ElijahAR

Hello! Hallo! Salut! Olá! ¡Hola! I am a native Spanish speaker who is willing to become fluent in German, Portuguese, and French. I have already attended German and Portuguese language courses but, unfortunately, I have not been able to put into practice what I have learnt so far. Currently, I am studying French at the Alliance Française - Bogotá (I am about to get started with the Elementary Level - A.4). I hope I will be able to learn a lot and polish my writing skills with you all. For starters, I am planning to write my curriculum vitae in German, Portuguese, and French. I guess I will use the Translation section of the forums in order to ask for help and corrections. Do you have any other ideas or suggestions on how I can take advantage of this great language learning community? Regards!, Liebe Grüße!, Cordialement!, Cumprimentos!, ¡Saludos! P.S. I am also willing to provide some guidance to students of Spanish as a second language. I'd be more than happy to (try to) help.

Although it is not an English classic, I would dare recommend you to read "One hundred years of solitude" by Gabriel García Márquez. It is regarded as one of the master pieces of the Spanish literature and it has been widely acclaimed by critics and by the public in general. I think you will like it a lot even with the limitations imposed by the translation.

Great resource! Thanks for sharing it. I am going to use it for my German, Portuguese, and French learning processes.

Hello! Regarding your questions, I think the best and most trustful resource is "La Real Academia de la Lengua Española". It is of course in Spanish, but I guess the examples could be useful and sometimes self explanatory. Reglas de formación del plural http://lema.rae.es/dpd/srv/search?id=Iwao8PGQ8D6QkHPn4i Be careful with the counter examples. They are highlighted with red "x" marks. Also, notice that some of those rules could have been updated more recently. We would have to double check. Please let me know if you need help with the analysis of the use cases of the plural you mentioned in your post. ¡Saludos!

¡Hola! ¿Listo para hablar español esta navidad? I think you did a great job in your Spanish Mission videos a few months ago. Would you please post some updates? I guess you have made some progress although your Spanish pronunciation was already very good by then. I did notice some minor mistakes, for example the pronunciation of "gi" in the word "gimnasio", you pronounced "oche" instead of "ocho" for number 8, "agricultores", "estatua", "cerca del mar", and you missed to pronounce the "u" in the word "restaurante". It is surely French/English/German interference because in those languages that "u" sound is imperceptible or it is just "mixed" with the preceding "a" to form another sound that doesn't exist in Spanish. In fact, it is challenging for me to pronounce "restaurant / le restaurant / das Restaurant" in English / French / German and make the correct distinction between them. http://www.wordreference.com/es/en/translation.asp?spen=gimnasio http://www.wordreference.com/es/en/translation.asp?spen=restaurante Other than that, well done!!! I'd be glad to review your pronunciation and grammar as soon as you publish new material.

I am a native speaker of Spanish and just got started with French a few months ago. With respect to difficulty, I would say that French is more challenging in terms of pronunciation than Spanish. Spanish is far simpler on that regard. Grammatically wise, I would say that they are somewhat similar. For example, verb conjugation, adjectives, and gender are handled similarly in both languages. Anyway, I would not say they are difficult languages to learn. They are just different from English and other germanic languages. Regarding how useful they could be later in your son's life, I think both could prove to be pretty useful depending on career preferences and other factors. Maybe he should consider learning the language he is more interested in first. Also, it is important to evaluate how often he could interact with native speakers of French or Spanish or experience the new language in general. That could definitely fuel his progress and catalyst his language acquisition process.

Interestingly enough, a few weeks ago, I came across an article that addresses this topic. It was originally published by BBCMundo and then it was replicated by the Colombian magazine "Semana". It could provide you with some complementary and useful information on the matter; additional to the valuable and relevant information that other members of this community have already shared with us in this thread. http://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-40643378 http://www.semana.com/educacion/articulo/signos-de-interrogacion-y-admiracion-en-espanol/541754 The article provides some history and context about how we ended up using "opening" (I guess you call them "inverted") question and exclamation marks in Spanish. By the way, did you know that exclamation marks were previously called "admiration marks" in Spanish (signos de admiración)? As the author mentions in the article, the official name change from "signos de admiración" to "signos de exclamación" is really recent (2014). Anyway, as you already know, it is grammatically incorrect not to use them and be also aware that even native speakers of Spanish tend to leave them out both in formal and in informal writing. I myself, being a native speaker of Spanish, try to correct my colleagues and friends whenever they omit them and I always use opening / inverted question and exclamation marks even if I am just chatting by Skype or Whatsapp. P.S. If you happen to have trouble understanding some of the expressions or context contained in the article or if you have any question about it, I would be happy to to try to clarify them to you.