Learning Spanish

I switched to learning Italian (Duolingo) for ~10 weeks before going to Rome, but can't say I learned much in that time TBH. Back to Spanish now. Definitely feel l'm getting better, though have to still to actually speak Spanish to anyone. Maybe Ibiza 2019? o_O
 
Johnny Vodka said:
I switched to learning Italian (Duolingo) for ~10 weeks before going to Rome, but can't say I learned much in that time TBH. Back to Spanish now. Definitely feel l'm getting better, though have to still to actually speak Spanish to anyone. Maybe Ibiza 2019? o_O
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I'm doing Duo Lingo too... 2 months in lol
 
Duolingo is very good. I find learning German is easier than Spanish. People of said countries tend to reply in perfect English anyway if I attempt to speak the lingo so that kind of annoys me, but is understandable.
 
Nostalgic said:
Duolingo is very good. I find learning German is easier than Spanish. People of said countries tend to reply in perfect English anyway if I attempt to speak the lingo so that kind of annoys me, but is understandable.
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I find the complete opposite, Spanish is relatively easy compared to German which seems it have been designed specifically to frustrate anyone trying to learn it!
 
Spanish is hard if you haven't grown up immersed in it - but it is a very logical language in structure. Far less flexibility than English which makes it easier to learn. It was weird for me because I grew up in a household where 4 languages were spoken (Eng, Sp, Cat & Portuguese!) and I was getting confused by age of 3 - so they decided to only speak English thereafter, which was a big mistake! because kids do pick everything up in a way the adult brain does not. The language issue is a constant headache in this particular corner of Spain (for obvious political reasons) but I just try and second-guess each situation to avoid the awkwardness of using the wrong one! In IBZ I found that up north and inland, Catalan was more likely to be used (especially at the bar in Cala Boix!) I prefer their dialect to the mainland and you can hear it a lot on the IB3 channel
 
Unfortunately on the English DuoLingo, you can't change it to Catalan unless you speak/read Spanish which is kind of annoying.
 
Don't get sidetracked by Catalan otherwise you will get muddled! You won't ever really need it. Useful mainly for food and place names which may read differently in certain situations.
 
I started to learn Spanish when I was 18 after a holiday in La Manga, during which my mate and I unsuccessfully tried to chat up the local chicas and had to rely on the barman to translate! We came back and both decided we'd like to learn Spanish and did various night classes and practised with au-pairs we met in town (some of which I'm still friends with today). I learnt to speak it fairy well but it wasn't until I was with my Spanish ex for 10 years that I would really say I became properly fluent. I found it difficult to learn at first because, like most British people I think, my understanding of my own grammar was so poor that I had to relearn that to a certain extent.

I've now started to learn German and while it's much easier to learn a second foreign language I find it really frustrating compared to Spanish, I'm approaching B1 level now but even at that level it's practically impossible to construct a grammatically correct sentence because it is just so difficult. It really makes you realise how easy English is to learn to a usable level.

By the way, for anyone interested in languages in general I would really recommend "The Unfolding of Language" by Guy Deutscher. The first two chapters are a bit slow but after that I found it fascinating and really helpfully whatever language you're learning.
 
TimmiT said:
I find the complete opposite, Spanish is relatively easy compared to German which seems it have been designed specifically to frustrate anyone trying to learn it!
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Most German sentences are very similar to my Black Country accent I have found which is why I find it easy to remember.

"Ich bin gut danke"

"Ar've (I've) bin gud thankya"

Deadly serious:lol:
 
Too many lessons on Duo now are multiple choice recognising Spanish or translating Spanish to English than the much harder translating English to Spanish...
 
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