Feb 11 2009
Is Spanish Hard?
I’ve studied a lot of languages in my time. Latin in high school, French in university, Hungarian on study abroad and when I went back to live there for a year, and finally Spanish, when I moved to Spain. Having studied so many languages is frustrating in many ways (because now I feel like I know bits of many, but can’t speak any of them hardly at all), yet it does give me a good vantage point to compare both the languages and methods of learning them. Because of so many different experiences with language learning, I can really know which method truly works for me. It was a great way to find out about my learning styles and even personality.
But back to Spanish. When I arrived in Spain I hadn’t studied even a word of Spanish! Luckily for me, I knew by this point in my life that the best way for me to learn a foreign language was to immerse myself in it, losing my shyness as I went. Although it is a slower process of learning, compared to memorizing lists of vocabulary and practicing set sentences for certain situations, I’ve found that the Spanish I have learned in “authentic” situations stays with me longer, thus truly learned, and is much more “real” (meaning that it is what is actually used by people in the street).
But is Spanish hard? I think most people confuse the actual difficulty of the language with poor learning techniques. Any foreign language is going to be hard to learn after one is set in their mother tongue (it’s even hard for kids!). Add to that poor study habits, only being around the language a couple hours a week, and almost no practice time and it’s no wonder people find learning another language almost impossible. Yet, in my experience, Spanish is a much easier language to learn than most others. Not only is it a romance language, thus having many similar root words and sentence structures (with minor differences, of course), but due to the number of Spanish speakers in the world, and in proximity of the US, it is a language many of us are in direct or indirect contact with nearly every day.
Having to do it all again, I’m not sure I’d follow the same language path (although it did give me a lot of useful information). I’d probably choose Spanish from the beginning!
