Spanish is NOT [insert expletive of choice] easy!

[Random Review]

Guy at work today (I'm in China) showing off about how he speaks Spanish. I don't know why, but I strongly suspected his Spanish wasn't great, but I never said anything. At the end of the day, people have the right to choose for themselves at what level they want to claim to speak a language and if that annoys me, I realise that's my problem, not his. Anyway after a while he adds: "of course, Spanish is really easy." This pushed my buttons, because I worked bloody hard to reach a decent standard in Spanish.

I interrupted him and said that Spanish was absolutely not easy and asked him to say something in Spanish. The response (in a stereotypical Anglo accent) was, "yo puedo hablar español." While not actually incorrect, this is a pretty odd sentence in Spanish (the use of the subject pronoun and 'poder' instead of 'saber' for a learned skill makes it sound a bit like, "me, I am capable of speaking Spanish"), so I pressed further and asked him to say something else. His next response was: "qué quieres yo hablo". This sentence actually is flat out wrong, actually very wrong (wrong verb, missing subordinator and wrong mood in the subordinate clause). An approximation of what it sounds like in Spanish would be if a Spanish speaker said, "what you want I speak?" instead of "what do you want me to say?". I'm ashamed to admit that at this point I corrected him in front of everybody (making him look daft and me look like a d***, although perhaps I deserve that) and quickly established that he had a very poor grasp of the traditionally difficult areas of Spanish (ser v estar, the two past tenses, por v para, subjunctive v indicative, etc). I think his level is roughly A2.

I apologised to him later, he is a really nice guy, and of course if he wants to claim to speak Spanish at A2, that's absolutely none of my business; but this thing of people with essentially pidgin Spanish claiming Spanish is easy is enough to drive anyone who has made a serious effort with the language crazy. You don't hear it for any other language that I know of. I am a vegetarian living in China (which is a nightmare if you don't speak Chinese, which I don't- I've only been here just over a month) and lots of my English-speaking colleagues that have been here a while told me that the word for meat in Standard Chinese is "rou", yet not one was able to tell me the tone (later a native speaker told me the tone, apparently it's the 4th one); but at least they all acknowledge that Chinese is difficult! No one is going around butchering the language and claiming it's easy.

Rant over. Sorry, had to get it out there.

[tastyonions]

I'm not so much bothered if someone has a minimal tourist level and claims to speak a language. Okay, you can say hello and bye and maybe order some food in a restaurant, good for you. On the other hand, someone who claims it is easy without having surpassed the level of a two year old would probably ruffle my feathers a bit.

[Cavesa]

You don't hear it for any other language that I know of.

I know of a few.

English. In my country (and I think in a few neigbouring ones too), people believe English is easy and French is hard. Leaving aside that I believe it is exactly the opposite for natives of western slavic languages, the people usually butcher English too.

And Italian. I have met a surprising number of czechs claiming Italian to be easy. Well, the examples I remember the most clearly:
1.The only thing I've ever heard this Italian speaker say was "Va bene". But I heard it many times. And her name with Italian pronunciation (but quite a good one, at least).
2.A lady who was supposed to speak Italian well enough to deal with stuff for our group of skiers. My one month old Italian (quite atrocious, as you can imagine) turned out to be better and helpful.

And there were others, but the point is the same. Actually, I could talk about a woman who considered herself a polyglot and would have been laughable, if she wasn't a nightmare.

I totally understand your rant. Im sure it's one of the things many language learners wish people stopped saying.

[tarvos]

Guy at work today (I'm in China) showing off about how he speaks Spanish. I don't know why, but I strongly suspected his Spanish wasn't great, but I never said anything. At the end of the day, people have the right to choose for themselves at what level they want to claim to speak a language and if that annoys me, I realise that's my problem, not his. Anyway after a while he adds: "of course, Spanish is really easy." This pushed my buttons, because I worked bloody hard to reach a decent standard in Spanish.

I interrupted him and said that Spanish was absolutely not easy and asked him to say something in Spanish. The response (in a stereotypical Anglo accent) was, "yo puedo hablar español." While not actually incorrect, this is a pretty odd sentence in Spanish (the use of the subject pronoun and 'poder' instead of 'saber' for a learned skill makes it sound a bit like, "me, I am capable of speaking Spanish"), so I pressed further and asked him to say something else. His next response was: "qué quieres yo hablo". This sentence actually is flat out wrong, actually very wrong (wrong verb, missing subordinator and wrong mood in the subordinate clause). An approximation of what it sounds like in Spanish would be if a Spanish speaker said, "what you want I speak?" instead of "what do you want me to say?". I'm ashamed to admit that at this point I corrected him in front of everybody (making him look daft and me look like a d***, although perhaps I deserve that) and quickly established that he had a very poor grasp of the traditionally difficult areas of Spanish (ser v estar, the two past tenses, por v para, subjunctive v indicative, etc). I think his level is roughly A2.

I apologised to him later, he is a really nice guy, and of course if he wants to claim to speak Spanish at A2, that's absolutely none of my business; but this thing of people with essentially pidgin Spanish claiming Spanish is easy is enough to drive anyone who has made a serious effort with the language crazy. You don't hear it for any other language that I know of. I am a vegetarian living in China (which is a nightmare if you don't speak Chinese, which I don't- I've only been here just over a month) and lots of my English-speaking colleagues that have been here a while told me that the word for meat in Standard Chinese is "rou", yet not one was able to tell me the tone (later a native speaker told me the tone, apparently it's the 4th one); but at least they all acknowledge that Chinese is difficult! No one is going around butchering the language and claiming it's easy.

Rant over. Sorry, had to get it out there.

Are you a vegetarian or a pescetarian? Otherwise they might still serve you fish.

Let them show off. I mean, the facade will fall anyway.

By the way, a tip for restaurants: the character for meat is 肉。 It combines with the animal name to form a type of meat, so 牛肉，羊肉，猪肉，鸡肉。 Anything with the grass radical at the top is a better bet. Wo chi su de (我吃素的）is a veeeery helpful phrase.

[crush]

Hey Random, i had a few similar experiences here in China with people claiming to speak Spanish at the "Yo hablar español" level. I always get excited when i hear someone say the speak Spanish because i have so few opportunities to speak it here. But i have met a few people who actually do speak it well.

I'm also a vegan in China and my catch phrase has become "我不要肉，不要鸡蛋" (wo3 bu2 yao4 rou4, bu2 yao4 ji1 dan4): I don't want 'meat' or eggs. Because eggs are also listed under the 素菜 (su4 cai4, vegetarian dishes). Dairy isn't generally an issue here since they don't use cheese. Another thing that is everywhere is 鸡精, a white-ish powder. I'm not sure what the English word is, but it's literally something like "chicken extract" or "chicken essence".

For the most part, though, i just cook myself. That way i don't have to worry about gutter oil or weird chunks of animal body parts finding their way into my meal.

If you have any questions about being vegetarian in China, i'd be happy to help

[reineke]

Guy at work today (I'm in China) showing off about how he speaks Spanish. I don't know why, but I strongly suspected his Spanish wasn't great...

Are you a vegetarian or a pescetarian? Otherwise they might still serve you fish.

Let them show off. I mean, the facade will fall anyway.b

Random eats the flesh of his enemies... Some people get worked up if you call something hard.

[garyb]

I have a friend who "speaks Spanish", and his catchphrase is "mi hablo español"... I've tried to point out that this means something closer to "I speak to myself in Spanish" than "I speak Spanish" *sigh*.

Anyway I'm finding Spanish pretty difficult even with knowing French and Italian, so go figure for a learner without that background...

[Blue]

Dunning Kruger at work I suppose. The more I learn about my target language the more I realize how much I don't know. Unless you have the experience, I think it's very hard to understand how long the journey is to fluency in an L2. Of course the extremely long and hard journey also means that it's understandable to be proud of covering even part of the distance. It's easy to brush off an A2 level, but it's hardly an insignificant feat. I won't fault anyone for being proud of it. Although I won't defend someone claiming that any language is easy.

[yerzhan21]

Hello, everyone

Perhaps, some people tend to overestimate their skills in specific languages. It has happened so that for the last two years I have been living in an area with quite high Spanish-speaking population (in accordance with PewResearchCenter, about %12 of a total population). Here, in Washington State, USA, I have been in the same situation many times, when I have heard people asking each other “¿Hablas español?” , with following answer “Sí, hablo español” or “Poquito,” when in fact there was not much of the Spanish beyond these general phrases.

I have been studying English, Spanish, and Japanese languages and I can tell, from my personal experience, that learning process itself was not more or less difficult to me in comparison between these three languages; but the one thing I discovered during my studying which I can use to reply to this original post is that there is perhaps no such thing as an “easy language.”
Every studying processes require certain degree of dedication, work, and patience. If we look at the complexity of any language - in term of phonetics, grammar, idiomatic phrases - I can even tell that my native Russian language is not easy for me (mostly grammar wise, there are just lots of rules and their exclusions). Only after 2 years of learning and practicing English, I truly believe that I am quite fluent in it.

I do acknowledge the fact that for some people certain languages maybe easier to learn than the others, mostly due to a specific language family. For example, it may be the case that for English speaker it would be easier to learn German, because these two languages belong to one Germanic language family. This also may be the case with French, Italian, or Spanish languages which belong to Romance languages family. It can make learning these languages easier in comparison with completely distinct language, such as Japanese and Chinese, which has nothing to do at all with Romance or Germanic groups (Nevertheless, there are already some borrowed phrases and words form German language in Japanese one); easier in comparison – yes, but not easy itself.

Even all of that examples listed above do not give reasonable right to people to claim their no language, when, in fact, this knowledge is limited by 5-7 general phrases (even with mistakes, as in the example of “Random Review” user in original post). But, nevertheless, even if they desire to state that they know a certain language, let it be so; we will keep ourselves in emotional equilibrium (which is very healthy), if we won’t get annoyed by these kind of situations

[Xenops]

Spanish is easy...Compared to Japanese, Mandarin, Arabic, Korean, Pashto, etc, etc...

Language learning to native-like fluency is one of the most time-consuming commitments a person could make. Can I put it up there with college education, marriage and raising kids?