Because the Spanish language has grown so much around the world, it has become extremely popular for people to learn Spanish as a second language. It is believed to be the fourth most commonly spoken language in the world. This is easy to believe as it spoken all around the world by native speakers and students alike. Many people are learning this language by necessity, to keep up with the need in business and everyday life. There are also many people who are learning it because they are interested in their own heritage and culture. Many schools use Spanish as their extra language and as it is considered an easy language to learn, therefore, more and more people are choosing to learn it. Spanish has similarities to other languages, such as Italian, Portuguese and French. This is why Spanish is easy to learn but these similarities also enable people to gain the confidence to learn study more languages. Why would anyone learn Spanish? Well, it can make a holiday to Spain or Latin America much more interesting for a start. There are many extremely popular vacation destinations where Spanish is spoken. Speaking the native language can make a holiday a much more culturally drenched event. Many students ask why they have to learn Spanish but, as many schools know, Spanish can be the basis for further language study. In many European countries learning Spanish will greatly reduce language barriers and make traveling much easier and accessible. There are so many good reasons why a person should learn Spanish that speaking only one language these days is almost inexcusable. In business and simply as a hobby, learning Spanish is both easy and can open up many doors for a person. Learn Spanish For Employment Opportunities Although learning Spanish can be fun, it can also open up a person’s career opportunities and this is why; many companies come in contact with people that do not speak English as a first language, when this occurs, Spanish can be a good backup in communication. There are many Spanish speaking people throughout the world and having employees that can communicate in both Spanish and English is considered to be extremely beneficial to a company. The world has become so small with all the developments in technologies relating to communication and international business. Also, people are finding travel and emigration so easy that it is important for people to keep up their communication skills. Many areas, like the United States in particular, have a large population of Spanish speaking individuals, making it important for certain jobs to be employed by people who are multilingual. For instance, in the medical profession, there is great need for medical staffs who are bilingual so that important information can be communicated clearly. Situations where patients only speak Spanish are not only easier, but safer too if they can speak their native tongue. Teachers also widen their employment opportunities by gaining the knowledge to speak in both English and Spanish. As well, any type of employment that involves tourism or international communication can create the need to speak Spanish as well as English. These are just a few of the many reasons why learning Spanish can be important and popular in today’s world.
Posts Tagged ‘Easy Language’
Why Chinese (Mandarin) Is One of the Easiest Languages to Learn – Reason 2
December 22nd, 2009In my 1st article I discussed how Mandarin Chinese is an easy language to learn because of the lack of verb conjugations. Now I want to demonstrate to you how easy Mandarin Chinese is when we look at how they describe verbs in the Past Tense. Using English again as a comparison lets take the verb “to go” as an example. I go -> I went What relation does the word “go” have with “went”? NONE! There isn’t even 1 common letter between them! So think about how hard life is for the foreigner who is learning English that they must simply memorize these words that have no logical relation to one another. How about Chinese? SO EASY! In Chinese when you want to describe past tense you simply ad the sound “le” after ANY verb and it becomes past tense. So using the verb “to go” as an example, in Mandarin Chinese it goes like this: I go -> I go “le” In order to simplify things above, I have used the English words of course. But that’s all you need to learn in Mandarin Chinese. Learn the verbs and just add “le” when you want to express that verb in past tense. SO EASY! It’s kind of like how we add “ed” to regular verbs in English. I play -> I played But of course in English we have many exceptions to this “ed” rule, making foreigners wonder if it even is a rule at all. French of course is the same which is again why I struggled with 10 years of French. But after only 2 years of learning Mandarin Chinese it was already better than my conversational French. Let me show you yet again how easy Mandarin Chinese is when using the Past Perfect tense. Look at these 2 English sentences: I ate fish I have eaten fish Both are using the verb “to eat” but the meanings are completely different. The first sentence is referring to something in the recent past (perhaps today or yesterday) while the other referring to eating anytime in the past, perhaps many years ago, conveying the idea that I have eaten fish at least once in my life at some point. In English the verb again must change (“ate” becomes “eaten”) and further we need to add the verb “to have” in order to convey this meaning. Mandarin Chinese? Again VERY EASY. Simply add the word “guo” to any verb and you convey the idea of Past Perfect. So the 2 sentences above would be “ I eat “le” fish I eat “guo” fish Notice how I kept the verb as “eat” in the above examples, as that is how it goes in Chinese. Keep the original verb exactly as is and just add “le” or “guo” depending on what kind of past tense meaning you want to convey. Hopefully in these 2 short articles I have already built up your confidence in your ability to master this surprisingly easy language. But I have not even begun! In the next article I will show you how easy it is to express Future Tenses.
Japanese Language Accelerated Learning Techniques
December 8th, 2009Japanese is anything but an easy language to learn, regardless of one’s mother tongue. Still, it is one of the most popular foreign language choices in America and Europe, for two main reasons: the economical importance of Japan and the numerous businesses contracted between Japan and these areas and the fascination for Japanese culture that mainly formed up through modern Western media. Regardless of which reason you want to learn it for, the Japanese language cannot be learnt easily unless you know how it works.
Japanese is spoken by over 130 million people all over the world, obviously most of them being in Japan’s mainland. The Japanese language’s grammar is usually very complex to foreigners because it uses a specific speaker-listener status vocabulary that is unlike anything English or other western languages can offer. Another showstopper when learning Japanese is its writing style, which uses a combination of three alphabets: Chinese characters (also known as Kanji) and two syllabic scripts known as Katakana and Hiragana. In addition, modern Japan uses the Latin alphabet for more and more purposes, which makes it slightly easier for English speakers to grasp this new language than say, a hundred years ago.
Many Japanese learning courses and books start off slowly, in a gradually increasing order of steps. Although this is the correct way to go with any language learning process, it takes a lot of time and you might simply not have that available time to invest in it. For this reason, there are a series of accelerated learning techniques that skip through some of the basics and try to accumulate these fundamentals over more advanced chapters, naturally. Take note that although this is definitely a faster way to learn Japanese, there’s a good chance that someone that takes the “stepwise”, slower technique will almost always speak and write better and more correctly.
One of the most common Japanese language accelerated learning techniques is to plunge you head first into some easier texts, as soon as you know the basic alphabet, then provide a translation in English (or your mother tongue) of the same text. This obviously skips a lot of steps such as basic grammatical structure, pronunciation of words, punctuation and so forth. However, this accelerated learning technique has the advantage of building up your vocabulary quickly. Doing several of these translated reading exercises per day, you will soon get some of the grammar and spelling foundations that you’ve skipped in the first place, up and running.
The next step in most Japanese language accelerated learning techniques is to play a tape followed by a translated text. After you’ve built on your Japanese reading and understanding skills, the audio technique is the logical step forward. This will correct any pronunciation problems and will also have a positive effect on your vocabulary gain. There are several sources offering Japanese language accelerated learning techniques, including books and courses. You can find some very useful sources online, on sites dealing with Japanese language learning, Japanese language translations and tests.
