What's the hardest part of learning spanish?

[Trellum]

Hello everyone!  I'd like to ask all the members that are trying or have already learnt some spanish what their main difficulty has been.  I'm a native spanish speaker, and I know how hard it can be to learn this language for some people, others seem to pick it up very fast tho.  That's why I'd like to know  what aspects of learning this language have been the hardest ones, was it the pronunciation? the gender of the words? verb conjugation?

[rgaz83]

I think Spanish is relatively simple-ish. It's the sheer number of words that need to be learned that does it for me. Just when I think I'm getting somewhere, I suddenly find I can't spell or read half of what I thought I knew.

[polybus]

I think that Spanish is a relatively easy language to learn for an English speaker. I think the hardest part for me was the verbal grammar. From an English point of view there are so many different conjugations for verbs, imperfect, subjunctive etc. Most of the conjugations are regular and not too hard to learn, but there are also a lot of irregularities. The best parts about learning Spanish is the easy pronunciation and the Latin-based vocabulary.

[MyDigitalpoint]

I believe that some of the hardest part of learning Spanish for native speakers and foreign speakers alike is accentuate words correctly.

Most Spanish speakers forget about accents or accentuate words incorrectly. For English speakers this is a hard task because their keywords lack of accents and "ñ" so they need to know what is ther ASCII code to be able to use them with the ALT key and a number combination.

Even when Spanish is written by hand, accents are usually missed when a writer is non-Spanish speaker.

[Dame6089]

For me, pronunciation is the hardest part. I understand what all of the words are supposed to sound like, but I can't seem to make them sound right when I speak them. I took many Spanish classes in college, but the hardest one for me was the pronunciation class. I couldn't roll my "r"s and everyone else in the class could. It was embarrassing to struggle so much.

[rgaz83]

For me, pronunciation is the hardest part. I understand what all of the words are supposed to sound like, but I can't seem to make them sound right when I speak them. I took many Spanish classes in college, but the hardest one for me was the pronunciation class. I couldn't roll my "r"s and everyone else in the class could. It was embarrassing to struggle so much.

The trilled Rs are difficult! I've gotten to the point where I can do a "fake rolled R" that I'm told is a reasonably close approximation of a true trill. But even I can tell the difference. I take comfort in knowing, however, that not everyone who is born into a language with a rolled R can ACTUALLY properly roll their Rs. I guess it's kind of like having a lisp.

[sillylucy]

For me, the hardest part of learning Spanish would have to be conjugating verbs. I don't really think about conjugating verbs when speaking English so it is difficult for me to have to think of a word and then try to conjugate it. My brain always stops when speaking because I know the words I want to say, but forget how to say it and trip over my words.

[JessiFox]

If I had to pick something, I suppose just the conjugation of verbs but even that wasn't too hard. I had a very easy time learning Spanish, keeping up with it has been another beast altogether.

[pluser]

Figuring out what order words should be in a sentence is what frustrates me the most.  Even after taking years of Spanish in high school and college, I still struggle with this.

[Efrahinu19]

Speaking the words correctly has to be my gripe with learning spanish. Making sure that you say what you want to say instead of accidentally insulting someone is unfortunately you of my biggest mistakes I've made in the past and now I'm really studying on saying thing right.

[oavani]

The hardest part for me is the memorization. I just have to put word lists down on flash cards and go over and over them until I remember. It's frustrating and tedious, but I cannot think of another way to do it.

[petesede]

For me it is conjugating verbs, and especially hearing those verbs said and being able to tell what form they are using because they sound so similar.  In most situations it is a single vowel that is changed near the end of the word that can totally change the meaning of the sentence.

[linguaholic]

I added a poll regarding the question: "What is the hardest part about learning Spanish?" Please vote! You find the poll on top of this thread.