<p>geez...i've already seen multiple 'spanish (class) is too hard' threads this week</p>
<p>why is it so hard for some people to learn a new language and not others?</p>
<p>Foreign languages in HS are jokes. I aced those Spanish classes, easy A's, but hey, looky now. I'm doing AP Chinese and it's not easy. Sure, I'm ethnically Chinese. Sure, my parents spoke it to me. Makes it easy? WRONG. Foreign languages are not in the least easy if you really up the level of vocabulary and delve into the language. It's just that you're studying at such a low level, as I did, that it's relatively the same as English. It's not hard to adapt. There's no habitual idioms that get in your way. At least, not like, in every other sentence. That's why.</p>
<p>^so true...then why all the 'Spanish is so hard threads'?</p>
<p>possibly because they're taking AP after only a couple of years of high school spanish. i took AP freshman year, and even though i lived in spain for a year and learned the language fluently, it was tough.</p>
<p>It's not easy to learn another language - and if you say it is then you're fluent, or you've been to that language speaking country.</p>
<p>What's so hard? The grammar is different. It's not memorizing words and putting them into a sentence. And there's multiple definitions to words sometimes in other languages. Spanish is probably the easiest language for us to learn, but learning in a classroom doesn't help me. I have to hang around my Spanish-speaking friends and their parents, it really helps a lot more. </p>
<p>Pronunciation can also be hard on some even if they know all the rules, and its difficult sometimes to memorize and use every accent mark correctly. </p>
<p>You can learn the basics in a classroom, but from there on out to become fluent it would take more, i.e visiting a Spanish speaking country or practicing with fluent Spanish peoples.</p>
<p>...sorry, but isn't this kind of a dumb question? some people just have KNACK for languages. I speak English and French (nearly) fluently, and can get by in Farsi and Spanish, but it was a struggle for me to even get to this point....I've lived in French speaking country for 5 yrs and its still hard...but I have kids in my class who speak 10 languages, i'm not even kidding, it's insane.</p>
<p>You're just born with it or not.</p>
<p>I don't know why the class would be hard, because language classes tend to be vocab/grammar, which is pretty much just memorization.</p>
<p>But actually getting to a fluent/near-fluent level without living in an area full of native speakers is difficult because it's hard to get past the point of not translating everything into English before understanding it.</p>
<p>Love languages. Come naturally to me. Conjugating, declining, modifying, etc.</p>
<p>Math, now, that's another story.</p>
<p>As others have said, it depends on the person. But once you get to a certain level where you're learning idioms and verb tenses that are just so different from what you're used to...it can be tough.</p>
<p>Personally, I hate just having to memorize seemingly-random facts, so while I'm good at reading and interpreting things, even in foreign languages, it's harder for me to write using complex verb tenses and the like.</p>
<p>I don't believe such thing as innate language ability, and myself is a contraexample: I am always a math/science type person, Chinese is my native language and I sucked at language when in elementary school. Then I moved to Latin America, and learned Spanish in one year and English in 2 years. I still suck at those literature classes at high school but I am fluent in both language. It is true that I learnt Spanish because of I am arround of native speaker, but English I just learnt at high school and still fluent.
However fluent does not imply high grade, I have seen a native speaker get low scores at SAT II of his own language.</p>
<p>It depends on how the teacher teaches the language...</p>
<p>Well, most people hear spanish on average only 45 mins a day. Out of 1440. That's like, 1/32 of the day.</p>
<p>ooh forgot what day this is:
¡Viva México!
¡Viva la Virgen de Guadalupe!
¡Abajo el mal gobiero!</p>
<h2>¡Mueren los gapuchines!</h2>
<p>¡Viva México!, el viva a los héroes independentistas</p>
<p>i take latin...and language is just MUCH easier because it's spoonfed and broken up in high school...now that i am doing epic poetry in Vergil's Aeneid, latin is incredibly more difficult</p>
<p>Well, if it's from a different language family, it can be quite complicated.</p>
<p>For example, a english speaker wouldn't understand why you say "Tengo sed" instead of "Soy sed". (I have thirsty instead of I'm thirsty)</p>
<p>For me, French is easy (but then again, I'm fluent in Spanish :D)</p>
<p>Um, if you were fluent in spanish you'd probably know "sed" actually is "thirst" not "thirsty." Just as hunger is "hambre" and hungry is "hambriento" (which is rarely used).</p>
<p>I don't really think it's innate ability so much as age of first exposure. Kids who grow up in bilingual families generally find it a lot easier to learn new languages, and it gets harder to learn new languages after a certain age.</p>
<p>ewww
english is such a weird language
hasn't anybody noticed that english pretty much follows its own system of spelling, grammar, AND dialogue? XD</p>
<p>Well, as a mathematically geared person, I'm always asking "why" when I learn a new exception, a new rule, a new anything. And when the teacher can't give an explanation, I struggle to fully understand the new material. No formula, no good.
My teacher said that a student's tendency towards analysis was the origin of the difficulties ;)
And yeah, English is the odd language... lucky us.</p>
<p>
Ohhh I did Vergil last year, and it was very difficult in the beginning - pretty much because Vergil insists on using syncope on almost every word so that every verb looks like an infinitive.. urhglkwaejfw... lol. Anyway, stick with it! Once you catch on to Vergil's style it becomes REAAAAAAALLY easy.</p>
<p>Oh, well, also, maybe it was hard in the beginning for me because I took AP Latin Vergil coming straight out of Latin I. Lol. Not even out of HONORS Latin I, because that wasn't offered... uhh.. lol. Silly me.</p>