Spanish is Hard!!! (Part III)

In Conclusion...

Although the differences in vocabulary, accents, grammar, expressions and idioms make Spanish a very difficult language to learn, it’s still worth learning. Travelling to different Spanish-speaking countries and taking part in a wealth of cultural and lexical knowledge from these countries make the frustration worthwhile. You may feel like an idiot sometimes, but in the end, you will be much smarter because you will know different ways of saying things and you will be able to easily interact with different nationalities of people. 

Take my work at the hospital last year as an example. As a volunteer in Language Interpretive Services, I had to translate for people from different Spanish-speaking countries. A lot of them were from Mexico, but there were also some people from other Latin American countries. I had to always keep a dictionary with me because, with these people being from different countries, they didn’t understand some of the words that I used. Once I used a word that they were familiar with, however, they immediately understood. I hope that when I become a doctor, I will be able to utilize my knowledge of the vocabulary in different countries to better serve my patients.  

So yes, Spanish is hard, but it’s not the only difficult language to learn. Think about what people learning English in different English-speaking countries have to go through. They have to be able to distinguish between an English accent, an American accent, and an Australian accent, for example. They have to learn that in America, a “rubber” is a condom not an eraser, that “rubbish” is called trash, “biscuits” are cookies, “chips” are French fries and “crisps” are chips. Also, colour is spelled color, practise is spelled practice and cancelled is just spelled with one L. instead of saying “Have you got” we say “Do you have” and we would never say anything like “turn your books at page 7.” And on top of all of this they also have to learn the slang from each of our countries?  

Spanish is hard… English is hard… It looks like we are all screwed!