OK, help me out here. Why if Spanish has so many verb conjugations, then do they it is efficient.
I've heard that Spanish is smooth and efficient language. If there are so many ways to conjugate a verb, how is that efficient. English does not seem to do this. I am going to pick a easy one. run = runner and ran. OK, try fly = flier, flying, and flew, flown. Buy = buying, buyer, bought.
The when I look at the conjugating list of Spanish verbs, I'm like oh man. I love this. Don't get me wrong. I wan't to speak Spanish for three very powerful reasons.
First, I am going to be a journalist. This is going to help me in one of many ways such as interviewing. Second, before long we will see half of the country speak Spanish. I do not want to be left behind. Third, jobs, jobs, jobs. Spanish will give us a leg up on the competition. Fourth, I happen to love the way Spanish sounds.
I just want to know why people told me would be easier than English? I do not see that. But it took me my entire life to learn English, and in many ways I am still nailing it down.
13 Answers
I guess it depends on what you mean by "efficient". In most cases, Spanish will take more words to express a concept than the English counterpart. However, I believe Spanish expresses shades of meaning, the subtleties that many times are left behind in English. There is no doubt that Spanish has a more complex verb structure.
I am going to pick a easy one. run = runner and ran. OK, try fly = flier, flying, and flew, flown. Buy = buying, buyer, bought.
The first rule of any journalist: Know how to identify verbs, which do not include runner, flier, buyer. These are nouns.
I just want to know why people told me (Spanish) would be easier than English?
I have heard this too, but by people who can only use three basic tenses and have severely limited communication skills. An advanced level of Spanish is a completely story. English, in fact, is one of the most difficult languages to acquire as a second / third language.
All the romance languages have this - and other "problems".
Sometimes I think they were designed by a committee. ha ha
As for the subjunctive - that problem happens, in the main, because they do not have the 11 Modals - including would / could etc.
I think the "Spanish is easy" thing is only relative. There are many languages that are much harder for a European-language speaker to pick up, but there is no truly "easy" language. Spanish just happens to be one of the less challenging languages in which to acquire good working communication skills. There are many languages with complex pronunciation systems, tones, non-phonetic writing systems, completely foreign (to us European language folks) word orders and other such complexities, of which Spanish has none. So in some ways, Spanish is a simpler language than many, including, I would say, English.
As you write ... today's supercomputers are working on a "universal language for the world".
No irregular anything. No preterite and imperfect for one past tense. And most of all no masculine and feminine.
Efficient and easy are two different things. Anyone who says that Spanish is easy is overly optimistic at best. Spanish is what it is. I think it is a complex language but consistent in pronunciation. Your can embrace it and try to learn or move on. For me, I have a long way to go and I am not trying to rush to get there but rather trying to enjoy the journey.
Talking about "efficiency", I can say that the more complex Spanish verb system is more "efficient" than the English one, with its "effcient"subjunctive mood and simpler conditional tense, for example, it expresses clearly what you wanna say. Not so much in English which makes use of auxiliary verbs of the past forms of the verbs to do the same thing.
That's from the perspective of a ESL student.
I guess it depends on what you mean by "efficient".
Well said. You´d have to define a metric. If it´s number of letters or words to express a given concept, then Spanish probably loses, just through the extra gender and and quanity endings and minimal use of compound words. Otoh, if one measures the time needed to learn to spell properly, or the time needed to correct spelling errors, then English comes up short. It´s really hard to compare languages as a whole. At best, doable over a fairly narrow context.
Something I have told many former ESL students: Things like "wanna" are lazy English and should be avoided like the plague - JulianChivi
Why, yes; but it's been long since I've considered myself to be a "right" student.
Un ejercicio: cuál es correcto:
(1) Toys R Us
(2) Toys B Us
(3) Both of the above.
(4) Neither of the above.
It is absurd to contrast and compare languages except in the context of X from the point of view of Y.
Thus, for instance, English is much easier for a speaker of, say, the Northern dialects of Chinese, than Chinese is for an English-speaker.
But to say why would take a long essay, and few unacquainted with both languages will follow.
If one runs into the statement, "Latin is easier than Greek", for example, notice that the unstated context is WHO is saying it--an English-speaker, for example. So the statement in full is: "[For an English-speaker] Latin is easier than Greek."
Beyond that, the most important qualification is what one might be talking about when one says "fluency".
thats whats hard for me tooo. i have finals next week and i suck at cinjugating
A shopkeeper puts up a simple sign--"Toys". He may even make some of his goods himself. A vast corporate venture puts up a sign, in countless venues, that looks simple-minded, "We R Toys" but makes megalomaniac claims. And those quite beyond the obvious Pinocchioisms involved, themselves a working part of the hypnosis.
