Easy Language Learning » Accent http://www.surfandturfradio.com Sat, 10 Dec 2011 06:04:24 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Why is Spanish Such a Hard Language to Learn http://www.surfandturfradio.com/why-is-spanish-such-a-hard-language-to-learn http://www.surfandturfradio.com/why-is-spanish-such-a-hard-language-to-learn#comments Wed, 23 Dec 2009 12:35:02 +0000 Admin http://www.surfandturfradio.com/why-is-spanish-such-a-hard-language-to-learn Spanish is like any other languages apart from the few special facts about the language which makes it identical like other languages. Spanish language is not particularly a hard language to learn, it has it’s set of difficulties which is faced to learn any new language. English is actually more difficult to learn than Spanish. Spanish and English have many words in common and some even sound similar, so it’s very easy for an English speaking person to learn it.

It’s just that it’s more difficult for an adult to learn a foreign language than a child. Our schools really should teach it throughout a person’s school years. Some very smart people have trouble learning a foreign language, while some of lower intelligence do extremely well.

Languages other than Spanish like English which is a Germanic language, however German isn’t especially easy for English speakers to master because there are so many different conjugations. Even more than in Spanish. Chinese is one of the most difficult languages for English speakers to learn because the structure is completely different. In English we spell things phonetically using a 26 character alphabet. Chinese uses thousands of characters, and is not phonetic. Spanish isn’t that hard to learn if you have a basis in Latin or some other of the Romance languages like French or Italian.

Sometimes you can get another language because of it’s similarities to one you already speak for example if you’re German you might have a good chance of learning English as English has it’s roots in German.

One basic problem faced by people in learning Spanish is not the writing skills which is easy to attain the Spanish grammar being easy but conversational skills is tough in Spanish because of it’s vast vocabulary and accent. One thing to remember about the Spanish language, is that not all Spanish speakers use the same accent. I originally learned Latin-American

Spanish, and one of my teachers spoke with the Castilian accent. I could not understand much of what she said. The grammar is very close to English grammar and the words are usually written phonetically. It shares a large common ground with English, French, Italian, Portuguese, German. . . etc. so it’s easy to learn for people of Latin/Germanic language descent.

The easiest way to learn a language is to study a short time every day, as opposed to a long time every once in a while.

There was a time when the capability of learning a new language was completely based on the person’s genetic ability.

Things have changed drastically with technology, now it is possible to learn and adapt a new language like Spanish in 3-4 months . I have listed few habits that you can develop to learn Spanish quickly , Watch the news in Spanish. This is a good exercise because you will always have a context. Watch the film as you listen to the story. You can read the subtitles and

listen at the same time. When you hear people speaking in Spanish try to understand what they are saying to each other.

. Be fearless. When you are in a setting in which you can use your Spanish just do it. Most Spanish-speakers are glad to help and happy you are trying. In order to learn and master the language, you will need to practice and immerse yourself in the language and understand the culture.

]]> http://www.surfandturfradio.com/why-is-spanish-such-a-hard-language-to-learn/feed 0 Much Importance Should Be Given To The Accent And Pronunciations While Learning Chinese http://www.surfandturfradio.com/much-importance-should-be-given-to-the-accent-and-pronunciations-while-learning-chinese http://www.surfandturfradio.com/much-importance-should-be-given-to-the-accent-and-pronunciations-while-learning-chinese#comments Thu, 10 Dec 2009 09:46:29 +0000 Admin http://www.surfandturfradio.com/much-importance-should-be-given-to-the-accent-and-pronunciations-while-learning-chinese Definitely, the spirit may be there to learn, but Chinese is a bit complicated to teach yourself, to say the reality. Chinese language emerged from a variety of tones and sounds which are not familiar to American speech patters. It is an appreciable effort for many to learn to speak and write Chinese language. There are a wide variety of books, CD-ROMs, and other formats available to help them along the way, if anyone has the inclination to learn how to speak Chinese Mandarin should get ready to purchase them. Actually, I don’t think so. Comparatively grammar in Chinese is much simpler than that of the European languages. English speakers sometimes complain that languages like Spanish have a complicated grammar (masculine and feminine genders, verb conjugations, etc), whereas the Chinese language has little or no bound morphology and there are no grammatical paradigms to memorize. Verbs do not take prefixes and suffixes to show the tense or the person, number, or gender of the subject as each word has a fixed and single form. Prefixes or suffixes showing their number or their cases are not taken by nouns. I’m not trying to tell you that Chinese has no grammar; what I mean is that due to the lack of inflectional morphology, Chinese grammar is mainly concerned with how words are arranged to form meaningful sentences. Plus each Chinese character pronounced in one syllable, that’s why when watching Chinese movies, you find that a few words can be translated into a syllable mapping in the English subtitle. Learning Chinese can be achieved with a grand wealth of books available out there from learning Chinese the ‘fast and fun way’, to Chinese for Dummies to Chinese ‘made easy for kids’. Of course, there are a wealth of basic courses on beginner’s Chinese, and let’s not forget a massive number of Chinese phrases and Chinese language dictionaries. However, these books are not produced at an economical price and the format is not comfortable for users . Now, would those all above relieve you a little bit in your Chinese language study? Hope so, but do not misinterpret this. I am not in any intention to convince you that Chinese is very easy to learn or other languages like English are much harder. What I mean is that Chinese is not as difficult as you imagined or heard about, but different from your mother tongue, but difference does not mean tough necessarily, Isn’t it?What it means is that Chinese is certainly simpler than you imagined or heard about, it’s just very dissimilar from your mother tongue, but dissimilar does not mean difficult necessarily, Doesn’t it? And that hard Chinese idea won’t be of any help in your study. Believe in yourself, the language is certainly not that tough to learn once that fear factor is overpowered. Wish you good luck with your Chinese language study. Many people who have spent hundreds of dollars on multiple Chinese language learning materials often wish they could utilize the services and expertise of a private tutor to help them grasp the many nuances and rules involved in speaking Chinese. Many people think it is expensive to engage private tutors and those who live in rural areas and want to learn Chinese language do not find them at all. The ideal way to learn any language is to be able to communicate with someone who speaks that language.

]]> http://www.surfandturfradio.com/much-importance-should-be-given-to-the-accent-and-pronunciations-while-learning-chinese/feed 0 Is It Really Easy To Learn Spanish? http://www.surfandturfradio.com/is-it-really-easy-to-learn-spanish http://www.surfandturfradio.com/is-it-really-easy-to-learn-spanish#comments Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:47:34 +0000 Admin http://www.surfandturfradio.com/is-it-really-easy-to-learn-spanish Seeing how Spanish is one of the most important languages in the World in terms of numbers of speakers (around 350 million Spanish speakers world wide, making Spanish come fourth in a top of the most popular languages) it’s easily understandable why learning this language has become a priority for hundreds of thousand of people each year. Spanish is also considered the second most important international language, after English, placing further importance on its learning.

Since Spanish is the main language spoken in areas such as South and Central America (except Brazil and the Guyanas), Spain and Andorra in Europe, Equatorial Guinea, the Sahara desert and some parts of the United States and the surrounding areas, it’s safe to say that knowing even the slightest bits of Spanish can get you going in most parts of the World. Spanish is also a Latin language and by learning Spanish you’ll even be able to handle yourself in countries that share the same Latin background such as Italy, Romania, Portugal and so forth.

One of the tricky parts of learning Spanish is understanding and using accents. Spanish accents show the way words are stressed but they can sometimes change the entire meaning of the word. Take the word “esta” for example. Without an accent, esta means “this” but esta with a stressed last vowel means “it is”. This concept can be found in other languages (English included) but Spanish tends to have more of these accent-related word meaning changes.

Once you get a relatively solid hold on Spanish vocabulary and pronunciation, one good way to further your learning process is by coming into contact with Spanish through media, be it Spanish music or Spanish TV channels (if they are subtitled than it’s even better). When listening to Spanish music or when watching a Spanish show on TV, try to focus on “intercepting” the words you know and relate them to the context in which they are spoken. This way you’re both building vocabulary and correlating nouns to adjectives and verbs with adverbs with more ease. Remember that whenever we’re learning a new language it’s the passive concepts of listening and reading that are more useful at first. The active concepts of speaking and writing are less likely to produce correctly unless you have a good hold on the passives so they sort of build on one another. So don’t be disappointed if you won’t be able to pronounce or spell correctly even after a few weeks of learning Spanish. These things take time and it’s more important that you focus on getting familiar with the language through reading and listening first.




By: Michael Gabrikow

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