Learning spanish

^thats cute. i'll have to try and remember that. i bought some of those "learn spanish in your car!!" cds, idk if it will help or not but it couldn't possibly hurt. i would prefer not to be completely clueless when classes start in 2 weeks.
 
OscarMayerLemur said:
Nevermind, grrrr. Because my school sucks. :K
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Why is that? I understand Spanish is a difficult lenguage, but after a few lessons gets easier. The other subjects I can't say much, I had a different sistem, but trust me, I really hated some of those too ;)
 
Actually, Spanish is much easier to learn than English. Take it from me. English is my first language but its rules on grammar and pronunciation can drive you up the wall sometimes. This is because it is very nuanced and quirky. Mispronounce or misspell a word and you may end up referring to an entirely different word.

English is a Germanic language while Spanish is a Romance language (mostly derived from Latin). Spanish tends to assign gender to its objects/nouns (as do the other Romance languages, namely, French, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian). For example, in English, we call it the sun and the moon, with no reference at all to gender. In Spanish, they are called, respectively, el sol (masculine) and la luna (feminine).

What drives me nuts is the fact that the Spanish letter Ll tends to get butchered all the time. Take the case of the paella. It’s pronounced as pa-el-ya but people who don’t know the language very well, tend to exaggerate and pronounce it as pa-e-ya. It also happens sometimes to callos. *Okay, talking about food is making me quite hungry* :lol:

Don’t even get me started with the letter Ñ. This letter is unique to the Spanish language (so unique that the Instituto Cervantes uses it prominently as its symbol/logo) and when Spanish words make their way into the English language, those containing this letter tend to lose the ñ, ending up as just plain n.

A little tidbit... People in the Iberian Peninsula tend to speak Spanish with a lisp (th…th…th) [Please feel free to correct me if I am mistaken]. Legend has it that Felipe II (or was it his father Carlos I? I can’t seem to remember) had a lisp and thus spoke Spanish with a lisp. Everyone around him started imitating how he spoke Spanish.

In Sudamérica, Mesoamérica and Centroamérica, the lisp is less pronounced and most of the time, not even present at all. Am I right? [Again, please feel free to correct me if I am mistaken].

Anyway, got to stop now as this is SOOO long as it is! :lol:
 
Actually, Spanish is much easier to learn than English.
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It's true. I am Romanian, and I found learning Spanish way easier than learning English. ;) And yes, once you get used to it, you can tell if someone is speaking the "Spain - Spanish" or the "Mexican - Spanish", or the "Argentinian - Spanish" etc. The pronunciation is quite different. Did that made any sense? :lol:
 
^ i know what you mean. in Spain they speak with the lisp, in Mexico they speak a little slower and in Honduras they speak way too fast. sometimes the words aren't the same in other Spanish Speaking countries.
 
mandy9578 said:
A little tidbit... People in the Iberian Peninsula tend to speak Spanish with a lisp (th…th…th) [Please feel free to correct me if I am mistaken]. Legend has it that Felipe II (or was it his father Carlos I? I can’t seem to remember) had a lisp and thus spoke Spanish with a lisp. Everyone around him started imitating how he spoke Spanish.
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Well, that is not exactly like that, I can tell you this is the first time I hear that story, and I live in Spain (and was born and grew up...)

Not all the Spanish do that 'lisp' (here is called ceceo, and it a exagerated use of 'c' instead 's' in pronuntiation. I live in the south of Spain (Andalucia), and here we do it opposite, we use 's' instead 'c'. The real story is that while the north of Spain has a Spanish thet in a momnt in history stopped changing, the one in the south is still evolving. That's why people from Galicia has a Spanish more similar to latin (it still incluse some words, I think). The other spanish from latin America are mixed with the kind of pronunciation people from that areas had before coloinization, that's why all seems different.

I studied that in lenguage applied in University because we had to get a completely neutral pronunciation to say the news and advertises.
 
I think Spanish is hard because English is my first language. I have absolutly no accent. I'm just book smart. I can speak it but I sound terribly American :(
 
Well in Dominican Republic there's like hardly no one that speaks with the lisp. We talk fast, like seriously fast that sometimes my friends have no idea what I'm saying! But yea I would say that all countries have a different "accent" I guess so you would hear people talking differently in every country.
 
I'm pretty okay in Spanish. Probably can go around and go shopping in Spain/Mexico haha.

My mother tongue (Filipino) is pretty close to Spanish. Lol, my country (the Philippines) was after all colonized by the Spanish for 333 years haha.
 
Hey Lorelai, so you're Romanian...that's why Spanish is easier for you to learn since Spanish and Romanian are both Romance languages. :) (Maybe you can even give Romanian equivalents of Spanish and English words...It doesn't hurt to learn a new language! :D)

Thanks poison girl for disabusing me of the ceceo notion. :) Anyway, it was just legend...no clue if it's true or not...My Uncle just told me that story...Also, I've forgotten about the neutral pronunciation thingy...My Mom took her Master's in Spanish language at the Complutense and attended courses for Spanish language professors at UIMP in Santander and she's always stressing the point about neutral accents used by journalists every time we watch the news on TVE International. I love watching Corazón de... Primavera, Verano, Otoño, Invierno since I get updates on gossip and celebrity news swirling over there in Spain...especially about the Princess of Asturias...Letitia and the rest of the Borbóns really fascinate me...They are so laid back as opposed to the Windsors...besides I like Anne Igartiburu..she's so pretty and charming. :lol:

Okay, will stop now! :D
 
You see Corazón de...?? :lol: I don't see it, but it's funny to think someone outside Spain in intered in Ana Obregón...

The neutral pronunciation realy suks if you're the one supposed to make it. i have a very pronunciated accent, and get it all out is very difficult. My accent takes out almost all the 's' making them an aspired 'h'. Also we tenfo to make a word from 2 contracting them. We don't say 'voy al', we say 'vial' for example. In the beggining to talk 'correct' was pretty stressful for me, now I'm getting used to it ;)
 
I think both English and Spanish are quite easy to learn. (I'm Danish). Compared to other languages that is. French and German grammar I'll never get. Mandarin Chineese is very, very difficult. ;)
 
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