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FAQ How hard is it to learn Spanish? If you've never studied a language before, the answer is "pretty hard." That said, Spanish is one of the easier languages for a native English-speaker to learn because there are a very large number of cognates (words that are substantially similar in both languages). For example, most English words ending in -tion are almost identical in Spanish except for a slight change at the end where -tion becomes -ción. So attention becomes atención, liberation becomes liberación, etc. Thus, vocabulary will probably be fairly easy for you to learn. On the other hand, Spanish grammar will seem fairly foreign to you and you will probably struggle with some concepts such as the subjunctive and having to choose between 2 different past tenses. However, Spanish is an extremely logical and regular language by almost any standard and any adult, no matter how intelligent, should be able to master the most important grammatical constructs with a minimum of time and effort. And while pronunciation varies widely from country to country, there are no sounds unfamiliar to the English speaker with the exception of perhaps the infamous trilled 'r' which will probably take you a while to learn. Learning to understand rapid speech and respond in kind will definitely take some real-world practice: you won't learn that in a book, but this is true of any language. So as you can see, learning Spanish is mostly a question of time and effort rather than difficulty. Of course, if you speak another romance language already, Spanish will be much, much easier to learn. If you speak Portuguese or Italian, for instance, you can probably cut your learning time in half. Portuguese is particularly similar to Spanish as they share approximately 89% lexical similarity (about 89% of the vocabulary of both languages is mutually intelligible). The converse of this is that if you learn Spanish, you're already halfway there to learning Portuguese and probably a quarter of the way to learning Italian!
How long will it take to learn Spanish? Conventional wisdom holds that it takes from 250 hours for an exceptional student to 350 hours to a less-than-exceptional student to reach a functional fluency in the language. This means that you will be able to easily express abstract ideas and communicate with educated adults and perhaps even speak and write with a bit of style. It does NOT mean that you will possess a native-level fluency, as only a prolonged stay in a Spanish-speaking country is likely to yield such results. The Foreign Service Institute (FSI, remember them?) itself allocates about 6 months to the task of teaching a new diplomat Spanish. Learning on your own, you might prefer to work at a less frenzied pace than a diplomat-to-be, but nevertheless it is unlikely to take a determined student more than a year to achieve functional fluency and in my personal opinion, this applies to just about any language-not just Spanish. Please note that the 250-350 hour figure only represents core study time. It does not include outside activities such as watching Spanish TV, reading Spanish books, and practicing with Spanish-speaking friends (all of which you should be doing!).
What is the hardest part of learning Spanish? In my opinion, the hardest thing is simply to commit yourself to studying Spanish every day. The temptation to skip a day is great, but it is imperative that you study 7 days a week. If you're in a hurry 15 minutes is far greater than 0. What to do if you skip a few days/weeks/months? The best thing to do would be to backtrack until you come to material that you understand completely. Then, start over from there and review all the material that you've forgotten. I wouldn't recommend trying to skip a head because it will only frustrate you and then you risk losing your resolve altogether. What is the hardest grammatical aspect of Spanish to learn? For me, the imperfect vs. preterite issue was the worst followed closely by the subjunctive. Fortunately, 90% of the time it's obvious which tense or mood you should use. But you'll likely spend months or even years fighting with the other 10%. Another hard thing is that Spanish is such a fast language: people from Peru to Mexico to Andalucía tend to speak very quickly and chain adjacent words together in speech. It will take you a LOT of practice before you are able to understand every word. In the meantime, you will develop a talent for picking out key words and stringing them together to get a broad overview of what is said. In time, your need to do this will diminish and finally disappear, but don't be alarmed if you finish your studies confident in your abilities and then get to a small fishing village in Venezuela and can only understand about half of what you hear. Each accent is different and they all use different slang. In my opinion, the Columbian accent is the easiest to understand and rural Mexican (because of the slurring and unusual slang) is the hardest. Castilian might also be hard for somebody accustomed to Latin Spanish because of its distinct accent.
What about regional differences? For the most part, regional differences are more a matter of style over substance. A certain construction might be preferred in one region but not in another. For instance, redundant constructions are far more common in Latin Spanish than they are in Spain. In fact, I was corrected for using them several times by my Spanish professora in Spain. Thus, you would say "Jose le habló a ella que ya no la quería" in the Americas but probably "Jose le habló que ya no la quería." In general, you will be understood everywhere speaking standard Castilian Spanish with a clear accent (no th's for c's please!). If you'll be spending a lot of time in a particular country, you'll probably want to pick up the local accent and slang but for general traveling purposes, it would probably be best to strike a compromise. You should be aware that some words carry very different meanings depending on the location. In Spain, the verb "coger" means to catch (a train, plane, etc). However, in Mexico and several other latin countries, it is more or less the same as the 'F' word in English. You should always do a bit of homework on the country you'll be visiting to make sure you won't inadvertently offend anybody. Being an obvious foreigner, they'll probably let it slide. But it's best not to take the chance.
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