Difficulty in Spanish
I recently started to learn Spanish about a year ago. I have learned a lot already but still have a long way to go. I was just wondering what peoples opinions are in what is the hardest thing to learn when learning the language? Like.......what is the most difficult gramatical concept?
5 Answers
Hmmm.....
I struggled with reflexive verbs at first, until I realized that some Spanish relfexives don;t have a reflexive equivilant in English. Like "dormirse" for example. I took everything literally.
Preterit and Imperfect was the hardest. I taught myself these 2 without the help of any teacher, I then decided to join SD and practiced on the Preterit and Imperfect game everyday until I got a grasp at it.
The subjunctive is not as hard as people tend to think. It just requires a bit of thinkin. I've tried to develop a "second brain" if you will. One for the indicative, and a separate thinking brain for the subjunctive. It just requires a bit more detail and attention.
Like for example with my subjunctive...
Cuando llegas, siempre apagas las luces.
Whenever you come home, you always turn the lights off. (Habitual; indicative)
Cuando llegues, apaga las luces.
When you get home, turn the lights off. (Hasn't happened yet; subjunctive)
This that have been difficult for me so far
Ser vs Estar (slowly getting the hang) Por vs Para (ditto, just takes a while to use correctly even after the rules are learned) Preterite vs Imperfect. (just starting to dabble) Conditional vs Subjunctive (not there yet, but have read ahead a little, and it´s pretty different)
I got lucky with other things like saber vs conocer and the reflexives, as there are very close equivalents in German, which was one of my college majors. Kind of a freebie.
Grammar is much easier than German, though verb forms seem even more varied. But grammar is way easier than German overall, and spelling way easier than English, so it´s not all bad news. (Never mind my Finnish dabbling, which was both horrible and horrifying)
I think the biggest thing when learning a new language, especially if it´s your first one, is to not be too literal, and don´t always look for an exactly equivalent word or expression or saying. Sometimes it doesn´t exist, or ¨they just don´t say that¨ ... so ... don´t waste too much time looking for them.
Good luck.
I think for me the differences between the preterite and the imperfect in the verb ser were the hardest and some differences between ser and estar have been hard too. I mean, at first I had no idea if I was supposed to say "la comida fue rica," "la comida era rica," or "la comida estaba rica," or "la comida estuvo rica." So confusing!
So far for me just remebering anything has been the hardest part, so congratulations to you for getting to the subjective, objective and indirect objects. I struggled with that when I took German in highschool, The only way I passed those tests were to memorize the different sentences that the teacher used as examples and hope they appeared on the tests.
It's really hard to say what the most difficult grammatical concept would be. I have been learning and have taught beginning Spanish over the years. When I taught in high school the most difficult concept was grammar. You seem to understand what grammar is so that's a big step.
Although I like what BradyLabuda had to say above, I would say that for an English speaker the Subjunctive mood is very difficult to understand because we don't really use it in English (I know, I know: if I were). Verbs in general present many challenges because Spanish does not really have phrasal verbs like: get behind, look forward to, seek out, get off, fall behind, keep on, etc. These concepts are almost always handled with one word in Spanish.
So I would advise you to study verbs vigorously. Keep on keeping on!
