Spanish learning French, French learning Spanish

Guest   Sun Nov 25, 2007 10:55 pm GMT
What aspects of French do Spanish speakers find difficult when learning French and what aspects of Spanish do French speakers find difficult when learning Spanish.

Thank you for your cooperation.
Guest   Sun Nov 25, 2007 10:59 pm GMT
Spanish speaker should find difficult French spelling, pronunciation and some verbal forms
French speaker the subjunctive mood and the Spanish syntax
Rodrigo   Sun Nov 25, 2007 11:40 pm GMT
I would also add for Spanish speakers it is difficult to learn when to use du and des, the word y and using pas.
Guest   Sun Nov 25, 2007 11:43 pm GMT
Is it difficult for Spanish speakers to learn the gender of nouns, as it can't be identified immediately as in Spanish?
La dia del mano   Mon Nov 26, 2007 12:30 am GMT
<<Is it difficult for Spanish speakers to learn the gender of nouns, as it can't be identified immediately as in Spanish? >

If you have a secret way of reliably and immediately identifying the gender of Spanish noune, flease fill us in. (Granted, the big majority of xxxo nouns are masculine and the majority of xxxa nouns are feminine, but what about the others -- the "l,o,n,e,r,s rule" is nowhere near perfect.)
Veracruz   Mon Nov 26, 2007 7:08 am GMT
Hello,

Regarding your question, I'd say that a noun is very likely to be feminine if it ends in -a (I'd say around 98% except for all those ending in -ama, which are masculine), --ud, -dad, -ción, -sión,-umbre (100%). Regarding endings in other letters there is no way to identify which gender they beling to : there are both masculine and feminine nouns ending in L, E, R, or Z. The same for words ending in S except that all those compound nouns (verb + noun in plural) such as lavamanos or paraguas are always masculine. I hope it helps.
Guest   Mon Nov 26, 2007 8:08 am GMT
I'd like to add another aspect. Spanish is very rich in diminutive and augmentative suffixes, these forms don't even exist in French. Moreover, the two forms "ser" and "estar" may be quite hard for beginners. On the other hand, in French, the use of two auxiliary verbs to form all compound tenses is rather difficult for Spanish speaking people.
Guest   Mon Nov 26, 2007 4:29 pm GMT
I'm a native Spanish speaker and I tried to learn French (a long time ago) but I just couldn't do it, after 6 months I dropped it, I got frustrated by letters not being pronounced, you had to learn how to spell the word and also how to pronounce it, some sounds are so similar that I just couldn't make the distinction (because Spanish has probably the easiest sounds in the world, only 5 vowels), and also it has too may accents, etc. so at the end I just gave up.
Rodrigo   Mon Nov 26, 2007 8:14 pm GMT
A difficulty I have is distinguishing the singular and the plural in spoken language, especially with ils, elles and the 3rd person plural conjugations.
The difference between le bureau and les bureaux is that the e is pronounced differently. The most compliocated part is the 3rd person plural because elle déteste and elles détestent sound the same.
Yop   Mon Nov 26, 2007 9:27 pm GMT
<The most compliocated part is the 3rd person plural because elle déteste and elles détestent sound the same.>

True. It's not always like that though: “Elle va” vs “Elles vont”, “Elle prend” vs “Elles prennent”, “Elle dort” vs “Elles dorment”, “Elle a” vs “Elles ont”, “Elle veut” vs “Elles veulent”, …

Beside, in spoken French we have some tricks to make clear we're refering to several people: “Elles détestent *toutes* cette musique”, “*Eux*, ils détestent la bière”.
Guest   Mon Nov 26, 2007 9:56 pm GMT
<<I got frustrated by letters not being pronounced, you had to learn how to spell the word and also how to pronounce it,>>

I'd guess that English spelling must must have been pretty frustrating, too.
Guest   Mon Nov 26, 2007 9:58 pm GMT
French spelling is very regular despite may letters are not pronounced. The English one on the other hand is an absolute mess.
Guest   Tue Nov 27, 2007 8:03 am GMT
English spelling is easier than French. English does not use any accents and it doesn't generally have morphological endings so it's as easy as chinese.
Guest   Tue Nov 27, 2007 5:14 pm GMT
<<I'd guess that English spelling must must have been pretty frustrating, too.>>

Actually yeah, English was pretty difficult as well, but you kinda have to learn it, if it was for me I would've dropped it a long time ago like I did with French but well I couldn't so I had to get over that "frustration", still I remeber all those tricky sounds like having to difference between "This" ans "These", "day" "they", skipping the T's after an N "Innertational", etc.
Xie   Wed Nov 28, 2007 10:19 am GMT
>>French spelling is very regular despite may letters are not pronounced. The English one on the other hand is an absolute mess.

That doesn't matter. To say that English spelling is difficult, because of the objective, messy nature of itself, would be defeatist because you would regard it as really difficult, something you couldn't manage without much toil, but no one would want to do difficult things.

Let's face it. Use audio materials (with textbooks, from news sites, audiobooks, whatever) to memorize all those tricky exceptions. When you have an intuitive understanding of everything, it is done!