Comparative Troubles When Folks Know Spanish

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English speakers, like Chinese speakers, have difficulties when it comes to learning another language. This is because they have a language which is adequate for all their needs, and are surrounded by people who speak the same language as they do. As a general rule Chinese and English speakers tend to speak their own language louder when they are not understood. However, if a person knows Chinese and English he may decide to learn spanish language too. He will then know the three most used languages in the world.

Spanish is one of a family known as the Romance languages. Other Romance tongues are French, Portuguese and Italian. They are all descended from Latin which is a highly inflected language, and are inflected themselves. English is also inflected and influenced by Latin but it is a Germanic language. By using a online language courses it could be quite easy to learn a new language that is relatively close to your own.

Inflection means that words change their meaning with the addition of small bits like s’ or ‘ed’. These morphemes have grammatical and semantic significance. Although they are not complete words themselves they do change the meaning of the word that they are fixed to. The English learner should have an easier time than the Chinese learner who does not come from a background of inflections.

Because English is also an inflected language this would not be such a problem for an English speaker but the Chinese speaker would have more difficulty. Mandarin is a tonal language and meaning is conveyed by one of four tones applied to the ways in which words are pronounced. These are sometimes called tonal inflections but they are different to the grammatical inflections of romance languages. The Chinese learner would be at some disadvantage.

An English person learning any romance language would soon recognize many words that are derived from Latin. They permeate the languages and contribute their own connotations. This will not be the case for the Chinese learner.

Since infancy the Chinese learner’s vocal apparatus will have been making sounds at the front of the mouth that are quite different to any sounds made in Spanish. This will make it difficult for him to make the sounds that are familiar to Spanish speaking people.

Both English and the target language make extensive use of the verb ‘to be’. However, there are two forms of this verb, ‘estar’ and ‘ser’. The former is used or more temporary states and the latter for more temporary. This might confuse the English learner to some extent, but the Chinese learner will approach the problem in a different way because the concept of the verb is quite different. Chinese speakers are inclined to say, ‘I go airport’ instead of ‘I am going to the airport.’

The Chinese learner will have mastered a complicated system of characters in order to write in his own language. The alphabet used by Spanish and English alike will be foreign to him, and he will have to start from scratch, learning a new system from the ground up. The English learner will escape this whole exercise and simply modify some aspects of what he learned in his early years at school.

Given the relative difficulties facing Chinese and English people who wish to online spanish course it seems that the English learner is at a huge advantage. In theory it should come so easily to him because his mother tongue and the target language have so much in common with the practice of learn new languages. However, having mastered the intricacies of is own language the Chinese learner might be up to anything.

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