Which is harder, learning from spanish to english or from english to spanish?

@Adr: There are roughly 125,000 words in the Spanish Dictionary. Compare that to roughly 300,000 words in the English OxFord Dictionary. This yields a 2.4:1 ratio. For every 2.4 words in the English dictionary, there is one Spanish word. That's to start...

I'm not saying Spaniards are "stupid" or that the Spanish language is inferior to English, I am saying that the Spanish language doesn't even come close to English in terms of vocabulary. That is a matter of fact, not opinion. With this vocabulary comes complexity from the vast amount of words. This itself is enough to overwhelm any non-native English speaker...

Not only that, I work with dozens of people that are native Spanish speakers and they all agree that English was more difficult to learn than Spanish. They said that English pronunciation is extremely difficult. The spelling on paper does not always match the pronunciation of the word. Take these words for example:

Party

Yacht

Chaos

Choir (But then 'Chore' is spelled similarly but pronounced very differently)

Another difficulty that native Spanish speakers encounter are the many thousands of exceptions to the English language. When we pluralize words in English, you put an 's' at the end of the word. These are some of the many exceptions to that rule though:

Sheep (Singular & Plural)

Deer (Singular & Plural)

Goose (Singular) --> Geese (Plural)

English is full of homophones:

There, their, they're

(All pronounced the same, spelled differently, and mean completely different things)

Here are some more examples:

gage, gauge

ate, eight

right, rite, wright, write

meat, meet

whine, wine

affect, effect

accept, except

English is also full of homographs, (Words spelled the same, sometimes pronounced differently, and have different meanings)

Some examples:

-When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

-The wind was too strong to wind the sail.

-The farm was used to produce produce.

-Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.

English also has overlapping functional words ("that" is both a demonstrative adjective, relative pronoun, AND connects subordinate/insubordinate clauses)

I could go on and on about the English annoyances, but I think you get the point =]

With Spanish one word can be used for so many things but with English there can be 20 different words that mean the same thing. So ill say because Spanish has much less words in the entire language then it should be easier to go from English to Spanish. If you lived in Mexico for a year you could come back fluent in the language from what ive been told. Living in America where all you hear is English is why it seems like it may be hard to learn Spanish.

I dont know much about spanish.. Though from what I understand is that it is closely related to Italian. If you intend on learning Italian you may want to learn that first as from what I understand people that learn Spanish first make a lot of mistakes in Italian that they are unable to correct due to habit. However I am not a language expert, just a Fester posting my best answer! Enjoy! Fester P.S. English is the most complicated language known at the moment. With all the slang and adjectives we use.. It is much more difficult then Spanish. Though once you have the basics down.. You are good to go!!

I believe Spanish to English. English has so many word forms, slang, and abnormalities. Our verb tenses for example are must less complicated, however, it's as if we have more words.

Spanish is a whole lot of grammar, like most languages.

My mom actually came to the US from Korea years and years ago. She's lived in America for over 30 years, and her grammar is still VERY off. I think it would be more difficult to have to learn English from another language.

this is impossible to answer, as no one has done both.

Spanish has much more grammar, but once you get the system, it's not that complicated.

English has words culled from every language it has ever come in contact with, and retains spellings and pronunciations from them. As a result, there are no rules about spelling or pronunciation that can possibly make sense even half of the time. The synonyms, antonyms and false ones, the words that are spelled one way, but pronounced five different ways, words that are pronounced one way, but spelled five different ways, throw curve balls to the English learner, that don't exist in Spanish. Think bow- the front of a boat, a knot with loops, folding the body in half to salute the crowd after a show, the weapon used to shoot an arrow, Now think of bow, (doubling the body) and bough (a branch of a tree), bow (front of a boat) etc.

The studies actually show that English is harder! But obviously if you already speak English then Spanish will be harder and if u already speak Spanish then learning english will be very hard!

Wow! How chauvinism I can watch around here. I understand this one thread is matter of opinion but what I don't get is why so people say what they clearly don't know. One should (at least) provide objective facts, not a "I heard...." or "at my little village people think...." anyway.

I will try to answer all stupid answers.

@Morgan: Can you explain me what study is able to affirm that a language with no genders, no conjugation, no declination, no agreement, no inflexion (as such English is) can be the hardest in the world??? No sense. For example, try to read a book in Czech. There is no possible comparison.

@AJ: "spanish is said to be the second easiest, because of the minimal rules and dialects". Oh, my God!!! Are you native??? Do you know our language rules???

1) Are you fluent at Spanish?? I don't think so.

2) Only in Spain there are 4 languages spoken and 13 Spanish dialects....

3) Spanish has orthography and accentuation rules, plus an array of verb conjugation. A good grammar book dedicates 200 pages only for explaining the use of ser/estar.

Ignorance has your name...

@KM: "Other languages such as Spanish are easier to learn because most things are straight forward and there are not nearly as many words that have the same meanings, pronunciations"

Your reasons intrigued me, how many languages do you speak?? It's evident you only speak English...

1) You do know all Spanish language dictionary. It's surprising!!! We use 30 verbs when you use only "to love".... Look for the difference between: Sí/Si - Tú/Tu - Mí/Mí - Sólo/Solo Hallar/Hayar

For example:

Wine ==> vino

He came ==> vino

2)A language aren't only words, and if you count all Spanish verbs conjugation (264 forms per verb). English is very little language. English more than 1.000.000 words do you use all of them?

3) Sincerely, study linguistics. Romance language structure sentences are many more complex and freer than Germanic ones. In concrete, speaking in English is speaking as a "Indian". Evidently, this is incompressible for you.

Say in Spanish: "Yo pensar inglés ser mejor lengua mundo". I'd like to laugh in your face.

@Calivett: "If you lived in Mexico for a year you could come back fluent in the language from what ive been told".

I'm sorry for breaking your dreams, but in a year a "gringo" is only able to get by, nothing else. A foreign language student need at least 10 (ten) years of total immersion to speak as a native (sometimes it's impossible). Try to learn Spanish subjunctive mood and then tell me your experience...

@zirp: Are you calling Spaniards stupid people?

English is one of the most difficult languages to learn because of its varying sentence structures, as well as grammar rules. Other languages such as Spanish are easier to learn because most things are straight forward and there are not nearly as many words that have the same meanings, pronunciations, etc. Also, because of cultural differences, the Spanish language is a much more straightforward way of communicating than English is.

Most likely Spanish. English grammar is very basic and easy to learn.

english is considered the hardest language to learn, because english has so many different rules and sound alike words. (Where, wear, two, too, to, etc.) spanish is said to be the second easiest, because of the minimal rules and dialects. (sign language is voted easiest, because it's based on concepts, and not words. there's no two signs for woods and forest, or road, way, and street.)