The question always comes to play, what is more difficult to learn: English or Spanish? My English learners say that English is the most difficult one, and my Spanish learners say that Spanish is the most difficult language. They both are right.
The Case for Spanish Being Harder
As a native Spanish speaker I can say that not even ourselves understand our own language at its best. There are many grammar rules that make the language difficult to understand at first and the verb conjugation confuses everyone.
There are twenty one tenses in Spanish and we don’t use all of them on a daily basis. Also, there is gender distinction where nouns can be male or female and sometimes a noun that seems female is male.Usually the nouns that end in “A” are female like: “Rosa” (rose) which you can say:”la rosa”. Nouns that end in “O” are male, such as: “Carro” which you can say: “el carro”.
However, there are exceptions to the rule, for example: “Agua” (water) which you may think you can say “la agua” because it ends with an “a”, but the correct form is “el agua”.
The Case for English Being Harder
In English there are sixteen tenses and just like in Spanish, not all of them are completely used. There are less grammar rules and basically, as the language has changed a lot, sometimes it is difficult to know what words to use.
There are not many conjugations of the verbs and there is no gender distinction, however, there are silent letters and sometimes words are omitted when speaking. For example, to say: Hey, did you eat?, some people say: Hey! You eat?
It’s All About Practice
Both languages have their ups and downs that make them difficult for their learners. If I had to choose one language that would be difficult to learn, will be Spanish. Not because of the pronunciation, but because of the several meanings a single word can have. A ṕerson named Jesús can be called “chucho” and “chucho” in El Salvador is dog, but also refers to someone who takes advantage of a situation for his own benefit.
As we can see, both languages can be difficult, however we don’t have to see them like that. Most of the time, people measure the level of difficulty of a language by how long it takes them to learn it, but that doesn’t make a fair judgment because the amount of time that took you to learn a new language can be different for others.
Final Words
In the end, whether you feel it is difficult or not, you have to keep practicing to see real changes. People worry when they have been learning a language for a long time, but they don’t see results, that is because they don’t practice enough.
Remember that to learn a language is not only about receiving classes or learning grammar, it’s more about how much practice you put into it. Have you been practicing recently?
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