4 Motivating TED Talks in Portuguese For Polishing Your Language Skills
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You’ve probably heard that Spanish is one of the easiest languages to learn. But is it going to be easy for you? Should you learn Spanish?
To make it easier for you, in this post, we will show you whether Spanish is the right choice for you.
Then you can decide if you want to start learning it right away, find a Spanish tutor, and start swimming into the Spanish ocean.
Let's get started.
Which Key Factors Make Spanish Easy to Learn?
While you can learn basic Spanish very quickly, achieving a proficient level requires much more than just watching Spanish movies and telenovelas. You have to be persistent and dedicated to succeed in your goal.
But for now, we can give you the 8 key factors to determine if Spanish is easy to learn for you.
The Key Factor - You
One of the key factors in learning Spanish is you.
Learning Spanish can be easier if you already speak another foreign language. And if that language is similar to Spanish, that is, belongs to the Romance language family, even better.
Knowing similar languages makes learning easier because you are already familiar with how the language works or some of it, such as sentence structure, some grammar parts, even vocabulary.
If you speak only one language, let’s suppose that it is English, things can be a little more challenging for you. It means that you have to take the learning seriously and put your best effort to achieve the wanted level. But that doesn't mean that you can't succeed in your goal. You just have to try a little harder.
Spanish Follows Logical Rules And Patterns
Every language consists of rules and patterns we follow in order to learn a language. But it also has exceptions to those rules. Some languages don't have many exceptions and Spanish is one of them.
Thanks to the clear rules and patterns and not so many exceptions, learning Spanish is easier than learning some other languages.
In Spanish, for example, nouns ending in -o are masculine, and the ones ending in -a are feminine. Exceptions to this rule are nouns that end with -ema, such as the words 'el poema' and 'el tema.'
As simple as that.
You Probably Already Know Some Spanish Words
Let's go through a quick history lesson.
English is a Germanic language, but French influence on English was huge and resulted in many French words showing up in the dictionary. It means that even if the words aren't pronounced the same way, English speakers can understand those Spanish words similar to English.
And since you are already reading this article, we suppose that you know English. That can be very helpful in learning Spanish.
English and Spanish share many cognates. It means that these languages have many similar words that also have similar meanings. For example, the word 'participar' means 'to participate.'
However, the two languages also have some false cognates, such as 'sopa' which doesn't mean 'soap' but 'soup' so make sure you don't get confused.
Everyone Likes Spanish Tenses
Even though Spanish verb tenses are more challenging than English, a great thing about this language is that you can use the present simple.
When you are at the beginning of your learning journey, it is natural that you don’t know how to use all the Spanish tenses and conjugate verbs right at the moment.
Over time, when you get the tenses properly, you can start using them without fear.
In the beginning, your listeners may be confused a little bit, but the point is that they can understand what you are trying to say.
Spanish Pronunciation Is a Piece of Cake
Spanish is considered one of the easy languages to learn mostly because of its pronunciation and vowel structure.
In Spanish, the vowels are pretty simple to pronounce and they are consistent no matter where they are in a word.
Spanish is generally a phonetical language. Except for the ‘h’ sound, vowels and consonants are pronounced the way they are supposed to. So, when you start learning sounds and letters, once you hear them, you will be able to pronounce them immediately. In English, you may make mistakes even after years of practicing.
But all this doesn't mean that you don't need to practice your pronunciation with tongue twisters. On the contrary, besides having excellent practice and have an ear for the perfect pronunciation, you'll have fun.
Number and Gender Agreement
One of the features of the Romance languages is that nouns, adjectives, and verbs have to agree in gender and number.
As we know, English doesn’t have noun genders. But it doesn’t mean that they are hard to learn. On the contrary, the rule is so simple that anyone can learn it in no time. For example, the word ‘chair’ isn’t defined in English, but in Spanish, this noun is feminine, ‘una silla.’ Besides, it could come in handy if you decide to learn some other Romance language.
Easy Spanish Exposure
With more than 450 million speakers and more than 20 Spanish-speaking countries, Spanish is one of the most wanted languages. It is the second most spoken language in the world and USA. There are so many native speakers to practice with and improve your listening skills, as well as plenty of entertaining ways to keep you engaged.
As we mentioned, Spanish is one of the Romance languages, a descendant of Vulgar Latin, which makes it easier for you to learn other related languages like Italian, French, or Portuguese.
Final Thoughts
We’ve given you some factors that can help you determine whether Spanish is really that easy to learn for you.
So, what do you think? How hard is it to learn Spanish?
Share your opinions with us in the comments below!
