One thing I have learned that still seems peculiar to me is that in both of these languages when you really talk with people and more so when you see them talk to each other.. on the news or in real life; the tendency is to speak MUCH faster than we do in English, at least American English.

I don’t know if this has cultural roots or it is some result of the language itself… but it is unmistakable that people operate at a different pace than I perceive in America.. especially in Spanish. As to Chinese the educated seem to speak slower but most everyone else seems to spit it out as fast as they can like doing so will impress people.

Not sure if I am the only one with this observation about the pace of languages especially Spanish and Chinese. If one thing is certain it makes learning the languages all the more difficult, And perhaps more interesting/frustrating is the fact once you overcome this hurdle and have mastered listening comprehension, when you speak their language in return, at what from your point of view is the straightforward, measured, and sensible pace, people are impatient with you or perhaps even just think your spoken is lacking… I just think Slow down! I think if people learned to do this (Especially in China but not so much in South America) all of the misunderstandings and arguments common to the culture and region would drop significantly.

Reasoned arguments come out at a reasoned pace, but I guess that’s just my background and own culture speaking this perspective. As Herodotus said best “custom is king.” From my point of view being about such custom though being more than fairly fluent in both languages, the on average pace of language in Chinese and Spanish is far faster.

Everyone perceives that speakers of languages they don’t know speak fast. The problem is that your ear/brain are not atuned to the phonology/sounds and does not know the structure.

These days while Jenny sounds like she is speaking quite quickly on the intermediate level lessons I am listening to, if I concentrate I can follow it and understand things and I suspect that there is little difference in utterance speed between her Mandarin and her English.

Well said. It is indeed easier to START speaking Spanish, but reaching native-like proficiency may be no easideer than any other language - including Chinese.

As a German speaker I’m definitely considering the possibility of a GermanSense in the not too distant future. Right now we’ve got losts of other fish to fry but it’s a possibility.

Ken

But the Vos/Ud/Tu is probably more of a dialect thing rather than a snake of complexity waiting to strike at those who wander in thinking Spanish is easy… and should be explained as such: It’s not unique - try to explain “y’all” to a non-(American) English speaker.

On the subject of HARD languages: I’d love to see someone really succeed with a web 2.0 German program. so far all I’ve seen are phrasebook-based.

PS - Ken: I appreciate your efforts to get the big brain working over here at Spanishsense..