticky Technique wrote: »

I don't see why it has to be 'exaggerated' though. Why not try to sound as Spanish as you can?



But surely pronouncing the words right results in a Spanish accent? I don't think I've really met anyone who sounded like they were trying too hard and ended up mangling the words. The people who were considered to have 'bad Spanish' on Erasmus were those who spoke with heavy accents.



I've never really thought about it, I tend to pick up the accent of wherever I am. I had a Catalan accent when I was younger because I lived there, when I went back as a teenager, I picked up the Andalusian accent. I think the advice usually given is to pick an accent you like and model your pronunciation on it.

I think we should just agree to disagree. In my experience and from discussions I've had with Spaniards, non-natives trying to sound "Spanish" always end up sounding less and less Spanish because they are so focused on accentuating every single word to sound as "Spanish" as possible that they neglect major pronunciation and grammar points in their speech, so although they might sound very "Spanish", their speech makes no sense. There's a big difference between speaking Spanish correctly and speaking Spanish with a Spanish accent.

Beginners and intermediate Spanish speakers should, in my opinion, just speak naturally and if the phonetics are correct, the Spanish will be perfectly understandable. I know English and Irish people who have been speaking and teaching Spanish for 30+ years and they just speak in their normal accent with perfect pronunciation.

Each to their own, I suppose.

BluntGuy

Alun wrote: »

Reason is I might be going there for a week or two in November/December and would like to be able to at least have a smattering of the language before I go.

With your clear ability to pick up languages, getting a "smattering" of the language shouldn't be too hard at all. Like all languages, getting that solid grounding is crucial and clearly you're pretty good at it. I don't find Spanish pronounciation that difficult and there's no reason to think you should either, it really just comes naturally after a while.

I agree with allandanyways that there's no real need to try and "emulate" a Spaniard's actual "accent". Doing so could result in your sentences ending up sounding like a clunky mess. Really, it's just those subtle alterations to how you pronounce certain letters and where the stress goes in certain words that makes your Spanish correct-sounding.

allandanyways

allandanyways wrote: »

I think we should just agree to disagree. In my experience and from discussions I've had with Spaniards, non-natives trying to sound "Spanish" always end up sounding less and less Spanish because they are so focused on accentuating every single word to sound as "Spanish" as possible that they neglect major pronunciation and grammar points in their speech, so although they might sound very "Spanish", their speech makes no sense. There's a big difference between speaking Spanish correctly and speaking Spanish with a Spanish accent.

Yeah, obviously trying to sound Spanish to the detriment of everything else is silly, but there's no reason you can't have a Spanish accent while speaking correctly. I haven't experienced this either/or situation before. I have met a lot of people who try to speak quickly and end up mangling the words, but Spanish speakers learning English do this as well.

Beginners and intermediate Spanish speakers should, in my opinion, just speak naturally and if the phonetics are correct, the Spanish will be perfectly understandable. I know English and Irish people who have been speaking and teaching Spanish for 30+ years and they just speak in their normal accent with perfect pronunciation.

Each to their own, I suppose.

Strictly speaking though, if the phonetics were correct, they'd have a Spanish accent. Pronouncing 'papeles' with English 'p's is wrong. There's just no way you can have perfect pronunciation while speaking in your normal accent. Understandable, yes, but not perfect. I do agree that correct grammar is more important, but why not try to sound as native as you can from the beginning, before you get into bad habits?

juanjo

Phonetics change depending of the area/region you live. In castillian, the z,c (when it sounds like z) and j are only used in spain, and there are variations depending of the region as well. In latin america z and c sound like s and the j sounds like your h (which btw is 100% mute in castillian).

The only people that can actually get a 100% native accent are children, they learn languages by copying phonetics whereas we "adapt" what we know to use it in the new language, that's why even after living for many years on a different place we tend to keep certain aspects of our native language.

I think that a decent grammar and vocabulary are the main things you need to learn (and use) to be understood in a different language. Of course pronunciation is important, but people tend to be flexible and accept variations, like one normally does when talking to, for instance, an american.

And with time you'll pick up the accent, ways to say things that, although won't make you sound like a native, will be enough for native speakers to identify where you learnt your trade.

I don't sound dublinese, but you can easily spot that I got my english here.