Intuyo que aprendiste español en Andalucía, ¿me equivoco?edit : ahora lo entiendo, he visto tu video de aprendizaje de español. Buena decisión aprender español con un canario, justo el mejor puente entre América y España.
Hi Olly, there is only one very small flaw in this video and it is at minute 7:09, "tú peleas" (you fight) is missing the "s". I hope you can fix it so no one mislearns this. I love your videos and your knowledge of languages. ❤️
It's funny because I'm a Spanish native speaker too and I struggled trying to understand the Spanish clips that were put here... Honestly, in the last clip I understood more or less a 30% ( being a native speaker )
I guess the most difficult part about learning Spanish is to understand fluid conversations. Spanish is the second fastest language apparently. And also the conjugation and the fact that the subject is normally dropped because the meaning is also heavily dependent on the conjugation. Other than that, it's relatively easy to learn compared to other languages.
it's funny you mention dropping the subject pronoun given the verb conjugation points it out. I'm trying to teach myself Swedish, and they have the opposite problem: So far, my understanding is that the verb stays the same (within the tense) regardless of who is speaking, so you HAVE to use the pronoun. Given my Spanish, it was a difficult thing to remember to do all the time. My Swedish friend still laughs at me when I do it.
As the South east asian Chinese i will never understand why Westerners say Spanish is easy and Chinese is hard.I mean look at the grammar of Spanish wtf is that* - -!!!!!))))
The good thing about Spanish is the consistency in its pronunciation. If you already know the sounds, every time you come across a new word, you can feel pretty confident on how to pronounce it. That's why we don't have spelling games on TV like in English speaking countries. Think about all the different sounds an 'a' can have in an English word.
Absolutely, it's super easy. Once you get the pronunciation Spanish is yours. Obviously, it has its irregularities as every language, but that's all. Edit: I am native speaker and the other one who says that hates the perfect pronunciation of the words is simply a psycho
@@rayelosado6260 The edit part is refiring to me ? Hahahahahahahaha I hurt spanish what can I do now? Die😭? Go to jail 🤧? OMG Hahahahahhaha Y nunca dije que odiaba la pronunciación de las palabras, parece que no sabes leer en inglés, hablé de la inflexibilidad que tiene el español con relación a sus fonemas, que no es lo mismo, es inevitable ver la carencia de variación fonética del español frente a otros idiomas, dependiendo de, puede ser una ventaja o una desventaja. ✌🏽
@@rayelosado6260 Se refiere a que tenemos muy pocos fonemas. La parte buena es que la transcripción de escritura a fonética carece de errores. Puede ser transcrita sin errores. Al revés no. Un sonido "v" no sabes si se escribe con v o b, o las "h" insonoras ocultas que puedan existir en una palabra, más allá de saberlo por memorización. Pero creo que están relacionados. Usando un alfabeto con tan poca letra (sólo agregamos la ñ al alfabeto común en inglés, más los acentos), para tener más fonemas habría que inventar más combinaciones de consonantes para representarlas o agregar letras nuevas. La mayor parte de idiomas con muchos fonemas requieren demasiadas reglas o peor aún, como en inglés, una transcripción arbitraria que hay que aprender palabra por palabra.
I am Japanese learning Spanish as my third language after Japanese and English. My English skill gives me a bit of advantage but the conjugation is driving me crazy!! But the fact that Spanish is spoken by so many people in the world that I am inspired to learn the language!!
!los entiendo muy bien, yo también lucho cada día con el inglés, realmente deseo muchísimo llegar ah hablarlo fluidamente algún día ,éxitos en sus estudios y logren sus propósitos muy pronto !.saludos ♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️👍👍👍👍👍👍💯🙏
I studied German and Spanish at Uni. I found German the harder language overall, but much easier to distinguish and understand when spoken than Spanish.
I found the same thing and I think it's because German is normally spoken with short pauses between the words instead of letting everything slur together like in English and to some degree Spanish. Spanish speakers (like English speakers) are usually kind enough to put pauses between the words if you're having trouble understanding them.
I wouldn't underestimate the difficulty of understanding natural conversations in Spanish. Spanish natives speak very fast and it's incredible the number of syllables they are capable of cramming into a single breath. I am a native Italian and my only real problem with the written language is memorising verb conjugations. But undestanding two natives speaking in informal/semi-formal situations? That's a whole different story.
Japanese is like that too. They speak incredibly fast and mash syllables together. Only big difference is, reading it is extremely challenging, and that's why it takes so long to learn.
@Paseos por Madrid a mi, a veces, me suena el inglés a onomatopeyas agolpadas. Lo aprendo porque no queda más remedio, pero le tengo poco aprecio. Añoro el tiempo de nuestros padres, hace apenas cuarenta años, cuando la lengua Franca internacional era el francés.
The word ‘se’ was the hardest part for me by a mile. It has so many uses, that when I would encounter it - I would be stopped in my tracks for a minute until I could mentally go through its list of uses, until I found the one that most matched the sentence I needed it for. Always heard of the horrors of subjunctive -but when it came to learning it, I was surprised how quickly it made sense to me.
Think of it as the unknown 'one' as in: One can not know the outcome. And the better word is one you already use: None. It has the same 'function'. There are none so deaf as those that will not hear.
@@dutchreagan3676 That only covers the passive use of 'se'. It can also be reflexive and function as an object pronoun, e.g. "Él *se* lo iba a dar (a ella)."
@@oliverraven And the "pasiva refleja", as in "se venden verduras", which could be more or less literally translated as "vegetables are being sold"... even though you could see that very same sentence at the grocer's in the sense of "WE sell vegetables", just that the subject is nowhere to be seen.
I love Spanish because it is so easy to read! And many words can be understood easily without learning. Never thought I would be learning Spanish, but due to I got ill with Covid last year, I suddenly realized that I have quite a few free time, so I just filled it with useful things. Thanks for Russian and Latvian, rolling R an Ñ were no problem for me. And English helped with c/z (th) sound. This year I finished reading my first non-adaptated book in Spanish. And the feeling was awesome! Reading a book of my favourite Japanese writer in Spanish - that was an adventure. It took me 3 months, but it was worth it. 😍 By the way, Spanish Uncovered Intermediate is just awesome! I finally could learn the difference between past tenses. 😁 before I could understand the meaning but when I had to write a sentence myself, I couldn't stop thinking - which tense do I have to take. 😀
@@juanxyah Lo siento, pero yo nunca he leído libros de Murakami Haruki. Mi escritor favorito es Higashino Keigo (東野圭吾さん). El libro se llama Paradox 13. Muy interesante y misterioso. Yo tengo 3 libros más en japonés, por eso estoy aprendiendo kanji de altos niveles para leer estos libros en idioma original.
@@victormanuellesanchezmoren9868 Español es el idioma muy bonito. I like the way it sounds, but sometimes (as I am from the northern country) I feel I'm not emotional enough to express myself in Spanish. 😁
@@irinaspalve8356 Thanks for your answer, Irina. I’ll definitely check out Higashino. The Wikipedia entry on him vaguely reminded me of Ben H. Winters, an American sci-fi writer. Good luck with Japanese. I’m currently taking a break from Russian, and working a bit on Swahili. Have a good one. 👍 Juan PS: Don’t worry about not being “emotional enough” to speak Spanish. Judging by what you wrote earlier, you already have a great feel for the language. So, just focus on having fun with it. Best of luck.
I used to hear my family speaking spanish and thought it sounded sooooo fast. I finally became fluent this year and it doesn’t sound so fast to me anymore. I started wondering if I just talk with a bunch of slow speakers but I realized I’m just used to it now. What’s funny is my Spanish speaking friends that don’t speak English think English is spoken way faster and I always have to explain that it’s scientifically not true.
The only time I struggled with English was while working in a project with an English man, he was so fast that was easier to understand to the South Africans in the meeting call than him.
science says that spanish is only fast in syllables per minute, but the information (bits per second) is pretty much the same as "slower" languages, actually the information / second is the same through all languages in the world .
Spanish is just objectively fast. Certainly faster on average than English. Some New Yorkers and other places I'm sure, speak pretty fast but your average English speakers are talking at a fairly moderate speed. Some American Southerners speak exceedingly slowly. Rarely do I ever hear a Native Spanish speaker using a slow pace. They fly through their words and some fly even faster such as those from the Caribbean.
I've always thought Spanish is the most beautiful Romance language. I had to take mandatory French classes for four years in school. I did well in the classes but I could never keep the grammatical gender straight, and the pronunciation was really irritating. I find Spanish much easier to learn; the pronunciation is a lot more straightforward (although the rolled R took me forever to say properly; I wasn't able to pronounce it until a couple of years ago, thanks to learning Finnish. Still waiting and hoping for a video about that language, btw), and the grammatical genders are so much easier to remember.
I think the hardest part to me was to get good listening comprehension in Spanish. I learned Spanish from English and it took a very long time to be able to understand natives.
What I see is that Spanish can be easy to learn in the basics, but hard to master and speak properly or sound natural due to the subjunctive, for some people, the use of the articles and in general to learn how to use the tenses properly can be a challenge, but, it is not impossible, what I think could help is practicing a lot with native speakers, it will help you to gather the enough practice to make the tenses more intuitive. Btw, I did not see anyone mentioned it, but, the conjugation of Tú pelea, should be Tú peleas* 😊
The thing with the question marks is pretty simple: A question in english change the structure of the sentence: You are ready Are you ready? In spanish we don't do that, it does still the same in most cases: Estás listo ¿Estás listo? It helps a lot to know where a question begins.
As an English speaker I think Spanish is easy while you’re learning the most common grammar and vocabulary and then it’s still easy into intermediate thanks to the cognates but then you hit the plateau if you want to get to advanced then it gets hard. But intermediate is good enough for most people.
I look forward to starting my Spanish language journey in about a year's time. I've been learning my heritage language (Māori) for nearly 4 years now. I'm at a B2 level in that language and want to push it up to an advanced C level first, before I decide to start learning Spanish too. As it happens, the pronunciation of Spanish is exactly the same as Māori.
Learning basic Māori from a young age has made Spanish pronunciation a breeze for me! You'll be impressing people with your Spanish skills in no time. Good luck with your Spanish journey 😊
I mean, as a Native Spanish speaker, I've listened to Maori several times (I actually know the NZ national anthem in Maori) and the sounds are a little different. For example, I've heard SOME 's be aspirated in Maori but that will never happen in Spanish. I've also heard the diphthong "au" which sounds like the "a" is reduced, and sounds totally different than Spanish. However, it has been very easy for me to pronounce Maori, so maybe their pronunciation isn't exactly the same but they're definitely very similar.
Hey Olli!!! :D My native language is spanish (I'm from Perú) and this video is absolutely accurate, I agree that the best way to learn it is by reading, it's really helpful that words are pronounce as they are written and you can guess a lot of meaning through the context. And People from latin america can undersrand european spanish at 99.99% so you can learn any of them and be able to understand both of them.
@@e5205 The main differences are in the names of food, foreign words, and slang. All Spanish speaking countries agreed on having only one set of rules for the language, so it’s structurally the same in Europe and the americas. (Aside from differences in pronunciation like z, c, ll, y)
@@e5205 Concha in Argentina means pussy, while in Spain it means shell, there are some variations like that, but not much. Once u know spanish at a fluent level ull start to know each countries´ slangs
Spanish comes really easy to me, since i'm Brazilian and learned italian. But even if I can already understand almost 100% of it, I want to study it properly in the future, it's so beautiful
O português é muito simples também para gente eu aprendi a falar português fluente só em 6 meses vc pode aprender ainda mais rápido porque o espanhol menos sons que o português às vezes eu penso que são praticamente a mesma língua
Easy because Portuguese and Spanish are cousins..about me my mother tongue is Arabic I have been learning Spanish for six months is super hard can not catch up is something like tiki-taka 😵💫
@@wilsonmejia6805para mi son casi lo mismo. En 6 meses aprendes portugués y en 6 meses aprendes español. Con tantas oportunidades laborales, no entiendo porque no hay más gente que hable ambos idiomas con lo rápido que se aprende.
Viva el Español, también me defiendo con el Inglés pero lamentablemente hay mucho nativo del inglés que critica porque tenemos un acento muy marcado o porque a veces es difícil pronunciar algunas palabras. Yo no le diría eso a ninguna persona que esté intentando hablar Español y más bien le ayudaría a darse a entender.
@@lizzethmancilla5197 típico de muchos gringos. No todos. Pero si una gran parte quieren que todo el mundo hable perfecto inglés, pero cuando hablan otro idioma yo no espero que lo hable perfecto y si dijera algo mal o le ayudo o me esfuerzo a entender a que se refiere.
Native Spanish speaker here. Out of curiosity, I looked up a few Spanish Language for foreigners resources and noticed how in most of them, people speak really slowly, at least in comparison to how the majority of natives speak in real life. This probably also makes the language seem harder than it actually is. I noticed the same thing with French when I took lessons a few years ago, the resources were very clear and easy to listen to, but I could barely keep up when I heard natives speaking. In contrast, the lessons I took in German and Japanese were a bit closer to reality. German isn't too fast, so hearing natives speaking wasn't as shocking. Japanese, on the other hand, is spoken at about the same speed as Spanish, sometimes even faster, and they don't pull any punches when it comes to speed with their resources. At least not the ones I'm using, which are often just as fast. Luckily, since I speak a similarly speedy language which happens to use almost the exact same phonemes, that part hasn't really been an issue, at least not yet.
yeah i'm at a beginner lever of spanish and i cringe when i can actually understand what someone is saying. not even children's shows talk that slowly. i'm pretty good with french and never do you hear anyone pronounce every word the way you're supposed to in isolation. everything blends together because it's spoken so fast.
I’m Australian but have always been able to roll my tongue and my Rs since a teen. In recent years Rammstein really helped improved my R rolling, even though I literally have only used it so far to sing Rammstein lol
Portuguese is my first language.Both Spanish and Portuguese have a way more verb conjugations than English.I would not worry much about pronunciation at first,but make sure I can master the verb conjugation of the most common verbs I use in my mother tongue.
What a great video! I love your channel. I learned Spanish as my second language, English is my first. I’ve studied Spanish now for over ten years. Without a doubt, the hardest thing for me to grasp was the subjunctive. It took months, but once I figured it out, you’re right, it was so much fun to use!
I have seriously studied Spanish each and every day for no less than an hour for the last four years. I have taken all kinds of classes. I even dream in it. But still it is very hard for me to communicate with native Spanish speakers who do not also speak English. But learning Spanish is not hard in any instance it is just sticking with your studies that is hard. As for the sounds ... someone forgot to tell the spanish speakers that hablado ... is not pronounced hablou and mas is not ma. But overall it is pretty easy ... just stick with it. It is a beautiful language.
Me pasa lo mismo. No aprendo del todo Inglés aunque lo estudio. Y sí, algunos países del Caribe y parte de España dicen "hablao", pero son solo acentos, formas de pronunciar palabras. En Argentina y Uruguay también suelen aspirar la S en ciertas palabras para decir las cosas, en cambio, en muchos otros lugares pronunciamos todo completo. Lo bueno es que la fonética es la misma para todo hispanohablante, y ese es un punto a favor cuando se aprende.
Yo hablo español de Mexico y me cuesta a veces trabajo entender a los de otro pais, algunos españoles se "comen" las letras o hablan muy rapido, incluso en mi mismo pais cuesta trabajo entender a algunos de otras regiones, asi que paciencia y disfruta el aprendizaje, solo no uses mucho las malas palabras
It depends on background. As a Canadian I studied French in school, and that helped me with Spanish. Many concepts are the same, even if the implementation is different, and many words are the same or similar.
Soy Nativo de español. También hablo varios idiomas como vos y te sigo hace un tiempo. Muchas gracias por todo lo que subís. Y tu español es brutal, esta buenísimo. Felicitaciones.
Thanks for admitting period that it is hard. I know the language well. There are many rules that are hard for many to grasp after even trying to grasp the basics. espero que no lo hayas dicho...or...yo desearía que tuvieras algo de comer...or...quedan dos cervezas en la nevera necesitamos más...This right here would take many several years to master.
good points: 1. it is written as it sounds: In Spanish, if a new word is created, the pronunciation is not ambiguous. 2. lot of common words with English 3. no phrasal verbs bad points: 1. split in usage of verb to be into "ser"/"estar" 2. reflective verbs. For example: "peinarse" 3. irregular verbs
as a native english and chinese speaker, the hardest part of spanish for me is figuring out when to use subjuntivo but to anyone who's also having trouble with that i promise it'll be fun after you get used to it :D
I used to struggle with the subjunctivo a lot, but what really helped was turning off my brain from overthinking it, and instead just trying to see it on context over and over again through immersion. For example if you get so used to hearing "lo que quieras" or "cuando llegue, vamos a celebrar" or "espero que él esté bien" or "le pedí que te lo mandara" or "si estuviera lloviendo, tú no estarías feliz" over and over again in context, your brain won't have any other choice but to understand it that way subconsciously so then you'll be able to speak fluently and not have to think about it! At least this is what happened to me after hundreds of hours of immersion. Y ahora estoy muy contento por poder habalar con fluidez sin tener que pensar conscientemente en lo que digo. Espero que veas este comentario y que continúes mejorando tu español!
HOW DO YOU KNOW IF IT'S INDICATIVE OR SUBJUNTIVE: -Indicative: para expresar acciones que se consideran reales o concretas -Subjuntive: para expresar acciones que no son reales o concretas, sino que se refieren a deseos, emociones, posibilidades, hipótesis, dudas, incertidumbres, etc. So for example, in the sentence: "I hope I sing tomorrow" -> "Ojalá cantE mañana" ✅(NO, "Ojalá cantO mañana" ❌because you wish to be that way)
@@人形niño HOW DO YOU KNOW IF IT'S INDICATIVE OR SUBJUNTIVE: -Indicative: para expresar acciones que se consideran reales o concretas -Subjuntive: para expresar acciones que no son reales o concretas, sino que se refieren a deseos, emociones, posibilidades, hipótesis, dudas, incertidumbres, etc. So for example, in the sentence: "I hope I sing tomorrow" -> "Ojalá cantE mañana" ✅(NO, "Ojalá cantO mañana" ❌because you wish to be that way)
Based on my experience, reading and writing Spanish is no more difficult than French or Italian. Spoken Spanish is another matter, due to the speed. One theory I came across is that Spanish has more polysyllabic words than French, Italian, English, or German, so Spanish speakers tend to speak faster to get their ideas across in the same time frame. Any thoughts on this?
I would say that's true with French given the number of silent letters, so many familiar words are a syllable shorter (gato vs chat for example). But all those silent letters takes getting used to in terms of comprehension.
Agree. Spoken French is so different than the written language. The French actually have dictation contests to write down what they hear and hardly anyone gets a passing score.
Everybody when speaking does it with a degree of articulation and a degree of speed, both being closely related. A third element is the degree of familiarity within the language. What I have in mind is the sterotype of the "peasant" mumbling along at an incredible speed (sometimes with a cigarette stuck in his mouth) the same old words and expressions that are all familiar to him and the person he is talking too. The opposite stereotype would be the academical professor making an exposé to a large audiance, trying to nuance and vary his language by bring in new words and expressions. Spaniards tend to be associated with the first stereotype... An Argentine used to say to me that Spaniards were 'brutos"... I do get the full meaning point that the way they in general talk and behave somewhat seem to lack "finesse". It is also true that sound combinations in Spanish are limited compared to French or English, it surely has an impact on the degree of articultation needed to clearly deferentiate those combinations. Please do not see any disrespect in my comment but more a frank and direct expression of my reflexion on the subject.
@Paseos por Madrid Well you know the Argentinian society is extremely divided, some people live in slums (villas) whereas some others play polo or rugby or hockey and live in luxurious towers or private bouroughs (countries).. some of them even say that they would have been better off had they been an English or French colony rather than a Spanish colony... In all objectivity the level of education in Spain is not high compared to other European big nations (I just looked at indicators). That's what those "educated" Argentian have in mind : they see the typical Spaniard as a campesino or low skilled worker. Also they have in mind "brutal and stupid" traditions in Spain, the many inartuculated dialects, etc. far from sciences, progress, modernity and enlightment. The argentinians will prioritize their "devotion" to Italy, France, Germany rather than Spain. It's a bit odd but it's the way it is. Spain is coming a long way... Many Spaniards were poor and were forced to emigrate for a better life not so long ago... Argentinians also maybe have some disdain for those formerly poor Spaniards who now behave like pseudo "nouveaux riches" thanks to the EU member card (while still being less rich than other big European nations). And "millions of Argentians are emigrating to Spain" is a bit exagerated "... half a million is already more than the exact figure (around 300.000)
Good for you Ollie! You managed to pronounce the RR in just two years. I am Argentinian (native Spanish speaker) and I haven't been able to do it yet, some don't understand me when I say certain words like "Jarra" for example but I don't care anymore, it's part of me 🙂
Spanish non-native speaker here and learner. Spanish starts off easy, but becomes harder as you continue learning. French is the opposite. Cebuano and English are my native languages, so Spanish comes off as somewhat easy to learn in terms of vocabulary, pronunciation, and sometimes grammar. There are languages out there that still beat Spanish in terms of phonology and spelling.
I used to struggle with the subjunctivo a lot, but what really helped was turning off my brain from overthinking it, and instead just trying to see it on context over and over again through immersion. For example if you get so used to hearing "lo que quieras" or "cuando llegue, vamos a celebrar" or "espero que él esté bien" or "le pedí que me te lo mandara" or "si estuviera lloviendo, tú no estarías feliz" over and over again in context, your brain won't have any other choice but to understand it that way subconsciously so then you'll be able to speak fluently and not have to think about it! At least this is what happened to me after hundreds of hours of immersion. Y ahora estoy muy contento por poder habalar con fluidez sin tener que pensar conscientemente en lo que digo. Espero que vean este comentario y que continúen mejorando su español!
HOW DO YOU KNOW IF IT'S INDICATIVE OR SUBJUNTIVE: -Indicativo: para expresar acciones que se consideran reales o concretas -Subjuntivo: para expresar acciones que no son reales o concretas, sino que se refieren a deseos, emociones, posibilidades, hipótesis, dudas, incertidumbres, etc. So for example, in the sentence: "I hope I sing tomorrow" -> "Ojalá cantE mañana" ✅(NO, "Ojalá cantO mañana" ❌because you wish to be that way)
Object prunouns in spanish are probably the hardest. "lo llevo, la dijo, hazlo" As a non-english native speaker verb conjugation came quite easy. It took some memorization, but if you keep in mind that verbs *should* be conjugated the shifts are actually quite intutive and have clear and easy rules. The "rr" is beautiful. I can travel to spanish speaking countries just so I can be rrring all day.
Yes, this is what I’m working on right now. But I’m starting to understand and it’s very exciting to be able to finally get a sentence that you wouldn’t have understood before.
I'm afraid "La dijo" is grammatically incorrect, since the verb "decir" is transitive. In this case the direct object would be WHAT/THAT she was said. It's a common mistake (at least in Spain) everyone will understand though. "Lo llevo" would depend on the context. Have a nice day!
I’m just starting to learn but I found the words are much easier to pronounce and the accent is easy for me, the rolling Rs come natural to me. I took two years of German but forgot everything after a couple years. German grammar isn’t difficult but the words and accent don’t come as natural for a English speaker.
German grammar is anything but easy. I don't know what level of proficiency you reached in German, but up to C1, the grammar is one of the hardest parts of the language. It's harder than the grammar in any Romance or Germanic language. Because of its grammar, it's that German is considered a level 2 language (measuring the difficulty to learn for English speakers).
I'm Mexican, I have a brother who, at 16, still doesn't know how to say the double rr properly hahaha. He couldn't, but the good thing is that he still learned to hide that detail very well.
I've been learning Spanish on my own since February. It's the easiest language I've ever learned, and I'm fluent in 7 languages. Knowing English and German is a huge help. I also took Latin and French in school some 55 years ago.
Then you are probably speaking wrong to say how easy it is. I have been in many classes and the proof is in the pudding. There is a difference to saying and understanding: espero que tengas dinero vs yo desearía que tuvieras dinero...or...quedan dos cervezas en la nevera y tenemos que irnos a la tienda para comprar más. Again most who say it is easy more than likely speak it wrong.
@@kcorpora1 I don't take classes. I spend 2-3 hours a day using communication apps and freely available online resources. Am I speaking fluently and correctly? Of course not. Is Spanish the easiest language I've ever attempted? Yes! If you're, say a native Mandarin speaker, Spanish is probably going to be more difficult than, say Japanese.
@@NMalteC cool but the language is not an easy language...I am fluent and I remember when I first started...I also remember so many struggle in the classes and many dropping the classes. Just think how many people use the verbs that are related wrong... jugar tomar...to play. saber conocer...to know. quedar quedarse...to remain. dejar salir...to leave. etc. Using the the subjunctive moods, etc. Learning the verb then its meaning. Conjugation. Commands. The list goes on. So without comparing it is a difficult language to learn outside of saying a few basic words.
@@kcorpora1 it depends on someone. It's easy for an Italian ot Portuguese speaker, but definitely hard for a Japanese or Korean speaker. Therefore, difficulty is relative.
@@vick.8671 I have been in many classes with different nationalities. Many drop the class. Again it is doable of course but not easy. There are several aspects of the language that are not easy to grasp. Therefore most that say it is easy more than likely are speaking spanish words yet speaking incorrectly.
Me alegra saber que hay tanta gente interesada en aprender Español. Solo puntualizar algo a Olly; en Andalucía, a parte del "seseo" existe el "ceceo" que es pronunciar las "s" como "c". Aún así he de decir que no todos seseamos o ceceamos, yo soy andaluza y no hago ninguna de las dos....las "s" del final sí que me las como o las pronuncio como "h" aspirada. Un saludo a todos y mucho ánimo a todos los que estais aprendiendo el español!!.
Incluso en pueblos muy cercanos en uno se desea y en otro se cecea. Por cierto, has oído el diálogo de la borrega? Te lo recomiendo, te mueres de la risa y yo, que soy andaluza apenas comprendo lo que dicen
Thank God I come from the part of Sweden with rolling Rs. Helps a lot in Spanish, but no with English 😐. The J sound can be tricky but overall Spanish is not that bad. For us Swedes the vocabulary is the main problem, here my English helped a lot. For me English was the bridge between Swedish and Spanish. Thanks Olly!
@@CHarlotte-ro4yi It's traumatic. A friend of mine was thinking about taking her daughter to a therapist but the day before the appointment the little girl started to pronounce the r.
Ser = identidad/esencia Estar = estado Soy guapo = I am handsome (doesn't matter, I am handsome, no matter what I wear) Estoy guapo = I look handome (maybe now I look, but tomorrow don't)
With my native Russian and English as a foreigh language I have even maybe a little bit more advantages to learn Spanish. It's plausible for some extence.
Learning Spanish is fairly straight forward, I can write and understand it written down fairly well. Understanding it when it's being spoken however is a whole new level of complexity.
@@BagoasAnushParsaRad desafortunadamente no. Lo escribo a mis amigos hispanohablantes y lo escucho las serias de Netflix con subtítulos, pero no lo entiendo bien. Necesito practicarlo en las conversaciones.
@@PRHWoolly80 ¡No te preocupes, con el tiempo vas a mejorar y será fácil, intenta tener amigos online hispanoparlantes, con práctica será pan comido escucharlo, como comprenderlo, no te desanimes! ¡Saludos!
@@optimizing_fitnessabsolutely confusing for beginners...short version: quedarse...me quedo en casa...anoche ellos se quedaron en casa...quédate! aqui...quédense! aqui todos. quedar...quedan dos cervezas en nevera...la casa queda cerca mi escuela.
@7:12, "You fight" is "Tú peleas", not "Tú pelea" (Some countries in Central America would use "Vos peleas"). "Vosotros peleáis" is spoken in Spain, some countries in Central America would use "Vos pelean", and the rest is "Ustedes pelean".
The hardest thing for me, is knowing which vocab word to use for something. As sometimes they are country specific, e.g el coche or el carro, la computadora or el ordenador etc.
@@fanaticofmetal Yes, though that is true, it can still get confusing when someone says a particular word to me and I don’t understand. Only to realise it’s a word used only in Colombia but actually I do know that translated word but the version from Spain, for example.
I grew up speaking English and French, so "computadora" and "ordenador" both make sense. But some of the things with the most names are animals. Chompipe, pavo, guajolote; cerdo, cochino, cuche, puerco ...
The natives will understand you fine no matter what you use. They've been usually exposed to common words from other spanish speaking nations already, it's when you get the to the local slang that things can get tricky. A word like parche is used only in Colombia I think
@@canchero724 Yes! I agree with the slang words part. Difficult when wanting to speak quite casually with friends who are from different Spanish speaking countries 😅
As a Spaniard, I'd say the hardest part of Spanish is the future form of the subjunctive. Most Spanish speakers don't know how to use it or just use it wrong.
Yo creo que el español es difícil porque tiene muchas reglas gramaticales a la hora de escribir, hay muchas personas que son hablantes nativos y no saben escribir bien sin errores ortográficos. PD: también el "que"y el "se" son difíciles. Yo soy hablante nativa y hasta a mí se me hizo complicado.
Hello there. i am from indonesia and have been learning spanish for a year. i can say that most of indonesia who are good enough in english can learn spanish pretty fast. Here is why: 1. Spanish prononciation is very similar to indonesian. all of the words have constant pronunciation. 2. Spanish has so many cognates with english. 3. For basic level, spanish has quite similar grammar to english grammar (it would not be the case if you learn further)
La vida es demasiado corta para aprender alemán 😅 Pero de verdad tengo much admiración por cada persona que se esfuerza a aprender mi idioma maternal! Es duro pero no tiene que ser perfecto, sabemos que el alemán es bien difícil…
Cada idioma tiene su problema y los casos son un poco complicados pero no se si después de tener clases en las que me tocaba analizar frases en español los complementos y los componentes al igual que aprender otras lenguas romances le tengo mucho respeto a las personas que aprenden español.
Yo soy de CR, igual estoy aprendiendo el aleman. Realmente los casos son complejos y demasiado específicos en la gramática. Tambien cosas como el plural, artículos definidos, no llevan una regla estricta que debas seguir sino que hay varias excepciones. Ahora si lo pienso, el español tiene sus casos gramaticales solo que no son tan específicos como en el aleman ni tan confusos. Siempre me he preguntado, por que un pronombre sie - ella, pero también sie para ellos o ellas, también Sie para usted pero formal, 3 pronombres iguales😅
I learnt Latin Based Spanish in La Paz Bolivia 🇧🇴 (The high) whilst staying there for 4 weeks, That was 10 years ago, now I am interested in going back to learn it again! - This time to the point of being fluent - Yes the British 🇬🇧 really are terrible at foreign languages 😞 - BUT - there's light on the horizon! More and more of us are trying to change that negative reputation with Europe! 😁👌 Muchas gracias y Adios! Yo soy estudiar Hablar! 🇪🇸 (I think 🤔)
@@hagianghoang5783 I'm Spanish native as long as you can help me with Vietnamese basics at least, I'm up for that like an language enchange... It's up to you saludos
In the minute 7:11 there is a mistake with the conjugation of "Tú" It should be "Tú peleas" with the "s". Great video, I'm a native Spanish speaker and I am passionate about languages, so I had fun watching this. Thank you :)
@@dutchreagan3676 🤣 it’s tricky for me, too. Currently working on the present subjunctive, and I’ve started to get the hang of it. Just wait til I get to the other tenses of the subjunctive, tho lol
I am a native Spanish speaker, I think your video about Spanish is very interesting. If someone wants to learn or practice Spanish I can help and they can help me with my English :)
I'm finding Spanish is hard to learn. Because you might have three words that mean the same thing. And some of the learning books are not telling you what context are you supposed to use each word in! They just leave you confused and in limbo!
7:10 it says "Tú pelea" when you are referring to possessive context, like ""It isnt's your fight is mine". But when it is refers to an action that a person usually do it's "Tú peleas", like "You fight in the ring"
Because I always have the most difficulty with pronunciation when studying foreign languages, to me Spanish is the easiest foreign language to learn. Italian may be the next easiest. French grammar is easier than Spanish grammar, but I have known a lot of people who after spending many years studying French still can't understand what the actors are saying when they try to watch French movies. I also have known some people with doctorates in French literature who say that they still have difficulty with the French u and ou sounds. Of the Spanish dialects, most native English speakers seem to find the Caribbean dialect to be the most difficult to understand.
In my opinion, French is a language that is best learned by attaining conversational fluency before being exposed to its written form...quite the opposite of Spanish in that regard. The easiest language to hear for me is Swahili, but the grammar is very different because it's built more around altering prefixes and suffixes than around sentence formation.
7:09 Keep in mind that here it is You fight, not You fight, that doesn't make any sense except if you take the tilde out of it, but doing that already gives it a different meaning.
I've been learning Spanish for five years and I still don't understand a lot. I can sort of understand when reading but when I hear Spanish spoken I haven't got a clue what's being said apart from picking out the odd word.
In my experience, the hardest thing for native English speakers to get right 100% of the time, is the pretty random noun gender of Spanish and its effect on adjective endings. I've been learning and speaking Spanish for more than 35 years and I still make mistakes with the gender of nouns. To give you an idea of how tricky it is, I've even heard my Spanish wife make mistakes with gender endings.
Hahha your Spanish wife is a child??Make mistakes with the ending gender? No sense with a native speaker. I am spanish and is so easy, I suppose that she make mistakes for confuse English and Spanish, this tipicaly happens when you are bilingual but one person that speaks all the time in Spanish is near to the impossible make that mistakes..
"Ya" basically means "At this point" I no longer know (I don't know at this point) = Ya no sé I already know (I know at this point) = Ya sé Come now! (Come at this point!) =¡Ven ya! In slang you use "Ya" to say that you get it at this point. Hope that helps.
Im Spanish and a thing i have trouble with is to understand latin american countries, maybe not mexicans or colombians but chileans are just impossible to understand, they have completely different words, a difficult pronunciation to understand and too many slangs which makes it really hard even for native speakers. Sorry for my english btw, im working on it
My difficulty understanding comes from the combination of words when spoken fast rather than the speed itself. Lots of the vowels blend together. Example, va a la playa turns into vayalaplaya in my head which tricks my brain into going hey wait did they say vaya or va a and then I'm behind the rest of the sentence. I had to watch a lot of subtitles to get used to the pacing. It only gets worse in Andalusia because they just eat all their words like pescado turns into something that sounds like "pay-cow" and it takes too long to decipher that in fast dialogue
OMG that's so true 😅 I do that very often and it changes with countries and even regions. Sometimes natives have to ask for clarification. Un special between South American, Caribbean and Spanish people.
Like English, the definitions of words sometimes depend on your location. Some examples in English are pants (trousers in the US, underwear in the UK), fanny (buttocks in the US, a part of female anatomy in the UK), and Randy (a person's name in the US, horny in the UK). In Spanish, Chino in Puerto Rico is naranja in Mexico. Huevos in some countries means eggs, and testicles in others. Bizcochos is a baked item in many places, and a female body part in others. A servietta is a towel in many places and a feminine napkin in others. It can be a funny world. Keep smiling. 🙂
"Everybody expects the Spanish Inquisition". As the Church was a branch of the State power, the whole bureaucracy applied to them as well. Any kind of visit to a person or judgement warning was notified 1 or 2 weeks earlier. That's why everybody knew they were coming beforehand. Over 500 hundred years have passed and you can still see the same fake statement everywhere. Therefore "History is written by victors" is another Hollywood fake statement. Because you have to be in the mood to write about it and spread the word to as many people as possible. If you don't do it because your culture encourages you to keep it to yourself, then any victory will always be pyrrhic or as it had never existed. Internalizing this beforehand will make wonders to understand Spanish culture and will blow your mind if you're a foreigner as you'll learn tones of things invented, created or negociated by Spanish territories. You'll find yourself correcting other people when they refer to American countries as "Colonies" when only the French, English and Dutch had them. Discovering that in Spain (also in Portugal) those lands were really parts of the state, never colonies. You'll learn about "The Black Legend", the new rich people behaviour, the Kings and politicians, The Dollar sign with the S letter and 2 columns taken from the Spanish flag coat of arms, the cowboys patrolling Louisiana with the same horse breed, invented in Andalusia in Southern Spain as a task force against burglars, that were later adquired by the Americans as their own, etc... everything can help you out to blend with the culture, while you're learning the language.
As a native spanish speaker i believe it's easy to learn but hard to "master" I'm currently studying Japanese, which has a similar phonetic, and every word is pretty well marked, but there're dozens of diminute things changing the meaning of the whole sentence and sound similar to others, so if you have an understanding, you can grasp most of it In spanish we have the same diminute changes but the language tends to be fluid and has a pretty ambigous pronunciation, like if instead of having 3 words you have 1 long word stiched together So you might be able to comunicate easily with little knowledge, but getting to that conversational point can be a pain, specially adding how every hispanic country speaks completely different and inside each country there're like 20 different dialects
Mastery is a difficult term. I don't know what the official definition would be. I've been speaking, reading and writing English for about 50-odd years and I often query my mastery over that. 🤔
@@FrauDrSophieLouisaBennett Indeed, i don't know if the term would be correct but it marks the idea pretty well, it might be easy to learn the basics but hitting the "sweet spot" would take a lot of time And regarding the English mastery, a huge number of natives don't know the difference between "Were" and "we're", perhaps we're being too hard on ourselves
Not too difficult, but if you get mixed up, results can be hilarious, because a lot of slang comes from it: "ser buena" (be good) vs "estar buena" (be smoking hot) / "ser retrasado" (be retarded) vs "estar retrasado" (be delayed)/ "ser verde" (be green) vs "estar verde" (be unprepared) / "ser jodido" (be difficult) vs "estar jodido" (be in a dire situation).
@@kellymiller7986 Not in a human lifespan, but given enough time, even mountains and rivers can change places, so "estar" seems appropiate. After all, the location of something is not an inherent and perpetual characteristic of it. "Ser" means you always have it and never can get rid of it. "Estar" means it's just a state, you weren't always like that, even if that state could be irreversible (as in "estar muerto").
Soy hablante nativo de español rioplatense. En el minuto 7.10 aparece una tabla de conjugación del verbo pelear en presente del modo indicado. Tiene un error: dice "tu pelea"; lo correcto es "tu peleas".
Sendo falante nativo de português, considero o francês bem mais difícil que o espanhol. Seja por apresentar mais fonemas, seja pela instabilidade da pronúncia/escrita, que chegam a soar totalmente aleatórias para mim. Consigo entender cerca de 80 a 90% do espanhol se falarem lentamente e 60 a 70% numa conversação normal (tanto o sotaque latino quanto o europeu, aliás.) O italiano tem a sua beleza e consigo entendê-lo bem, mas por volta de 45 a 60%. Já o romeno? Não me atrevo a tentar. Humor à parte, me atrevo a dizer que o francês e romeno sejam as línguas mais difíceis.
2 Things. 1) if you have the subtitles to a video you can pause and try to find the words or the saying online. 2) if i had -AR verbs 1st then -AR in basic future and past tense i would have had an easier time at the start.
Conjugation and the speed at which it’s spoken natively has been my biggest thing. Oh and different words for things in items in different regions. Dominicans were very hard to learn from. Just so fast
Im an English native speaker and rolling my R's is still so hard. Ive taken Spanish in school since 6th grade. All the way to college. I still cannot roll my R's. I can speak and understand a fair amount but cannot even roll my r's. I guess practice makes perfect and I should work on it more.
I like this video. I love listening the spanish language. The vowels are pronounced like my polynesian languages. The spanish language has mauri (life-force) that is why it sounds beautiful. I'll start here to learn Spanish. Gracias.
I love your videos I’m native Spanish speaker and I think conjugations are the hardest and RRs, to pronounce takes a while to dominate the skill , but speed also ,
Hey there. I've been trying to learn Arabic for over 10 years but have been very uneventful. I was hoping, since I knew that you learned Arabic, there might be a course on your website for it. But I couldn't find one. I don't know how feasible it is to ask for you to make an entire course on one language, but I would definitely get your program if there was. Thanks
The pronunciation of Spanish and rolling the R’s has never been challenging for me. What I struggle with is getting the language to sink in. Perhaps of just been procrastinating it my whole life. Spanish, to me, has always seemed like something I should do eventually. I have tons of family that speak Spanish despite the fact that we’re not Latinos. But I don’t know what’s keeping me from driving in. 😅
Maybe you think you don't need to learn it, this question can only be answered by you. I am from México City and Spanish is my first language, just for the record, it took me years and a lot of practice to master the English language, so if did it you can do it too, don't give up, but first find out if you really really want to learn Spanish . Hope I helped a little.
I’m a native Spanish speaker and I think the hardest things about Spanish is rolling R’s and verb endings. Many of my friends and coworkers just can’t pronounce the R correctly as much as they sincerely try. And they often get the wrong verb ending or tenses because of how many there are and when to use them.
Never learned Spanish, but, as for me, "r" sound is quite easy, it is a little bit easier than english or french "r" and I LOVE how it sounds. My favorite sounds is spanish and french [r] (don't know which one I like more)
Consistency of the spelling system and pronunciation, very standardized and simple phonetical system. These are the main advantages in comparison to other Latin languages but, for example, verbal tenses are more challenging than in French or Italian.
Spanish is a very beautiful language. Spanish is a very rich language with many ways of expressing things. For that reason, Spanish literature is very rich and varied. In Spanish, spelling practice is not necessary because it is pronounced as it is written.
¡Qué tal, Olly! Your video is very good. Without any intention of criticism.... there is a little mistake in the table where the conjugation of the verb fight is shown (minute 7:09). "You fight" in this case translates to Spanish as "Tú peleas" (with an "S" at the end of the word), not "Tú pelea". "Tú pelea" (also "Pelea tú") is used, but is the imperative form, meaning your are ordering somebody to fight; something as: "You, fight!"
Love your channel Olly, it is so interesting and informative. Two things not mentioned. First the preterite tense. English speakers (especially those who have learned French) will always fall back on using haber + past partciple. However any Spaniard will tell you that using haber + past participle when you should be using the preterite immediately marks you out as not being Spanish. The other thing that gets me is the flipping of subject/object. For example 'I have forgotten the keys' becomes 'Las llaves se me han olvidado' (the keys forgot themselves to me'. Don't get me started on then subjunctive, especially in the imperfect tense...
También puedes decir "He olvidado las llaves" -Pretérito imperfecto de indicativo: equivale al "...used to" -> Yo estudiaba/Yo solía estudiar: I used to study (puede también traducirse como "I studied") -Pretérito imperfecto de subjuntivo: equivale al "...were to"-> Yo estudiara/Yo fuera a estudiar: I were to study (puede también traducirse como "I studied")
Native English speaker learning Spanish here. If we removed conjugation, Spanish would be the literal easiest language to learn! Otherwise, grammar is the only thing that’s kinda tough. Why does “que” or “lo” go HERE on a sentence versus HERE? Find that out and Spanish is the gateway language to whatever is in your future. Beautiful language with a culture and history nearly as long as English’s-highly recommend!
In USA, an exchange school student was ask by a native, how do you learn English, the most difficult language in the world?, the exchange student was brazilian, the same with students from other countries and more complicated languages.
Being Spanish teacher myself, after 6 years of working I can say that the most difficult aspects are: 1) Subjunctive, conjugation and difference between pretérito indefinido and pretérito imperfecto, as for grammar 2) Start speaking fluently with the right intonation and being able to keep up with conversations 3) Getting rid of a very strong accent, that makes your Spanish difficult to understand Also, very important tip for those who are studying Spanish now: don’t forget to actually learn the words, even though you think they are identical to the ones in English. Trust me, you might recognize them in texts, but when you are about to speak, most of the time you wouldn’t remember them.
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If someone has your intermediate Spanish Uncovered, would there be any reason to invest in Grammar Hero?
Intuyo que aprendiste español en Andalucía, ¿me equivoco?edit : ahora lo entiendo, he visto tu video de aprendizaje de español. Buena decisión aprender español con un canario, justo el mejor puente entre América y España.
Hi Olly, there is only one very small flaw in this video and it is at minute 7:09, "tú peleas" (you fight) is missing the "s". I hope you can fix it so no one mislearns this.
I love your videos and your knowledge of languages. ❤️
I’m watching this being a native Spanish speaker just because, you know, it’s always interesting to know the English speakers perspective.
I'm doing the same lol
It's funny because I'm a Spanish native speaker too and I struggled trying to understand the Spanish clips that were put here... Honestly, in the last clip I understood more or less a 30% ( being a native speaker )
@@juandiegovelez9160 those things happen
me too
I'M DOING THE SAME JAJSAKS
I guess the most difficult part about learning Spanish is to understand fluid conversations. Spanish is the second fastest language apparently. And also the conjugation and the fact that the subject is normally dropped because the meaning is also heavily dependent on the conjugation. Other than that, it's relatively easy to learn compared to other languages.
it's funny you mention dropping the subject pronoun given the verb conjugation points it out. I'm trying to teach myself Swedish, and they have the opposite problem: So far, my understanding is that the verb stays the same (within the tense) regardless of who is speaking, so you HAVE to use the pronoun. Given my Spanish, it was a difficult thing to remember to do all the time. My Swedish friend still laughs at me when I do it.
Italian native speaker here, never studied Spanish and yes I don't understand anything at all when they speak.
@@atlantis4516 Really? Regardless of where they come from? This is the first time I see an Italian say this.
@@jsphat81 yes I am talking seriously
As the South east asian Chinese i will never understand why Westerners say Spanish is easy and Chinese is hard.I mean look at the grammar of Spanish wtf is that* - -!!!!!))))
The good thing about Spanish is the consistency in its pronunciation. If you already know the sounds, every time you come across a new word, you can feel pretty confident on how to pronounce it. That's why we don't have spelling games on TV like in English speaking countries. Think about all the different sounds an 'a' can have in an English word.
As Native speaker that's the most I hate from spanish how inflexible its pronunciation is. 😅
Absolutely, it's super easy. Once you get the pronunciation Spanish is yours.
Obviously, it has its irregularities as every language, but that's all.
Edit: I am native speaker and the other one who says that hates the perfect pronunciation of the words is simply a psycho
@@rayelosado6260 The edit part is refiring to me ? Hahahahahahahaha
I hurt spanish what can I do now? Die😭? Go to jail 🤧? OMG Hahahahahhaha
Y nunca dije que odiaba la pronunciación de las palabras, parece que no sabes leer en inglés, hablé de la inflexibilidad que tiene el español con relación a sus fonemas, que no es lo mismo, es inevitable ver la carencia de variación fonética del español frente a otros idiomas, dependiendo de, puede ser una ventaja o una desventaja. ✌🏽
@@vhickj ¿Qué diferencia hay entre la pronunciación y la fonética?
@@rayelosado6260 Se refiere a que tenemos muy pocos fonemas. La parte buena es que la transcripción de escritura a fonética carece de errores. Puede ser transcrita sin errores. Al revés no. Un sonido "v" no sabes si se escribe con v o b, o las "h" insonoras ocultas que puedan existir en una palabra, más allá de saberlo por memorización.
Pero creo que están relacionados. Usando un alfabeto con tan poca letra (sólo agregamos la ñ al alfabeto común en inglés, más los acentos), para tener más fonemas habría que inventar más combinaciones de consonantes para representarlas o agregar letras nuevas. La mayor parte de idiomas con muchos fonemas requieren demasiadas reglas o peor aún, como en inglés, una transcripción arbitraria que hay que aprender palabra por palabra.
I am Japanese learning Spanish as my third language after Japanese and English. My English skill gives me a bit of advantage but the conjugation is driving me crazy!! But the fact that Spanish is spoken by so many people in the world that I am inspired to learn the language!!
Go foward mate ! Es un hermoso idioma :)
Saludos desde España
I am trying to learn japense and speak Spanish English lol
Im Indian going to madrid for college
I think i have to study spanish too
I already know english malayalam tamil hindi arabic
!los entiendo muy bien, yo también lucho cada día con el inglés, realmente deseo muchísimo llegar ah hablarlo fluidamente algún día ,éxitos en sus estudios y logren sus propósitos muy pronto !.saludos ♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️👍👍👍👍👍👍💯🙏
@@zayedashraf1443inténtalo duroo . Es algo difícil pero no imposible
I studied German and Spanish at Uni. I found German the harder language overall, but much easier to distinguish and understand when spoken than Spanish.
Than*...
@KJG Olden English might be slightly closer to German than Spanish. Both languages are Germanic.
I found the same thing and I think it's because German is normally spoken with short pauses between the words instead of letting everything slur together like in English and to some degree Spanish. Spanish speakers (like English speakers) are usually kind enough to put pauses between the words if you're having trouble understanding them.
wow this gives more hope in continuing my learning of german then i relook at your sentence: i"i fond German language the harder overall.
Just because I personally found it harder, it doesn’t mean you will.
I wouldn't underestimate the difficulty of understanding natural conversations in Spanish.
Spanish natives speak very fast and it's incredible the number of syllables they are capable of cramming into a single breath.
I am a native Italian and my only real problem with the written language is memorising verb conjugations.
But undestanding two natives speaking in informal/semi-formal situations? That's a whole different story.
Japanese is like that too. They speak incredibly fast and mash syllables together. Only big difference is, reading it is extremely challenging, and that's why it takes so long to learn.
Right? Especially when i listen to spoken Spanish from Spain it sounds like i put it on at least 1.5x speed 😂
Vamos a suponer que hablan dos españoles contigo con un tono pausado, así sería comprensible, ¿no?
@Paseos por Madrid you don't say 😂 I'm trying my hardest lol
@Paseos por Madrid a mi, a veces, me suena el inglés a onomatopeyas agolpadas. Lo aprendo porque no queda más remedio, pero le tengo poco aprecio. Añoro el tiempo de nuestros padres, hace apenas cuarenta años, cuando la lengua Franca internacional era el francés.
The word ‘se’ was the hardest part for me by a mile. It has so many uses, that when I would encounter it - I would be stopped in my tracks for a minute until I could mentally go through its list of uses, until I found the one that most matched the sentence I needed it for.
Always heard of the horrors of subjunctive -but when it came to learning it, I was surprised how quickly it made sense to me.
Think of it as the unknown 'one' as in: One can not know the outcome. And the better word is one you already use: None. It has the same 'function'. There are none so deaf as those that will not hear.
@@dutchreagan3676 That only covers the passive use of 'se'. It can also be reflexive and function as an object pronoun, e.g. "Él *se* lo iba a dar (a ella)."
sentences
se murió el perro
se me cayó el celular
but It's not very used, only some situation
I'm from Perú 🙌
@@oliverraven And the "pasiva refleja", as in "se venden verduras", which could be more or less literally translated as "vegetables are being sold"... even though you could see that very same sentence at the grocer's in the sense of "WE sell vegetables", just that the subject is nowhere to be seen.
@@dutchreagan3676 huh??
I love Spanish because it is so easy to read! And many words can be understood easily without learning. Never thought I would be learning Spanish, but due to I got ill with Covid last year, I suddenly realized that I have quite a few free time, so I just filled it with useful things.
Thanks for Russian and Latvian, rolling R an Ñ were no problem for me. And English helped with c/z (th) sound.
This year I finished reading my first non-adaptated book in Spanish. And the feeling was awesome! Reading a book of my favourite Japanese writer in Spanish - that was an adventure. It took me 3 months, but it was worth it. 😍
By the way, Spanish Uncovered Intermediate is just awesome! I finally could learn the difference between past tenses. 😁 before I could understand the meaning but when I had to write a sentence myself, I couldn't stop thinking - which tense do I have to take. 😀
It's always wonderful to read things like this, thanks for appreciating our language, I hope you continue learning many things about Spanish.😄😄😄
¡Felicidades! Espero que ese escritor sea Haruki Murakami! Keep up the good work! 👍
@@juanxyah Lo siento, pero yo nunca he leído libros de Murakami Haruki. Mi escritor favorito es Higashino Keigo (東野圭吾さん). El libro se llama Paradox 13. Muy interesante y misterioso. Yo tengo 3 libros más en japonés, por eso estoy aprendiendo kanji de altos niveles para leer estos libros en idioma original.
@@victormanuellesanchezmoren9868 Español es el idioma muy bonito. I like the way it sounds, but sometimes (as I am from the northern country) I feel I'm not emotional enough to express myself in Spanish. 😁
@@irinaspalve8356 Thanks for your answer, Irina. I’ll definitely check out Higashino. The Wikipedia entry on him vaguely reminded me of Ben H. Winters, an American sci-fi writer.
Good luck with Japanese. I’m currently taking a break from Russian, and working a bit on Swahili.
Have a good one. 👍
Juan
PS: Don’t worry about not being “emotional enough” to speak Spanish. Judging by what you wrote earlier, you already have a great feel for the language. So, just focus on having fun with it. Best of luck.
I used to hear my family speaking spanish and thought it sounded sooooo fast. I finally became fluent this year and it doesn’t sound so fast to me anymore. I started wondering if I just talk with a bunch of slow speakers but I realized I’m just used to it now. What’s funny is my Spanish speaking friends that don’t speak English think English is spoken way faster and I always have to explain that it’s scientifically not true.
The only time I struggled with English was while working in a project with an English man, he was so fast that was easier to understand to the South Africans in the meeting call than him.
I agree, English seems fast at the beginning, but once you are intermediate it becomes too slow unless you don't understand connect speech.
@@marialuisaminervamoralesri6411 por qué debería escribirlo en español si estoy tratando de comunicarme con personas que hablan inglés?
science says that spanish is only fast in syllables per minute, but the information (bits per second) is pretty much the same as "slower" languages, actually the information / second is the same through all languages in the world .
Spanish is just objectively fast. Certainly faster on average than English. Some New Yorkers and other places I'm sure, speak pretty fast but your average English speakers are talking at a fairly moderate speed. Some American Southerners speak exceedingly slowly. Rarely do I ever hear a Native Spanish speaker using a slow pace. They fly through their words and some fly even faster such as those from the Caribbean.
I've always thought Spanish is the most beautiful Romance language. I had to take mandatory French classes for four years in school. I did well in the classes but I could never keep the grammatical gender straight, and the pronunciation was really irritating. I find Spanish much easier to learn; the pronunciation is a lot more straightforward (although the rolled R took me forever to say properly; I wasn't able to pronounce it until a couple of years ago, thanks to learning Finnish. Still waiting and hoping for a video about that language, btw), and the grammatical genders are so much easier to remember.
Felicidades!!! Me da risa lo de la r enrollada jajajaja
I think the hardest part to me was to get good listening comprehension in Spanish. I learned Spanish from English and it took a very long time to be able to understand natives.
What I see is that Spanish can be easy to learn in the basics, but hard to master and speak properly or sound natural due to the subjunctive, for some people, the use of the articles and in general to learn how to use the tenses properly can be a challenge, but, it is not impossible, what I think could help is practicing a lot with native speakers, it will help you to gather the enough practice to make the tenses more intuitive.
Btw, I did not see anyone mentioned it, but, the conjugation of Tú pelea, should be Tú peleas* 😊
The thing with the question marks is pretty simple: A question in english change the structure of the sentence:
You are ready
Are you ready?
In spanish we don't do that, it does still the same in most cases:
Estás listo
¿Estás listo?
It helps a lot to know where a question begins.
As an English speaker I think Spanish is easy while you’re learning the most common grammar and vocabulary and then it’s still easy into intermediate thanks to the cognates but then you hit the plateau if you want to get to advanced then it gets hard. But intermediate is good enough for most people.
I guess it could happen to master any language.
I look forward to starting my Spanish language journey in about a year's time. I've been learning my heritage language (Māori) for nearly 4 years now. I'm at a B2 level in that language and want to push it up to an advanced C level first, before I decide to start learning Spanish too. As it happens, the pronunciation of Spanish is exactly the same as Māori.
Learning basic Māori from a young age has made Spanish pronunciation a breeze for me! You'll be impressing people with your Spanish skills in no time. Good luck with your Spanish journey 😊
Donde se habla eso?
@@0505121968 Nueva Zelanda
I mean, as a Native Spanish speaker, I've listened to Maori several times (I actually know the NZ national anthem in Maori) and the sounds are a little different. For example, I've heard SOME 's be aspirated in Maori but that will never happen in Spanish. I've also heard the diphthong "au" which sounds like the "a" is reduced, and sounds totally different than Spanish. However, it has been very easy for me to pronounce Maori, so maybe their pronunciation isn't exactly the same but they're definitely very similar.
@@qwertytypewriter2013 Fair call. The pronunciation is similar but not exactly the same.
Hey Olli!!! :D My native language is spanish (I'm from Perú) and this video is absolutely accurate, I agree that the best way to learn it is by reading, it's really helpful that words are pronounce as they are written and you can guess a lot of meaning through the context. And People from latin america can undersrand european spanish at 99.99% so you can learn any of them and be able to understand both of them.
Pero nadie puede entender el chileno jajajajajaja
I'm learning Spanish from latin american sources and I've been wondering what's the .01 I'll miss if I ever go to Spain
@@e5205 The main differences are in the names of food, foreign words, and slang. All Spanish speaking countries agreed on having only one set of rules for the language, so it’s structurally the same in Europe and the americas. (Aside from differences in pronunciation like z, c, ll, y)
@@e5205 Concha in Argentina means pussy, while in Spain it means shell, there are some variations like that, but not much. Once u know spanish at a fluent level ull start to know each countries´ slangs
@@paulo3378 yo soy chileno y estoy de acuerdo contigo lol
Spanish comes really easy to me, since i'm Brazilian and learned italian. But even if I can already understand almost 100% of it, I want to study it properly in the future, it's so beautiful
O português é muito simples também para gente eu aprendi a falar português fluente só em 6 meses vc pode aprender ainda mais rápido porque o espanhol menos sons que o português às vezes eu penso que são praticamente a mesma língua
Easy because Portuguese and Spanish are cousins..about me my mother tongue is Arabic I have been learning Spanish for six months is super hard can not catch up is something like tiki-taka
😵💫
@@wilsonmejia6805para mi son casi lo mismo. En 6 meses aprendes portugués y en 6 meses aprendes español. Con tantas oportunidades laborales, no entiendo porque no hay más gente que hable ambos idiomas con lo rápido que se aprende.
Viva el Español, también me defiendo con el Inglés pero lamentablemente hay mucho nativo del inglés que critica porque tenemos un acento muy marcado o porque a veces es difícil pronunciar algunas palabras. Yo no le diría eso a ninguna persona que esté intentando hablar Español y más bien le ayudaría a darse a entender.
De hecho muchos son así , ellos quieren que hablemos perfecto pero nosotros les aplaudimos el hecho de que intenten hablar español
@@lizzethmancilla5197 típico de muchos gringos. No todos. Pero si una gran parte quieren que todo el mundo hable perfecto inglés, pero cuando hablan otro idioma yo no espero que lo hable perfecto y si dijera algo mal o le ayudo o me esfuerzo a entender a que se refiere.
Native Spanish speaker here. Out of curiosity, I looked up a few Spanish Language for foreigners resources and noticed how in most of them, people speak really slowly, at least in comparison to how the majority of natives speak in real life. This probably also makes the language seem harder than it actually is. I noticed the same thing with French when I took lessons a few years ago, the resources were very clear and easy to listen to, but I could barely keep up when I heard natives speaking.
In contrast, the lessons I took in German and Japanese were a bit closer to reality. German isn't too fast, so hearing natives speaking wasn't as shocking. Japanese, on the other hand, is spoken at about the same speed as Spanish, sometimes even faster, and they don't pull any punches when it comes to speed with their resources. At least not the ones I'm using, which are often just as fast.
Luckily, since I speak a similarly speedy language which happens to use almost the exact same phonemes, that part hasn't really been an issue, at least not yet.
yeah i'm at a beginner lever of spanish and i cringe when i can actually understand what someone is saying. not even children's shows talk that slowly. i'm pretty good with french and never do you hear anyone pronounce every word the way you're supposed to in isolation. everything blends together because it's spoken so fast.
I’m Australian but have always been able to roll my tongue and my Rs since a teen. In recent years Rammstein really helped improved my R rolling, even though I literally have only used it so far to sing Rammstein lol
Portuguese is my first language.Both Spanish and Portuguese have a way more verb conjugations than English.I would not worry much about pronunciation at first,but make sure I can master the verb conjugation of the most common verbs I use in my mother tongue.
Es verdad.
As a Spanish speaker learning Portuguese I definitely agree and you have even more tenses that us or at least that you actually use.
What a great video! I love your channel. I learned Spanish as my second language, English is my first. I’ve studied Spanish now for over ten years. Without a doubt, the hardest thing for me to grasp was the subjunctive. It took months, but once I figured it out, you’re right, it was so much fun to use!
10 years. But his spanish must be great now. Or m i wrong
I have seriously studied Spanish each and every day for no less than an hour for the last four years. I have taken all kinds of classes. I even dream in it. But still it is very hard for me to communicate with native Spanish speakers who do not also speak English. But learning Spanish is not hard in any instance it is just sticking with your studies that is hard. As for the sounds ... someone forgot to tell the spanish speakers that hablado ... is not pronounced hablou and mas is not ma. But overall it is pretty easy ... just stick with it. It is a beautiful language.
No se preocupe lo mismo me pasa aun con el ingles
El problema es que los nativos hablamos tan rápido que parece que decimos todas las palabras juntas jajaja
Me pasa lo mismo. No aprendo del todo Inglés aunque lo estudio. Y sí, algunos países del Caribe y parte de España dicen "hablao", pero son solo acentos, formas de pronunciar palabras. En Argentina y Uruguay también suelen aspirar la S en ciertas palabras para decir las cosas, en cambio, en muchos otros lugares pronunciamos todo completo. Lo bueno es que la fonética es la misma para todo hispanohablante, y ese es un punto a favor cuando se aprende.
Yo hablo español de Mexico y me cuesta a veces trabajo entender a los de otro pais, algunos españoles se "comen" las letras o hablan muy rapido, incluso en mi mismo pais cuesta trabajo entender a algunos de otras regiones, asi que paciencia y disfruta el aprendizaje, solo no uses mucho las malas palabras
It depends on background. As a Canadian I studied French in school, and that helped me with Spanish. Many concepts are the same, even if the implementation is different, and many words are the same or similar.
I started learning French after English, I speak Spanish, the french grammar becomes easier because of Spanish
Ver a Gente aprendiendo Espanol es mi pasion
Somos especiales 😎
Xd
Soy Nativo de español. También hablo varios idiomas como vos y te sigo hace un tiempo. Muchas gracias por todo lo que subís. Y tu español es brutal, esta buenísimo. Felicitaciones.
I’m learning Spanish for over 2 years now & I think the hardest part is conjugations
Thanks for admitting period that it is hard. I know the language well. There are many rules that are hard for many to grasp after even trying to grasp the basics.
espero que no lo hayas dicho...or...yo desearía que tuvieras algo de comer...or...quedan dos cervezas en la nevera necesitamos más...This right here would take many several years to master.
for real. la wéa.
@@ylbertorrez5626 Chileno?
It's those pesky radical changing verbs that are amongst the hardest.
good points:
1. it is written as it sounds: In Spanish, if a new word is created, the pronunciation is not ambiguous.
2. lot of common words with English
3. no phrasal verbs
bad points:
1. split in usage of verb to be into "ser"/"estar"
2. reflective verbs. For example: "peinarse"
3. irregular verbs
as a native english and chinese speaker, the hardest part of spanish for me is figuring out when to use subjuntivo but to anyone who's also having trouble with that i promise it'll be fun after you get used to it :D
@Diego Padilla Es muy usado el modo subjuntivo en español solo que la mayoría no se da cuenta...
Que es un subjuntivo? XD
I used to struggle with the subjunctivo a lot, but what really helped was turning off my brain from overthinking it, and instead just trying to see it on context over and over again through immersion. For example if you get so used to hearing "lo que quieras" or "cuando llegue, vamos a celebrar" or "espero que él esté bien" or "le pedí que te lo mandara" or "si estuviera lloviendo, tú no estarías feliz" over and over again in context, your brain won't have any other choice but to understand it that way subconsciously so then you'll be able to speak fluently and not have to think about it! At least this is what happened to me after hundreds of hours of immersion. Y ahora estoy muy contento por poder habalar con fluidez sin tener que pensar conscientemente en lo que digo. Espero que veas este comentario y que continúes mejorando tu español!
HOW DO YOU KNOW IF IT'S INDICATIVE OR SUBJUNTIVE:
-Indicative: para expresar acciones que se consideran reales o concretas
-Subjuntive: para expresar acciones que no son reales o concretas, sino que se refieren a deseos, emociones, posibilidades, hipótesis, dudas, incertidumbres, etc.
So for example, in the sentence:
"I hope I sing tomorrow" -> "Ojalá cantE mañana" ✅(NO, "Ojalá cantO mañana" ❌because you wish to be that way)
@@人形niño HOW DO YOU KNOW IF IT'S INDICATIVE OR SUBJUNTIVE:
-Indicative: para expresar acciones que se consideran reales o concretas
-Subjuntive: para expresar acciones que no son reales o concretas, sino que se refieren a deseos, emociones, posibilidades, hipótesis, dudas, incertidumbres, etc.
So for example, in the sentence:
"I hope I sing tomorrow" -> "Ojalá cantE mañana" ✅(NO, "Ojalá cantO mañana" ❌because you wish to be that way)
Based on my experience, reading and writing Spanish is no more difficult than French or Italian. Spoken Spanish is another matter, due to the speed. One theory I came across is that Spanish has more polysyllabic words than French, Italian, English, or German, so Spanish speakers tend to speak faster to get their ideas across in the same time frame. Any thoughts on this?
I would say that's true with French given the number of silent letters, so many familiar words are a syllable shorter (gato vs chat for example). But all those silent letters takes getting used to in terms of comprehension.
Agree. Spoken French is so different than the written language. The French actually have dictation contests to write down what they hear and hardly anyone gets a passing score.
Everybody when speaking does it with a degree of articulation and a degree of speed, both being closely related. A third element is the degree of familiarity within the language.
What I have in mind is the sterotype of the "peasant" mumbling along at an incredible speed (sometimes with a cigarette stuck in his mouth) the same old words and expressions that are all familiar to him and the person he is talking too.
The opposite stereotype would be the academical professor making an exposé to a large audiance, trying to nuance and vary his language by bring in new words and expressions.
Spaniards tend to be associated with the first stereotype...
An Argentine used to say to me that Spaniards were 'brutos"... I do get the full meaning point that the way they in general talk and behave somewhat seem to lack "finesse".
It is also true that sound combinations in Spanish are limited compared to French or English, it surely has an impact on the degree of articultation needed to clearly deferentiate those combinations.
Please do not see any disrespect in my comment but more a frank and direct expression of my reflexion on the subject.
@Paseos por Madrid Well you know the Argentinian society is extremely divided, some people live in slums (villas) whereas some others play polo or rugby or hockey and live in luxurious towers or private bouroughs (countries).. some of them even say that they would have been better off had they been an English or French colony rather than a Spanish colony...
In all objectivity the level of education in Spain is not high compared to other European big nations (I just looked at indicators). That's what those "educated" Argentian have in mind : they see the typical Spaniard as a campesino or low skilled worker. Also they have in mind "brutal and stupid" traditions in Spain, the many inartuculated dialects, etc. far from sciences, progress, modernity and enlightment.
The argentinians will prioritize their "devotion" to Italy, France, Germany rather than Spain. It's a bit odd but it's the way it is.
Spain is coming a long way... Many Spaniards were poor and were forced to emigrate for a better life not so long ago... Argentinians also maybe have some disdain for those formerly poor Spaniards who now behave like pseudo "nouveaux riches" thanks to the EU member card (while still being less rich than other big European nations).
And "millions of Argentians are emigrating to Spain" is a bit exagerated "... half a million is already more than the exact figure (around 300.000)
@@jandron94 Pero qué mamada estas diciendo? 😂
Good for you Ollie! You managed to pronounce the RR in just two years. I am Argentinian (native Spanish speaker) and I haven't been able to do it yet, some don't understand me when I say certain words like "Jarra" for example but I don't care anymore, it's part of me 🙂
tu tienes dislalia
Spanish non-native speaker here and learner. Spanish starts off easy, but becomes harder as you continue learning. French is the opposite.
Cebuano and English are my native languages, so Spanish comes off as somewhat easy to learn in terms of vocabulary, pronunciation, and sometimes grammar. There are languages out there that still beat Spanish in terms of phonology and spelling.
I used to struggle with the subjunctivo a lot, but what really helped was turning off my brain from overthinking it, and instead just trying to see it on context over and over again through immersion. For example if you get so used to hearing "lo que quieras" or "cuando llegue, vamos a celebrar" or "espero que él esté bien" or "le pedí que me te lo mandara" or "si estuviera lloviendo, tú no estarías feliz" over and over again in context, your brain won't have any other choice but to understand it that way subconsciously so then you'll be able to speak fluently and not have to think about it! At least this is what happened to me after hundreds of hours of immersion. Y ahora estoy muy contento por poder habalar con fluidez sin tener que pensar conscientemente en lo que digo. Espero que vean este comentario y que continúen mejorando su español!
HOW DO YOU KNOW IF IT'S INDICATIVE OR SUBJUNTIVE:
-Indicativo: para expresar acciones que se consideran reales o concretas
-Subjuntivo: para expresar acciones que no son reales o concretas, sino que se refieren a deseos, emociones, posibilidades, hipótesis, dudas, incertidumbres, etc.
So for example, in the sentence:
"I hope I sing tomorrow" -> "Ojalá cantE mañana" ✅(NO, "Ojalá cantO mañana" ❌because you wish to be that way)
Object prunouns in spanish are probably the hardest.
"lo llevo, la dijo, hazlo"
As a non-english native speaker verb conjugation came quite easy. It took some memorization, but if you keep in mind that verbs *should* be conjugated the shifts are actually quite intutive and have clear and easy rules.
The "rr" is beautiful. I can travel to spanish speaking countries just so I can be rrring all day.
Yes, this is what I’m working on right now. But I’m starting to understand and it’s very exciting to be able to finally get a sentence that you wouldn’t have understood before.
I'm afraid "La dijo" is grammatically incorrect, since the verb "decir" is transitive. In this case the direct object would be WHAT/THAT she was said. It's a common mistake (at least in Spain) everyone will understand though. "Lo llevo" would depend on the context. Have a nice day!
Our RR is making you so happy.
Sigue viajando por todos nuestros países siendo feliz con la RR.
Mazel Tov.
"La dijo" is not correct sounds really weird. It should be "Le dijo"
@@rafabloops8188 la dijo looks like laismo.
Your Spanish is amazing, Olly! You sound like a completely different person!
I’m just starting to learn but I found the words are much easier to pronounce and the accent is easy for me, the rolling Rs come natural to me.
I took two years of German but forgot everything after a couple years. German grammar isn’t difficult but the words and accent don’t come as natural for a English speaker.
German grammar is anything but easy. I don't know what level of proficiency you reached in German, but up to C1, the grammar is one of the hardest parts of the language. It's harder than the grammar in any Romance or Germanic language. Because of its grammar, it's that German is considered a level 2 language (measuring the difficulty to learn for English speakers).
Hola debes tener en cuenta Guinea Ecuatorial allí se habla Español y es muy curioso .depende de la etnia sonará diferente.
Etnia, no. La región.
@@shar6389
Eso ,eso.
I had no idea rolling your R's is hard for some people, it feels perfectly normal and easy for me to do despite speaking only english
Same lol, useful if I end up doing Spanish
I'm Mexican, I have a brother who, at 16, still doesn't know how to say the double rr properly hahaha. He couldn't, but the good thing is that he still learned to hide that detail very well.
I've been learning Spanish on my own since February. It's the easiest language I've ever learned, and I'm fluent in 7 languages. Knowing English and German is a huge help. I also took Latin and French in school some 55 years ago.
Then you are probably speaking wrong to say how easy it is. I have been in many classes and the proof is in the pudding.
There is a difference to saying and understanding:
espero que tengas dinero vs yo desearía que tuvieras dinero...or...quedan dos cervezas en la nevera y tenemos que irnos a la tienda para comprar más.
Again most who say it is easy more than likely speak it wrong.
@@kcorpora1 I don't take classes. I spend 2-3 hours a day using communication apps and freely available online resources. Am I speaking fluently and correctly? Of course not. Is Spanish the easiest language I've ever attempted? Yes! If you're, say a native Mandarin speaker, Spanish is probably going to be more difficult than, say Japanese.
@@NMalteC cool but the language is not an easy language...I am fluent and I remember when I first started...I also remember so many struggle in the classes and many dropping the classes.
Just think how many people use the verbs that are related wrong...
jugar tomar...to play.
saber conocer...to know.
quedar quedarse...to remain.
dejar salir...to leave.
etc.
Using the the subjunctive moods, etc.
Learning the verb then its meaning.
Conjugation.
Commands.
The list goes on. So without comparing it is a difficult language to learn outside of saying a few basic words.
@@kcorpora1 it depends on someone. It's easy for an Italian ot Portuguese speaker, but definitely hard for a Japanese or Korean speaker. Therefore, difficulty is relative.
@@vick.8671 I have been in many classes with different nationalities. Many drop the class. Again it is doable of course but not easy.
There are several aspects of the language that are not easy to grasp. Therefore most that say it is easy more than likely are speaking spanish words yet speaking incorrectly.
Me alegra saber que hay tanta gente interesada en aprender Español.
Solo puntualizar algo a Olly; en Andalucía, a parte del "seseo" existe el "ceceo" que es pronunciar las "s" como "c". Aún así he de decir que no todos seseamos o ceceamos, yo soy andaluza y no hago ninguna de las dos....las "s" del final sí que me las como o las pronuncio como "h" aspirada.
Un saludo a todos y mucho ánimo a todos los que estais aprendiendo el español!!.
Incluso en pueblos muy cercanos en uno se desea y en otro se cecea. Por cierto, has oído el diálogo de la borrega? Te lo recomiendo, te mueres de la risa y yo, que soy andaluza apenas comprendo lo que dicen
when i was learning Spanish
i found is easy since alot of features are present in hindi too
correction en 7:09 ( you fight es tu peleas) incluye la s al final, add the "s"
Thank God I come from the part of Sweden with rolling Rs. Helps a lot in Spanish, but no with English 😐. The J sound can be tricky but overall Spanish is not that bad. For us Swedes the vocabulary is the main problem, here my English helped a lot. For me English was the bridge between Swedish and Spanish. Thanks Olly!
I'm a native spanish speaker and let me tell you that I didn't pronunce the vibrating r until i was 5 years old.
Same but with Germany! So glad I grew up with the bavarian rolling r😅
@@CHarlotte-ro4yi It's traumatic. A friend of mine was thinking about taking her daughter to a therapist but the day before the appointment the little girl started to pronounce the r.
Not everywhere "b" and "v" are pronounced in the same way. About difficult things is the use of the verbs "ser" and "estar". BTW, love your channel!
Ser = identidad/esencia
Estar = estado
Soy guapo = I am handsome (doesn't matter, I am handsome, no matter what I wear)
Estoy guapo = I look handome (maybe now I look, but tomorrow don't)
With my native Russian and English as a foreigh language I have even maybe a little bit more advantages to learn Spanish. It's plausible for some extence.
Learning Spanish is fairly straight forward, I can write and understand it written down fairly well. Understanding it when it's being spoken however is a whole new level of complexity.
Has mejorado en la habilidad de escucha y comprensión oral?.
@@BagoasAnushParsaRad desafortunadamente no. Lo escribo a mis amigos hispanohablantes y lo escucho las serias de Netflix con subtítulos, pero no lo entiendo bien. Necesito practicarlo en las conversaciones.
@@PRHWoolly80
¡No te preocupes, con el tiempo vas a mejorar y será fácil, intenta tener amigos online hispanoparlantes, con práctica será pan comido escucharlo, como comprenderlo, no te desanimes! ¡Saludos!
The hardest part has to be verbs changing meaning in the reflexive form.
Like quedar and quedarse. Just learned the difference last week. Been practicing them, and I’m getting the hang of the differences
@@optimizing_fitnessabsolutely confusing for beginners...short version:
quedarse...me quedo en casa...anoche ellos se quedaron en casa...quédate! aqui...quédense! aqui todos.
quedar...quedan dos cervezas en nevera...la casa queda cerca mi escuela.
@@uusfiyeyh de
@7:12, "You fight" is "Tú peleas", not "Tú pelea" (Some countries in Central America would use "Vos peleas"). "Vosotros peleáis" is spoken in Spain, some countries in Central America would use "Vos pelean", and the rest is "Ustedes pelean".
In centroamerica no one use vosotros, that’s just used in Spain
The hardest thing for me, is knowing which vocab word to use for something. As sometimes they are country specific, e.g el coche or el carro, la computadora or el ordenador etc.
They usually mean the same thing so it's not really a problem
@@fanaticofmetal Yes, though that is true, it can still get confusing when someone says a particular word to me and I don’t understand. Only to realise it’s a word used only in Colombia but actually I do know that translated word but the version from Spain, for example.
I grew up speaking English and French, so "computadora" and "ordenador" both make sense. But some of the things with the most names are animals. Chompipe, pavo, guajolote; cerdo, cochino, cuche, puerco ...
The natives will understand you fine no matter what you use. They've been usually exposed to common words from other spanish speaking nations already, it's when you get the to the local slang that things can get tricky. A word like parche is used only in Colombia I think
@@canchero724 Yes! I agree with the slang words part. Difficult when wanting to speak quite casually with friends who are from different Spanish speaking countries 😅
As a Spaniard, I'd say the hardest part of Spanish is the future form of the subjunctive. Most Spanish speakers don't know how to use it or just use it wrong.
Yo creo que el español es difícil porque tiene muchas reglas gramaticales a la hora de escribir, hay muchas personas que son hablantes nativos y no saben escribir bien sin errores ortográficos.
PD: también el "que"y el "se" son difíciles. Yo soy hablante nativa y hasta a mí se me hizo complicado.
Qué = pronombre interrogativo
Que = conjunción
¿QUÉ estás haciendo?
Lo QUE quiero
Hello there.
i am from indonesia and have been learning spanish for a year.
i can say that most of indonesia who are good enough in english can learn spanish pretty fast.
Here is why:
1. Spanish prononciation is very similar to indonesian. all of the words have constant pronunciation.
2. Spanish has so many cognates with english.
3. For basic level, spanish has quite similar grammar to english grammar (it would not be the case if you learn further)
HAy gente de Indonesia que, de hecho, pronuncia exactamente igual que los hablantes de español, xd
@@ivanovichdelfin8797 tienes razon
Yo recientemente estoy aprendiendo los casos en alemán y puedo jurar que es imposible comparar alemán con el español.🇩🇪🇪🇸😬
La vida es demasiado corta para aprender alemán 😅 Pero de verdad tengo much admiración por cada persona que se esfuerza a aprender mi idioma maternal! Es duro pero no tiene que ser perfecto, sabemos que el alemán es bien difícil…
Es verdad que tiene demasiados pronombres en segunda persona?
Cada idioma tiene su problema y los casos son un poco complicados pero no se si después de tener clases en las que me tocaba analizar frases en español los complementos y los componentes al igual que aprender otras lenguas romances le tengo mucho respeto a las personas que aprenden español.
Yo soy de CR, igual estoy aprendiendo el aleman. Realmente los casos son complejos y demasiado específicos en la gramática. Tambien cosas como el plural, artículos definidos, no llevan una regla estricta que debas seguir sino que hay varias excepciones. Ahora si lo pienso, el español tiene sus casos gramaticales solo que no son tan específicos como en el aleman ni tan confusos. Siempre me he preguntado, por que un pronombre sie - ella, pero también sie para ellos o ellas, también Sie para usted pero formal, 3 pronombres iguales😅
I learnt Latin Based Spanish in La Paz Bolivia 🇧🇴 (The high) whilst staying there for 4 weeks, That was 10 years ago, now I am interested in going back to learn it again!
- This time to the point of being fluent -
Yes the British 🇬🇧 really are terrible at foreign languages 😞
- BUT - there's light on the horizon! More and more of us are trying to change that negative reputation with Europe! 😁👌
Muchas gracias y Adios!
Yo soy estudiar Hablar! 🇪🇸
(I think 🤔)
I am from Vietnam, I would love Spanish and try to learn it daily. Imagine in future I can speak this language fluency
I can help
@@rafainc9273 how you can help me?
@@hagianghoang5783 I'm Spanish native as long as you can help me with Vietnamese basics at least, I'm up for that like an language enchange... It's up to you saludos
@@rafainc9273 oh really. So appreciated for that. But how can we exchange language each other?
Maybe discord or I don't know, you name it
In the minute 7:11 there is a mistake with the conjugation of "Tú" It should be "Tú peleas" with the "s".
Great video, I'm a native Spanish speaker and I am passionate about languages, so I had fun watching this. Thank you :)
The hardest part about Spanish is either verb conjugation or comprehending the message of fast speech
the 'subjunctive'.... AARRGGHH !
Definitely tricky!
Es fácil v: solo es cuestión de acostarse v,:
@@dutchreagan3676 🤣 it’s tricky for me, too. Currently working on the present subjunctive, and I’ve started to get the hang of it. Just wait til I get to the other tenses of the subjunctive, tho lol
@@optimizing_fitness : welcome to the club!
I am a native Spanish speaker, I think your video about Spanish is very interesting. If someone wants to learn or practice Spanish I can help and they can help me with my English :)
I'm finding Spanish is hard to learn. Because you might have three words that mean the same thing. And some of the learning books are not telling you what context are you supposed to use each word in! They just leave you confused and in limbo!
Hola.
7:10 it says "Tú pelea" when you are referring to possessive context, like ""It isnt's your fight is mine". But when it is refers to an action that a person usually do it's "Tú peleas", like "You fight in the ring"
No. We don't add "tildes" (ú) for possessive context when it's about typing. He just made a bad conjugation.
Because I always have the most difficulty with pronunciation when studying foreign languages, to me Spanish is the easiest foreign language to learn. Italian may be the next easiest. French grammar is easier than Spanish grammar, but I have known a lot of people who after spending many years studying French still can't understand what the actors are saying when they try to watch French movies. I also have known some people with doctorates in French literature who say that they still have difficulty with the French u and ou sounds.
Of the Spanish dialects, most native English speakers seem to find the Caribbean dialect to be the most difficult to understand.
In my opinion, French is a language that is best learned by attaining conversational fluency before being exposed to its written form...quite the opposite of Spanish in that regard. The easiest language to hear for me is Swahili, but the grammar is very different because it's built more around altering prefixes and suffixes than around sentence formation.
7:09 Keep in mind that here it is You fight, not You fight, that doesn't make any sense except if you take the tilde out of it, but doing that already gives it a different meaning.
I've been learning Spanish for five years and I still don't understand a lot. I can sort of understand when reading but when I hear Spanish spoken I haven't got a clue what's being said apart from picking out the odd word.
You have to be around it every day!
thanks for giving us a objective and real perception of the difficulties that it might be able to encounter learning Spanish
In my experience, the hardest thing for native English speakers to get right 100% of the time, is the pretty random noun gender of Spanish and its effect on adjective endings. I've been learning and speaking Spanish for more than 35 years and I still make mistakes with the gender of nouns. To give you an idea of how tricky it is, I've even heard my Spanish wife make mistakes with gender endings.
Hahha your Spanish wife is a child??Make mistakes with the ending gender? No sense with a native speaker. I am spanish and is so easy, I suppose that she make mistakes for confuse English and Spanish, this tipicaly happens when you are bilingual but one person that speaks all the time in Spanish is near to the impossible make that mistakes..
if your wife makes those silly mistakes that not even children make, then she is not native
@@danieldebelen1995 She is native. She was born to a Spanish family and grew up in Spain. All native speakers make mistakes in their own language.
@@timupton5625it doesn't happens,the native spanish speakers who make that kind of mistakes could be retarded people or may have a mental illness.
Don't worry, even for me that I speak Spanish I aknowledge the grammar complexity of the language.
"Ya" basically means "At this point"
I no longer know (I don't know at this point) = Ya no sé
I already know (I know at this point) = Ya sé
Come now! (Come at this point!) =¡Ven ya!
In slang you use "Ya" to say that you get it at this point.
Hope that helps.
Im Spanish and a thing i have trouble with is to understand latin american countries, maybe not mexicans or colombians but chileans are just impossible to understand, they have completely different words, a difficult pronunciation to understand and too many slangs which makes it really hard even for native speakers. Sorry for my english btw, im working on it
Los chilenos son dificiles de entender principalmente por su pronuncia desidiosa que a veces los hace sonar como unos ebrios hablando en una barra
Tranquilo , nadie les entiende 😂
you make me excited to learn my own language
My difficulty understanding comes from the combination of words when spoken fast rather than the speed itself. Lots of the vowels blend together. Example, va a la playa turns into vayalaplaya in my head which tricks my brain into going hey wait did they say vaya or va a and then I'm behind the rest of the sentence. I had to watch a lot of subtitles to get used to the pacing. It only gets worse in Andalusia because they just eat all their words like pescado turns into something that sounds like "pay-cow" and it takes too long to decipher that in fast dialogue
OMG that's so true 😅
I do that very often and it changes with countries and even regions. Sometimes natives have to ask for clarification. Un special between South American, Caribbean and Spanish people.
Like English, the definitions of words sometimes depend on your location. Some examples in English are pants (trousers in the US, underwear in the UK), fanny (buttocks in the US, a part of female anatomy in the UK), and Randy (a person's name in the US, horny in the UK).
In Spanish, Chino in Puerto Rico is naranja in Mexico. Huevos in some countries means eggs, and testicles in others. Bizcochos is a baked item in many places, and a female body part in others. A servietta is a towel in many places and a feminine napkin in others.
It can be a funny world. Keep smiling. 🙂
*china
"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!" -Monty Python
"Everybody expects the Spanish Inquisition". As the Church was a branch of the State power, the whole bureaucracy applied to them as well. Any kind of visit to a person or judgement warning was notified 1 or 2 weeks earlier. That's why everybody knew they were coming beforehand. Over 500 hundred years have passed and you can still see the same fake statement everywhere.
Therefore "History is written by victors" is another Hollywood fake statement. Because you have to be in the mood to write about it and spread the word to as many people as possible. If you don't do it because your culture encourages you to keep it to yourself, then any victory will always be pyrrhic or as it had never existed.
Internalizing this beforehand will make wonders to understand Spanish culture and will blow your mind if you're a foreigner as you'll learn tones of things invented, created or negociated by Spanish territories. You'll find yourself correcting other people when they refer to American countries as "Colonies" when only the French, English and Dutch had them. Discovering that in Spain (also in Portugal) those lands were really parts of the state, never colonies. You'll learn about "The Black Legend", the new rich people behaviour, the Kings and politicians, The Dollar sign with the S letter and 2 columns taken from the Spanish flag coat of arms, the cowboys patrolling Louisiana with the same horse breed, invented in Andalusia in Southern Spain as a task force against burglars, that were later adquired by the Americans as their own, etc... everything can help you out to blend with the culture, while you're learning the language.
The "V "depends on the country , some people say it with a gentle short sound like in English or Portuguese
As a native spanish speaker i believe it's easy to learn but hard to "master"
I'm currently studying Japanese, which has a similar phonetic, and every word is pretty well marked, but there're dozens of diminute things changing the meaning of the whole sentence and sound similar to others, so if you have an understanding, you can grasp most of it
In spanish we have the same diminute changes but the language tends to be fluid and has a pretty ambigous pronunciation, like if instead of having 3 words you have 1 long word stiched together
So you might be able to comunicate easily with little knowledge, but getting to that conversational point can be a pain, specially adding how every hispanic country speaks completely different and inside each country there're like 20 different dialects
Mastery is a difficult term. I don't know what the official definition would be. I've been speaking, reading and writing English for about 50-odd years and I often query my mastery over that. 🤔
@@FrauDrSophieLouisaBennett Indeed, i don't know if the term would be correct but it marks the idea pretty well, it might be easy to learn the basics but hitting the "sweet spot" would take a lot of time
And regarding the English mastery, a huge number of natives don't know the difference between "Were" and "we're", perhaps we're being too hard on ourselves
@@NicoSleepyLeen hitting the 'sweet spot' would take a lot of time. Full stop. 🤭🤭🤭🤭🤭🤭🤭
I'm Judy from Philippines and Im learning Spanish and Portuguese 😁
Learning the difference between Ser and Estar is a fun trip isn't?
Nah it's easy
Not too difficult, but if you get mixed up, results can be hilarious, because a lot of slang comes from it: "ser buena" (be good) vs "estar buena" (be smoking hot) / "ser retrasado" (be retarded) vs "estar retrasado" (be delayed)/ "ser verde" (be green) vs "estar verde" (be unprepared) / "ser jodido" (be difficult) vs "estar jodido" (be in a dire situation).
The weirdest thing at first is that the location of things uses "estar". I mean, the school and the hospital are pretty much stuck in one place.
@@kellymiller7986 Not in a human lifespan, but given enough time, even mountains and rivers can change places, so "estar" seems appropiate. After all, the location of something is not an inherent and perpetual characteristic of it. "Ser" means you always have it and never can get rid of it. "Estar" means it's just a state, you weren't always like that, even if that state could be irreversible (as in "estar muerto").
Soy hablante nativo de español rioplatense. En el minuto 7.10 aparece una tabla de conjugación del verbo pelear en presente del modo indicado. Tiene un error: dice "tu pelea"; lo correcto es "tu peleas".
Sendo falante nativo de português, considero o francês bem mais difícil que o espanhol. Seja por apresentar mais fonemas, seja pela instabilidade da pronúncia/escrita, que chegam a soar totalmente aleatórias para mim. Consigo entender cerca de 80 a 90% do espanhol se falarem lentamente e 60 a 70% numa conversação normal (tanto o sotaque latino quanto o europeu, aliás.) O italiano tem a sua beleza e consigo entendê-lo bem, mas por volta de 45 a 60%. Já o romeno? Não me atrevo a tentar. Humor à parte, me atrevo a dizer que o francês e romeno sejam as línguas mais difíceis.
As a native Spanish speaker, and only knowing a few words in Portuguese, I understood 98% of your message! :)) Our languages are very close
Pois é
2 Things. 1) if you have the subtitles to a video you can pause and try to find the words or the saying online.
2) if i had -AR verbs 1st then -AR in basic future and past tense i would have had an easier time at the start.
Spanish is very hard to learn but not impossible, it's a beautiful language!
A realest! Thank you!
Yes Spanish is one of the best languages of the world, greetings from Argentina ✋😅
Conjugation and the speed at which it’s spoken natively has been my biggest thing. Oh and different words for things in items in different regions. Dominicans were very hard to learn from. Just so fast
One of the most challenging parts of Spanish is the many meanings the word "cojones" can have.
Im an English native speaker and rolling my R's is still so hard. Ive taken Spanish in school since 6th grade. All the way to college. I still cannot roll my R's. I can speak and understand a fair amount but cannot even roll my r's. I guess practice makes perfect and I should work on it more.
a native Spanish speaker here :)
I like this video. I love listening the spanish language. The vowels are pronounced like my polynesian languages. The spanish language has mauri (life-force) that is why it sounds beautiful. I'll start here to learn Spanish. Gracias.
I’d love to see a “is Portuguese hard to learn”
Same here I'm studying Potuguese and I love it :)
how do you even read and pronounce the words? the rules are so convoluted.
I love your videos I’m native Spanish speaker and I think conjugations are the hardest and RRs, to pronounce takes a while to dominate the skill , but speed also ,
Hey there. I've been trying to learn Arabic for over 10 years but have been very uneventful. I was hoping, since I knew that you learned Arabic, there might be a course on your website for it. But I couldn't find one. I don't know how feasible it is to ask for you to make an entire course on one language, but I would definitely get your program if there was. Thanks
There are Arabic learning channels on TH-cam, have you checked out any of them yet?
@@Noor_Jacobs03 I lot of the ones I tried were too childish
The pronunciation of Spanish and rolling the R’s has never been challenging for me. What I struggle with is getting the language to sink in. Perhaps of just been procrastinating it my whole life. Spanish, to me, has always seemed like something I should do eventually. I have tons of family that speak Spanish despite the fact that we’re not Latinos. But I don’t know what’s keeping me from driving in. 😅
Maybe you think you don't need to learn it, this question can only be answered by you. I am from México City and Spanish is my first language, just for the record, it took me years and a lot of practice to master the English language, so if did it you can do it too, don't give up, but first find out if you really really want to learn Spanish . Hope I helped a little.
I’m a native Spanish speaker and I think the hardest things about Spanish is rolling R’s and verb endings. Many of my friends and coworkers just can’t pronounce the R correctly as much as they sincerely try. And they often get the wrong verb ending or tenses because of how many there are and when to use them.
Never learned Spanish, but, as for me, "r" sound is quite easy, it is a little bit easier than english or french "r" and I LOVE how it sounds. My favorite sounds is spanish and french [r] (don't know which one I like more)
@@moranag209 Yeah, english r is harder tbh
Consistency of the spelling system and pronunciation, very standardized and simple phonetical system. These are the main advantages in comparison to other Latin languages but, for example, verbal tenses are more challenging than in French or Italian.
After four years of learning spanish i can finally read a few spanish sentences.
Spanish is a very beautiful language. Spanish is a very rich language with many ways of expressing things. For that reason, Spanish literature is very rich and varied. In Spanish, spelling practice is not necessary because it is pronounced as it is written.
So the subjunctive is like the vosotros form: not too easy but fun af
¡Qué tal, Olly! Your video is very good. Without any intention of criticism.... there is a little mistake in the table where the conjugation of the verb fight is shown (minute 7:09). "You fight" in this case translates to Spanish as "Tú peleas" (with an "S" at the end of the word), not "Tú pelea".
"Tú pelea" (also "Pelea tú") is used, but is the imperative form, meaning your are ordering somebody to fight; something as: "You, fight!"
Bueno, también puede ser tu pelea, cómo que la batalla fuera tuya, pero si el sentido de que sabe pelear, ahí si va la "s"
I speak spanish but my mother lenguague is Portuguese. Spanish is easy for me.
*language
@@jordibernal3488 👍
Love your channel Olly, it is so interesting and informative. Two things not mentioned. First the preterite tense. English speakers (especially those who have learned French) will always fall back on using haber + past partciple. However any Spaniard will tell you that using haber + past participle when you should be using the preterite immediately marks you out as not being Spanish. The other thing that gets me is the flipping of subject/object. For example 'I have forgotten the keys' becomes 'Las llaves se me han olvidado' (the keys forgot themselves to me'. Don't get me started on then subjunctive, especially in the imperfect tense...
También puedes decir "He olvidado las llaves"
-Pretérito imperfecto de indicativo: equivale al "...used to" -> Yo estudiaba/Yo solía estudiar: I used to study (puede también traducirse como "I studied")
-Pretérito imperfecto de subjuntivo: equivale al "...were to"-> Yo estudiara/Yo fuera a estudiar: I were to study (puede también traducirse como "I studied")
Native English speaker learning Spanish here. If we removed conjugation, Spanish would be the literal easiest language to learn!
Otherwise, grammar is the only thing that’s kinda tough. Why does “que” or “lo” go HERE on a sentence versus HERE? Find that out and Spanish is the gateway language to whatever is in your future.
Beautiful language with a culture and history nearly as long as English’s-highly recommend!
In USA, an exchange school student was ask by a native, how do you learn English, the most difficult language in the world?, the exchange student was brazilian, the same with students from other countries and more complicated languages.
Being Spanish teacher myself, after 6 years of working I can say that the most difficult aspects are:
1) Subjunctive, conjugation and difference between pretérito indefinido and pretérito imperfecto, as for grammar
2) Start speaking fluently with the right intonation and being able to keep up with conversations
3) Getting rid of a very strong accent, that makes your Spanish difficult to understand
Also, very important tip for those who are studying Spanish now: don’t forget to actually learn the words, even though you think they are identical to the ones in English. Trust me, you might recognize them in texts, but when you are about to speak, most of the time you wouldn’t remember them.