RSSKnow Spanish For Excitement And Enrichment
Apr 03
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Taxi drivers in Beijing would have difficulty if they were asked to learn Spanish. Their method is to speak Chinese louder when people do not understand them. Chinese speakers and English speakers have such difficulty because they have strong and widely used languages which are adequate for all their linguistic needs. They cannot easily understand the need to learn another language. However, if they online spanish courses they will have access to the three most widely used languages on the planet.
Spanish is one of a family known as the Romance languages. Other Romance tongues are French, Portuguese and Italian. They are all descended from Latin which is a highly inflected language, and are inflected themselves. English is also inflected and influenced by Latin but it is a Germanic language. By using a language lessons it could be quite easy to learn a new language that is relatively close to your own.
Inflections are small additions that change the meaning of words and the rules about how they are used. For example the letters ‘ed’ make a regular verb past tense. Spanish also has inflections and so the English learner should find it a little easier to understand than the Chinese speaker who is not familiar with the concept of tense.
Whereas the English learner would bring some understanding of inflection to the task, the Chinese learner would be in less familiar territory. Chinese is a tonal language and the meaning of words is determined by up, down, neutral, flat or tones. The absence of these tones might seem strange to a Chinese learner as would be the presence of the Latinate inflections.
An English person learning any romance language would soon recognize many words that are derived from Latin. They permeate the languages and contribute their own connotations. This will not be the case for the Chinese learner.
His vocal apparatus will have been making sounds quite foreign since infancy. Many sounds are made at the front of the mouth, using the lips. Consequently, pronunciation will be a problem for the Chinese speaker but easier for the English person. However, both learners may have difficulties with following the speed at which people talk.
Both English and the target language make extensive use of the verb ‘to be’. However, there are two forms of this verb, ‘estar’ and ‘ser’. The former is used or more temporary states and the latter for more temporary. This might confuse the English learner to some extent, but the Chinese learner will approach the problem in a different way because the concept of the verb is quite different. Chinese speakers are inclined to say, ‘I go airport’ instead of ‘I am going to the airport.’
Writing in Spanish and English uses the same alphabet and basic techniques. Once a certain number of words have been learnt and knowledge has been gained about how to use accents, the English learner should find it quite easy to write in Spanish. However, the Chinese learner will have to start from scratch learning a whole new alphabet that is very different to his native system of characters.
The point of such comparisons is to suggest how much easier it should be for an English speaker to learn spanish language. The native language of the English learner and the target language have so much in common that learning should be just fun with use of languages courses. However, given the intellectual gymnastics that all Chinese people go though to learn how to read and write their own language they may confidently be expected to do well.
