What is your primary weakness in Spanish?
Hi everyone! First post and first day here. I've actually been learning Spanish for a couple days now, but just stumbled across this website today. I'm really loving it so far; it seems like the perfect fit for a beginner like myself!
Anyhow, I thought I would introduce myself to the community and receive some insight on what your weakness is in Spanish?
Learning to roll my R's and pronunciation in general is kicking my butt right now. I've also noticed that I tend to confuse myself on words that have accents. I'm constantly second-guessing myself and consulting my vocabulary list, haha. Needless to say, I take my time when I'm writing something in Spanish.
7 Answers
Welcome, Michael. Yes, this is a great site. Lots of good lessons, articles, etc. here.
"R" rolling is a problem for me too. One trick I use for the single R is to say almost like a soft D sound before the R. The double Rs, forget it!! 
As for my biggest weakness, it would have to be understanding what Spanish speakers are saying to me. That will just take a lot of practice.
If you would, let us know a little more about yourself in your profile. It will help everyone here to know how best to help. See ya around!!!
The worst thing is that when I speak I still have to think so hard about the next verb that in the meantime I make some absolute idiot error before I even get to the next verb.
I think speaking Spanish is very like show-jumping. The verbs are the jumps and the better your horse gets, the higher they put the jumps and the more combinations they put up.. The nice promising novice horses get a sweet little course at 1 meter high with an inviting double. The Grade A horses have to clear a 1.50 m course with two triple combinations and a double subjunctive oxer.
For me it's speaking too. My listening has really improved over the last year or so and, although I sometimes don't understand every single word, increasingly I am able to follow most conversations and feel the gist of what somebody is saying.
When it comes to speaking though, there is often a big blockage between my brain and my mouth lol. I am working on this, so hopefully will improve in time!
For me, the order of difficulty is: writing, reading, speaking, listening. Writing and speaking have the advantage that you can select words you know to compose a sentence. Reading and listening mean there are unknown words coming at you. Listening is way the hardest because unknown words are coming at you fast and in an accent!
I think it depends on the learner's background, own native language, any second (third etc) language(s), domestic situation, location, resources, reason(s) for learning, and, to a limited (yet often overstated) extent, age (I believe there's actually no scientific evidence to support the claim that young children are capable of learning language faster than adults - the fact that they do in practice learn their mother tongue in three or four years has more to do with constant immersion, necessity, absence of other language to lead them off-track, and the encouragement given to them by their parents, family and peers).
It's interesting that you mention learning to roll your R's as a particular problem for you. For me, being Scottish, this has never posed a difficulty since we Scots roll our R's all the time anyway. We also possess the KH sound (as in 'loch') represented by Spanish J (and sometimes G), so pronouncing this too is a non-problem for us. In fact, surprisingly, I've found pronunciation quite easy in Spanish, and so far in my (limited) opportunities to speak the language with natives I've always managed to make myself understood. Of course, the sensation of one's first utterances in any foreign language may make the speaker feel a little self-conscious when hearing come out of your own mouth words that sound strange to you, which is weird.
I have to say I've found pronunciation of Spanish much more straightforward than French, which is the foreign language that I learned at school. I think Spanish is much easier to pronounce for English-speakers. It has fewer sounds than French, and certainly fewer unfamiliar sounds (e.g. the French nasal endings, which even to this day I can't replicate, even although I can recognise the differences among them when spoken by a native). Moreover, Spanish is written almost entirely phonetically, which French isn't always (although even French is obviously much more phonetic than English).
On the other hand, understanding Spanish-speakers is probably the greatest challenge so far. I'm not sure if this is because it's inherently harder to attune one's ear to Spanish, or simply because I haven't had enough exposure to it yet - I suspect the latter. It did take me a good while to become able to understand French-speakers, yet nowadays I can understand most of what's being said on French news, for example (although I do still struggle with some of the more colloquial language in certain genres of cinema). Similarly, I'm beginning to be able to understand 'good' Spanish much better than I could at the start, e.g. 'well-spoken' individuals making public announcements on TV as opposed to taxi-drivers in the street (who tend to garble no matter what language they speak).
Reading and writing Spanish are pretty easy. The phonetic system makes spelling quite intuitive. I feel my background in French has given me a tremendous 'foot-up' in this regard (they say it takes an English speaker with no prior Romance language about three years of complete immersion to become functionally fluent in Spanish, yet only two if you already have French, Italian, Portuguese or even Latin etc). On the downside, I find my French creeping into my Spanish where it's not always wanted, and this can occasionally distort my meaning. For example, the Spanish preference for 'hooking' pronouns onto the end of infinitive verbs is quite 'unFrench', so I often make the mistake of following French sentence structure, e.g. 'Quiero lo ver' as opposed to 'Quiero verlo' (French: 'Je veux le voir').
Admittedly, Spanish verbs are challenging. The number of tenses and moods, the number of conjugations, and the pervasiveness of the subjunctive, all render verb-learning more difficult. That said, I would make two observations in this regard: (1) The overall verb structure, no matter how massive, has common patterns, which are, broadly speaking, quite logical and regular (even the irregularities have regularity to them ¡!), and I've actually enjoyed trying to master them. (2) Spanish verb order is probably more natural for an English-speaker than it would be, say, in another Germanic language. For example, Afrikaans, a cousin Germanic language of English, has virtually no conjugations and many fewer tenses, but the placing of verbs in the sentence is quite odd for an English-speaker (only present indicatives and modals go near the beginning while the rest get pitched away at the end in a particular order).
The Spanish preference for omitting object pronouns seems odd at first, but you do become used to it after a while, and the verb conjugations or context usually compensate for their omission.
Finally, vocabulary seems relatively straightforward. There is a vast commonality of vocabulary between English and Spanish, while many of the more difficult words are so frequently used that you learn them quite swiftly. And again there are patterns in the vocab to help you along.
Buena suerte.
For most adult learners, reading, speaking, writing, then understanding a native speaking is the usual order.
Keep trying on the rolled R's. Get the tip of the tongue on the front of the hard palate and make it vibrate. This is muscle building so it may seem difficult or impossible at first. I find it easier to practice by repeating "erre" or "perro", If you can find a native speaker who will help you that would be great too.
And of course good luck with finding a "cute Spanish chick" too!
The fact that it's in a foreign language...
