Is Spanish hard to learn? Or, if we were to ask that question in Spanish: “¿Es difícil aprender español?”
As you can see, Spanish uses the same Latin alphabet that we use in English, with one additional letter (ñ), which brings the total to 27.
When you learn Spanish, there’s no need to learn an entirely new alphabet as you would have to do when learning a language like Korean, Greek, Russian, or Hebrew.
Learning any new language requires effort. Languages that are very different from English require much more effort (when your native language is English). Languages that are more similar to English are easier to learn (Spanish is one of these).
A big part of learning a new language is becoming familiar with lots of new vocabulary words. In some languages, almost all vocabulary words are completely different from their English translations.
But not in Spanish.
Spanish and English have plenty of similar words, which makes it easier to learn Spanish.
Some are terms that English borrowed from Spanish, like patio, plaza, mosquito, cargo, and even “alligator” —which comes from “el lagarto” (“the lizard” in Spanish).
There are also those words that Spanish borrowed from English, like sándwich (sandwich), software, and jeans.
But most of the similar words between Spanish and English are simply Latin-based words like the following:
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| persona | person |
| actividad | activity |
| familia | family |
| sociedad | society |
| posibilidad | possibility |
| solución | solution |
Spanish is one of the languages that evolved from Latin (the language of the Roman Empire).
This probably doesn't surprise you, given that Latin America consists mostly of Spanish-speaking countries (like Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Columbia, etc.) —except for Brazil, where Portuguese is spoken.
English, in contrast, is a Germanic language. English did not evolve from Latin. And yet, English has plenty of Latin-based vocabulary words.
This is largely due to the Norman conquest of England in 1066 when the Normans (who spoke Old French) conquered England. That resulted in plenty of Latin-based French words entering the English language.
Even if you haven’t yet started learning Spanish, you can surely recognize quite a few of the thousand most frequently used Spanish words. The ones you recognize will often be words that share a common Latin origin with the corresponding English words.
Most Spanish words are pronounced as they are written (and vice-versa). That’s why Spanish is generally considered to be a phonetic language.
That makes Spanish easier to learn than some other languages that have irregular spelling and pronunciation rules.
For example, the Spanish word “paz” and the French word “paix” both mean “peace” and they both come from the Latin word “pāx.” But the final letter ‘x’ in that French word is not pronounced, whereas in that Spanish word, the final letter ‘z’ is pronounced.
Each Spanish noun has a grammatical gender. For example “la luna” (the moon) is feminine, whereas “el sol” (the sun) is masculine.
To speak Spanish correctly, you need to know the grammatical gender of each noun that you use in a sentence. That’s because the article preceding takes on a different form (for example, “la” versus “el”), and the adjectives change their ending as well.
That’s one of the difficulties of learning Spanish.
But in this respect, Spanish is much easier than German (which has three grammatical genders). Here are some examples:
| English | Spanish | German |
|---|---|---|
| the fork | el tenedor (masculine) |
die Gabel (feminine) |
| the knife | el cuchillo (masculine) |
das Messer (neuter) |
| the spoon | la cuchara (feminine) |
der Löffel (masculine) |
It turns out that there are patterns that help predict the gender of Spanish nouns from the word endings.
Most Spanish nouns that end in ‘-o’ are masculine, and Spanish nouns that end in ‘-a’ are often feminine.
But there are some exceptions to these patterns. For instance, “la mano” (the hand) is feminine despite ending in ‘-o.’ The same is true of “la foto” (the photo) —but that’s because it’s short for “la fotografía.”
Also, the word “el día” (the day) is masculine despite ending in ‘a’. Some other exceptions include “el problema” (the problem) and “el planeta” (the planet).
The Foreign Service Institute teaches languages to diplomats. Based on their experience, they rank languages into four groups in terms of how difficult they are for English speakers to learn.
Spanish is in the easiest of the four groups (alongside other relatively easy languages to learn, such as Italian, Dutch, Norwegian, and a few more).
They estimate that learning Spanish (to a level of “General Professional Proficiency”) takes about 750 class hours (30 weeks in a high-intensity full-time program of learning Spanish).
While Spanish is in Category 1 (the easiest), German is in Category 2, most Slavic languages (like Polish and Czech) are in Category 3, and Category 4 (the most difficult) has languages like Chinese and Japanese.
The ratings of the Foreign Service Institute are consistent with the widely held idea that Spanish is among the easiest languages for English speakers to learn.
Spanish is one of the most spoken languages in the world. There are hundreds of millions of Spanish speakers. That makes it easier to find people to practice the language with (pen pals, language buddies, or tutors).
Compare that to a language like Icelandic, spoken by fewer than half a million people.
When I was learning Spanish in school, the part that I found most difficult was learning irregular verbs.
Also, the difficulty of learning Spanish depends on the level of fluency which you want to reach. Some people are content with knowing enough Spanish to understand the lyrics of the salsa songs they hear or order a margarita when they travel to Cancún during spring break.
Others want to learn enough Spanish to read Spanish-language literature in their original texts, like “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel García Márquez or “Don Quixote” by Miguel de Cervantes.