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>Absolutely. Your Spanish is very good for someone who doesn't practice frequently. English is truly easier than Spanish, and some people wont believe it, but spoken Japanese is even simpler (the written language is the really hard part).
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>Regards,

Martin;

I studied Spanish (Castellaño) in high school and college. Since my mother spoke it I decided it was a good idea. Perhaps that is why I got involved with flamenco and ended up getting married to a Peruvian, whose family was from Zaragoza, Spain.

In college our professor one day was discussing irregular verbs in Spanish. He said (as I recall) “there are eleven irregular verbs in Spanish. In English all the verbs are irregular and every grammar rule has an exception. Even the vowels have exceptions”!

Perhaps Spanish was easy for me to learn due to my mother and the fact I attended Catholic school, at a time when Latin was taught and was the language of the mass.

As for which language is easier that is a good question! When I studied Spanish I actually learned more about the rules of grammar in English! Also, in English there seems to be a hang up about gender. If you were to suggest gender attached to a word to the average English speaking person, they would either have no concept of what was meant or express concern of such a thought.

The closest we got to gender having any significance in English (the form we attempt to speak in the United States) is in the early 1970’s when it was announced that it was improper to refer to the word “their” when male and female were concerned within the same subject. Now we use “his/her”. Progress!

Remember we have roots going back to the Puritans and we must not refer to anything that remotely has anything to do with reference to male or female! Such thoughts are impure but anything else is alright! :)

Which is easier to learn – English or Spanish? English has about 700,000 words of which 220,000 words are based upon Latin roots, and 20,000 from Greek roots. We pick up words from German and other languages and then we make up our own words on demand. Remember, Spanish is one of the “vulgar” languages. What does that make English?

For some people I have known learning another language is not difficult. In the end at least for me, Spanish was easier to learn than English.

Perhaps this topic is a bit like a VFP programmer saying – VFP is easier to learn than VB 6.0, when the programmer has never used VB! :)

Tom