Master Spanish For Pleasure And Enrichment
Thursday, March 31st, 2011English speakers, like Chinese speakers, have difficulties when it comes to learning another language. This is because they have a language which is adequate for all their needs, and are surrounded by people who speak the same language as they do. As a general rule Chinese and English speakers tend to speak their own language louder when they are not understood. However, if a person knows Chinese and English he may decide to learn spanish language too. He will then know the three most used languages in the world.
Spanish is one of a group of languages known as the romance languages. Other romance languages are Italian, French and Portuguese. They are all derived from Latin. Like Latin they are inflected languages. English is also an inflected language that has many Latin influences but it belongs to the Germanic family. By using a learn new languages it could be quite easy to learn a new language that is relatively close to your own.
This means that words change their meaning and grammatical functions by the addition of morphemes. These are bits of a word that change meaning without having meaning themselves. For example, the addition of the letter s means that a noun becomes plural.
Because English is also an inflected language this would not be such a problem for an English speaker but the Chinese speaker would have more difficulty. Mandarin is a tonal language and meaning is conveyed by one of four tones applied to the ways in which words are pronounced. These are sometimes called tonal inflections but they are different to the grammatical inflections of romance languages. The Chinese learner would be at some disadvantage.
Both English and Spanish include many words that are derived from Latin. The English speaking learner will enjoy recognizing these words and the similarities between some English and Spanish words. The Chinese learner will not enjoy the Latin influence. Though Marco Polo did get to China and stayed there, he did not seem to have any permanent influence on the language that he found.
Since infancy the Chinese learner’s vocal apparatus will have been making sounds at the front of the mouth that are quite different to any sounds made in Spanish. This will make it difficult for him to make the sounds that are familiar to Spanish speaking people.
The verb ‘to be’ is used in both English and Spanish, but in the latter there are actually two forms of this verb. The verb ‘estar’ is used for more temporary states and ‘ser’ tends to be used for more permanent things. This will be something that might confuse the English learner. To the Chinese learner the whole problem of the verb ‘be’ will be seen in a different light. He will not be inclined to inflect any verbs but will tend to use them in a static way. In English he will tend to say: ‘I go shop’ and not ‘I’m going shopping’.
Writing in Chinese is a daunting prospect for foreigners. A whole new system of characters has to be learnt. For the Chinese person writing will involve learning the alphabet from scratch. However, the English learner will escape this whole imposition and be able to call upon his early learning education.
Given the relative difficulties facing Chinese and English people who wish to learn spanish words it seems that the English learner is at a huge advantage. In theory it should come so easily to him because his mother tongue and the target language have so much in common with the practice of language course. However, having mastered the intricacies of is own language the Chinese learner might be up to anything.