I watched a film recently where the Venetian dialect was rather prominent. I noticed quite a lot of similarities to Spanish, for example, for chiuso they said something which sounded very similar to cerrado. They also liked to use redundant indirect objects the way Spanish does, for example something like “mi piace a me”
odiernod said: “I think that everybody learning a foreign language should be free to pick up the pronunciation they prefer”… but of course!, I wasn’t trying to force anyone to choose Spanish from Spain, I’m sure you figured that out. I was just saying that learning Castillian Spanish has advantages “writingwise”. Btw, I also love ARgentinian accent and I’d also be very happy if I’d be able to pull off that accent myself.
dfranks you explained it perfectly, yes.
Ernie:
lisp n (speech impediment) ceceo nm
lisp vi (speak with a lisp) cecear⇒ vi
Ernie, I also wonder if they use that word at all, because “seseo and ceceo” would sound the same for them :P. But they sure have people with that speech impediment, so I wonder too what word they use for cecear. I wonder also what word they use for “sesear”.
@odiernod, what is the name of film you watched? I’m curious. So, you think a Venetian can learn Spanish faster than other poeple? 
the film was called “Io sono Li.” Can Venetians learn Spanish faster than other people? Depends on the other people! :-). They will definitely be able to learn Spanish faster than the British for example, and perhaps a bit faster than an Italian who doesn’t speak a dialect or whose dialect doesn’t resemble Spanish.
It feels strange that you know about your country from foreigners, I didn’t know that film. However, Italy has various dialects and pronunciations about every 20 km. So, a phrase listened in Venezia (Venice) is quite different from the same in Vicenza or Padova. Italian’s dialect doesn’t exist.
@skyblueteapot
Spanish is relatively easy at the start but the grammar is pretty complex, much more than a lot of other languages. Other very difficult things about it include:
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Advanced vocabulary is very different from the words in English. Thus, you have to dedicate a lot of time learning them.
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Subjunctive. It is the bane of the Spanish student’s existence. The basic constructions aren’t difficult (espero que X) but the adverbial clauses (aunque, como, cuando) are, to me, the hardest part about Spanish grammar. There are a lot of threads on wordreference amongst NATIVES debating the finer points of the subjunctive.
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The speed at which it is spoken. Apparently, languages like Spanish and Japanese are much faster than English and Chinese. (study of language speed done a year ago by a French university) To me, this is the hardest part of Spanish.
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Verb conjugations.
Easy points:
- Vocabulary is very easy initially for English speakers.
- Almost 100% phonetic. (you don’t see spelling bees in Spanish-speaking countries)
- Similar to English and Romance languages so easy for them. (but hard for Arabs, Asians…)
- Not as rich of a phonetic system as English; fewer new sounds.
Regardless, Spanish is roughly the same difficulty for an English speaker as the other romance languages and some Germanic ones. And it takes a lot of years to become native-like in any language. In spite of how “easy” Spanish is, I have personally not met many Americans that have learned it to a C1, C2 level.
I believe that teapot’s point was that after studying pretty much any other language, Spanish is easy by comparison. I have experienced the same thing. I learned Italian to a high C1 level over the last few years and have found Spanish to be a piece of cake in comparison. Everything that is considered “difficult” about Spanish for English speakers, Italian makes just a teensy bit harder.
Oh, yes, relative to Chinese and Japanese, Spanish is 3.5x easier according to the FSI and their 50 years or whatever of data. If that is what teapot meant, then I agree completely.
But I still haven’t met very many Americans or English speakers that speak it well.
If you learned Italian well then obviously another romance language would be relatively easy.
I’m lazy in learning Portuguese but roughly 89% or so of the words are extremely similar or identical. And the sentence structure and subjunctive seem relatively similar. But the phonology will be a beast.
Yes, I know. I never meant to say that Americans are any worse or better at learning languages than others. We just have less of a need than others.
I meant that I had not met any C1/C2 Americans speaking Spanish to show that if it is so easy as some claim, why can’t somebody do it while with little effort and not being immersed in the language? Alternatively, if you go abroad for 5 years in Mexico, for example, I sure as heck hope that you are speaking very well.
FYI, the average language major is like a low, low B1 or even a high A2. It’s pretty ugly. 
A lot of my relatives were FOB’s so yes, I know how easy it is to learn English if you have to learn it for work and to integrate into society. Oh, and if you have 20+ years you can learn a lot of English. I agree completely that Africans or Europeans are not necessarily more gifted at languages than monoglot Americans or Brazilians, for example. All my relatives are bilingual and I don’t think that they are good at languages; I’m actually the only one in our very large family to learn a foreign language well. They never learned one the hard way; they had Chinese+English given to them.
I think the same of the Swiss, that they aren’t special or gifted. Guys like Roger Federer (Swiss German, English, then C1 French) were fortunate linguistically to grow up in the environment that they had to speak so many languages.
I would say that your university was the exception, unfortunately.
At our university (one of the largest in the nation, a public ivy), the average language learner sucked but there were pockets of people, usually form the specialized language semi-immersion program, that were C1 after studying abroad and after the rigorous pre-abroad work.
I met some people that had been living abroad for 8 months and spoke worse than dedicated students that hadn’t gone abroad. But that is their choice or fault.
When you do skype language exchanges, why don’t you just do X minutes in English and X minutes in your target language? That’s what I do–it takes the guesswork out of making the chat “fair.” With equal time it is pretty much as far as we can measure.
@Kimojima
I have never had success in doing language exchanges. I’ve looked at a few exchange sites and it looks to me like most of the people looking to exchange are actually scam accounts. I don’t know really. I’m very happy with the tutors here, so I’ll just stick with them despite having to spend some money.
It seems from your comment that you find answering questions posed by the native speaker to be the most useful way of learning for you. I personally find that being the one asking the questions is actually the harder role. When I am asked a question, it is possible to repeat a lot of what the native speaker said in their question, in my answer. When I am asking the questions in my target language, I get the chance to think about how to best express the point I am trying to get across through the question. I get to practice turns of phrase that I have read or heard, but have yet to have had the confidence to use.
A few people have said something along the lines of “I haven’t seen very many people speak Spanish at a C1/C2 level in America.” But quite honestly how many people learn a language to C1/C2 in general (out of the general population from scratch)? I’d say proportionally more people learn the popular languages (Spanish, French, German) to a higher level than the “less-popular.” But these people who have learned languages from nothing are not easy to find off the street for learners of ANY LANGUAGE. I do agree that Spanish is a very regular language (comparatively) and is one of the easiest languages for an English speaker, but don’t underestimate it. It’s still foreign, the subjunctive is very unusual and is very hard to learn “perfect” use of it as a non-native. And I do believe that Spanish is spoken comparatively fast, and even some native speakers have admitted that to me (obviously it appears fast to those who don’t know it). Another point regarding why it appears as though not many learn Spanish to C1/C2 could also be the relative difficulty in attaining this level without operating in the language daily, that is not to say it can not be done though as many people here have proved!
@Kimojima I’ve never heard of that approach to text chat! It sounds interesting and maybe I’ll give it a try! Sometimes when I’m doing language exchanges I find that we sometimes speak a sort of mix L2’s. Like I’ll be speaking in my L2 and my friend will reply in his L2. I usually put a stop to this by saying something like “I find it more useful to spend an equal set amount of time in each language.” because you’re right it is very confusing sometimes.
@Kimojima
I was not suggesting mixing languages. I was just saying I find being the question asker in an an entirely L2 chat more difficult than being the one answering the questions.
I think mixing languages like that is a terrible idea.