To think that Spanish is a ridiculous language?

[Ammadam]

Sorry to any spanish speakers. But I just wanted a mimor moan.

I've lived in France and Italy before. I thought the French and Italian languages were totally fine. They make sense. I became quite good at speaking Italian with the locals.

I'm in Spain on holiday. I've come to Spain many times on holiday, and so I'm always trying to learn Spanish a bit.

It's just such a crazy language.

Why is every word so long. Why are there so many changes for every word. Why does it sound like babble. Add to that, it's spoken extremely fast. Apparently it's the second fastest spoken language.

I was actually just talking about this to some Spanish people at a group here. They agreed that it's a very difficult language.

They said that everything is said in a much longer way than in English.

For example "Star wars" in Spanish, is "la guerra de galactica"

I found Spanish fairly easy, you want to try learning Greek if you want a challenge! Whole new alphabet to learn, I'm getting there slowly though...

Yes, it’s one of the charming things about Spanish for me! (I learned Arabic for a couple of years while living in the ME, too — another really lovely language, I thought.)

They’re probably agreeing with you to sympathise and be polite - I mean, most languages are quite tricky for a while, and it would be natural for them to say “yes, of course, it’s hard, my friend also found it hard, just like you” etc.

Also maybe you’re expecting it to behave like the languages you know better, and it doesn’t so it’s annoying. And perhaps you learned the other languages when you were younger and languages are easier to learn? No idea, that could well be rubbish.

I’d go with thinking it’s less easy than you expected it to be, but you’ve done it before so with time, immersion and practice you can do it again.

I don't speak Spanish, but on both IMDB and Wikipedia it says that the Spanish title for "Star Wars" is "La guerra de las galaxias".

Indeed
how do you pronounce “ough” in English

though
thought
trough
drought
at least Spanish pronunciation is consistent!!!

I sense it was meant humorously. I mean, when you think about the concept of dividing words up into masculine or feminine, it is quite ridiculous! But we also have ridiculous things in English.

A more bonkers strand of the thread 😃

I always think of this clip 😂

It also literally says its "la guerra de galactica" on the spanish Wikipedia page"

It LITERALLY DOESN'T.
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars

Fuck me, I am starting to see why you are struggling so much if you are so contrary and belligerent over such non-issues.

Hurrah, an opportunity to post from one of my favorite modern poets 😊

https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2521165111233924&id=100064731724463

Try learning Irish! It’s horrendous. 😂

Most languages have pros and cons when you're learning. I find Spanish to be quite logical, and consistently follows its own rules (grammar, phonics...)

The speed of the spoken language can be tricky, but I find Spanish speakers to be a largely patient bunch, and I've never had anyone tut, roll their eyes or refuse to slow down for me.

“La guerra de galáctica” makes absolutely zero grammatical sense. Galáctica doesn’t mean galaxies (or stars).

Did this Spanish local person write it for you like that? Or you heard it from them, only spoken?

As a native Spanish speaker, I can reassure you it’s “la guerra de las galaxias”. See attachment, from Wikipedia. Any variations from that, and you’re probably looking at a Latin / South American idiom or different marketing name.

Some people find it difficult to learn, fair enough. But at least it makes sense and has rules. Try explaining to a non-native English learner why tough, though, through and throughout are pronounced the way they are. Or why the O sound in oven and open is different. Spanish has rules, at least.

What do you mean “many word changes”? What word changes does Spanish have?

PS Image under review, but you can just check the link someone else posted above me.

Star Wars was La Guerre des Etoiles in French, so I’m not sure how that’s ‘better’ than Spanish!

English is so much easier than Spanish. There are much less word changes.

For example in English , it's

I go
You go
He goes
She goes
We go
They go

In Spanish it's

Yo voy
Tu vas
El va
Ella va
Nosotros vamos
Ellos van ( they for males)
Ellas van ( they for females)

Agree! I am fairly fluent in French and have decent Italian and Spanish. I find it very hard to believe that you would struggle this much if you know one of those languages already. Agree they speak quite quickly though, although so do I!

English is very difficult to learn the rules of pronunciation as they are so irregular.

When I taught in Spain my students struggled a lot with what they called phrasal verbs which we have in English but not in Spanish. We'd talk about someone going up the stairs or going down the stairs, breaking down in a car, calling off an appointment, looking after a baby and so on. All of those things in Spanish are expressed by one verb - bajar la escalera, cuidar el bebe - etc.

Spanish is a beautiful and (relatively) straightforward language. If you learned French and Italian, I’m not sure why you’d struggle with Spanish?

Ridiculous language?
I think you’re being extremely rude!
Just because something is different to what you’re used to doesn’t make it ridiculous.

Spanish to me is far easier than German. If you’re looking for long words then German is your language.

I like the way that Spanish phrases, names etc are longer. Guerra de la Galaxia ( or whatever it is) sounds more romantic/flowery than Star Wars.

I studied French, German and Russian at school, live in a French speaking country and have since studied Italian and Dutch. Spanish seems a doddle to compared to the rest - though I am not particularly advanced. It's far simpler than Italian or French in sentence structure and spelling. Huge reduction in the number of consonants in a word. Dutch is the one I have struggled the most with - yet that is supposed to be easy for English speakers to learn.

For fuck sake. Does it fucking matter!

Did you ever think I was looking at a different page to you. There are more than one websites. Here is the one that I was looking at.

It is also very idiomatic, so although it is easy to learn basic Spanish, means it is much more difficult to speak it well like someone would whose first language is Spanish. To say it is riculous OP is ... well, ridiculous! YABU.

I love the Spanish language! As pp have said, it's easy to learn as it's mostly phonetic. I love the grammar, although I haven't quite mastered it yet, and I really like the imperative 😅.

We moved to Madrid for 3 years a while back. DC were 5 and 8 at the time, and they were pretty much fluent after a year, despite going to an international school.

But how is this worse than French?

Je vais
Tu vas
Il / elle / on va
Nous allons
Vous allez
Ils / elles vont

Those are not “word changes”. They’re called verb conjugations. Regular verbs also don’t “change” like that. When you learn Spanish, you first learn to conjugate regular verbs - the example you’ve given is something that’s picked up quite easily as you go, or studied much later when the concept of regular and irregular verbs has been understood.

You also say French and Italian are easier. Do you realise they conjugate verbs exactly the same way as the Spanish?

• je vais: (I go)
• tu vas: (you go, singular)
• il/elle/on va: (he/she/one goes)
• nous allons: (we go)
• vous allez: (you go, plural)
• ils/elles vont: (they go)

The verb to go, in French. It’s even “worse” than Spanish! In Spanish all of them start with the same letter at least…

You do need a background in grammar to understand how to learn most languages though. English-speaking people don’t always have this grammar knowledge.