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Spanish is a lovely language. Its enthralling intensity, diversity, and expressiveness are no surprise that so many of us wish to master it...quickly! But how long do you think it will take you to get there? Some people may have been attempting to learn Spanish for years and feel as though they have made no progress. Others claim to have learned the language in a month by adopting unconventional methods. So, how can you figure out how long it will take you to learn Spanish, especially if you're a complete beginner? Take a peek.

What's the secret? You're more likely to succeed and stay motivated if you make your objectives public (for example, by posting them on social media, keeping a language progress journal, or even starting a blog devoted to your Spanish learning adventure). You should also ensure that you do not become bored when learning Spanish by stepping outside of your comfort zone and varying your learning methods. If you grow bored, it's most likely because you're using a strategy that doesn't work for you or because you don't have enough resource variation.

 

This is significant because if you're not always fighting yourself and trying to find motivation to learn Spanish instead of really studying Spanish, you'll automatically make faster improvement. Learning Spanish as a person whose original language is vastly different from any Romance or Germanic language might be challenging at first (but not impossible!).

 

It can be easier to predict how long it will take you to learn Spanish if you speak English. The Language Difficulty Rankings, created by the US Foreign Service Institute, are a valuable tool. It's just a list of categories that indicates how long you'll need to learn a certain language as an English speaker (reading and speaking proficiency). Perhaps you want to study Spanish so you can read your favourite classics in the comfort of your own home. Perhaps you merely want to learn Spanish to be able to communicate informally with the Spanish-speaking people in your city, not to read sophisticated news or compose eloquent e-mails. If this is the case, learning Spanish will be a lot quicker since you won't have to worry about building a holistic approach that includes formal and informal registers, for example.

 

You can concentrate on anything you think you'll need sooner. Aside from the questions mentioned here, you might wish to start with a Spanish variant. Most people would choose between European and Latin American Spanish, however be aware that regional distinctions exist in Spain, as well as major disparities in pronunciation and vocabulary across Latin American nations. Another aspect to consider in determining how long it takes to learn is regional variability. Of course, this does not rule out the possibility of learning more than one kind in the future! It's just more effective to concentrate on one at a time so you can build the ideal atmosphere and see results more rapidly.

There can be significant variances in speech even within a single language or linguistic group. Dialect refers to changes in intonation and pronunciation, as well as words and phrases that are present in some branches of a language but not in others. Spanish has a long and illustrious history that spans continents and epochs, making it an excellent starting point for research into the origins and spread of dialects. Here's a quick rundown of the 10 most common Spanish dialects, including where they're spoken and how they differ:

Castilian: The official Spanish language spoken in northern and central Spain is referred to as this phrase.

Andalusian: This dialect, which is spoken in southern Spain, is the country's second most common after Castilian. The ceceo/seseo distinction, the emission ("elision") of the consonants 'd' and 'r,' the aspiration of the consonants' at the end of syllables, and the loss of final consonants are all significant differences from northern Spanish. Because of these variables, the sound is softer and more fluid than in other Spanish dialects.

Murcian: This dialect is spoken in the Murcia Community's Autonomous Region in the southeast of Spain.

Catalan: Catalan, the official language of Andorra and spoken in parts of northern Spain; Basque, the language isolate of an autonomous Spanish community in the Pyrenees; Galician, the Portuguese-influenced language of Galicia, in northwestern Spain; and Extremaduran, a three-branched language spoken in the autonomous community of Extremadura, in western Spain.

 

Canarian: The aspirate’s,' elided consonants, and pronunciation of the letter 'h' distinguish the Spanish Canary Islands dialect from the Caribbean Spanish dialect. Because of Portugal's efforts to conquer the islands, the Canarian lexicon has been extensively affected by Portuguese.

Llanito: Llanito is a mix of Spanish from Andalusia and British English. Gibraltar's status as a British overseas territory has resulted in this unusual linguistic mix.

Bolivia: This dialect is spoken in Mexico City, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, and the majority of Central and South American countries. While there are distinctions in how individuals in these nations speak Spanish, Latin American Spanish is commonly referred to as such to distinguish it from Spanish spoken in Spain. The distinction is akin to English spoken in England vs. English spoken in the United States; although if someone from the Midwest talks considerably differently from someone from the Northeast or the Southeast, U.S. English speakers can understand each other with minimal effort.

Rioplatense: Rioplatense is a Spanish word that means "from Rioplatense. This dialect is spoken in Argentina and Uruguay's River Basin area, as well as in both nations. Rioplatense is distinguished from other Spanish dialects by its speakers' intonation, which is more Italian than Spanish. Many Italians immigrated to this region, mainly to Buenos Aires, in the nineteenth century. 

Spanish in the Caribbean: This dialect is spoken in Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and along the East coast of Mexico and Central America; it is distinguished by elided middle consonants, missing terminal consonants, and an aspirated 'r' spoken like the Portuguese 'x.'

Equatoguinean Spanish: Equatoguinean Spanish is a language spoken in Equatorial Guinea, Africa. This dialect is Africa's only official Spanish; it incorporates vocabulary and pronunciation patterns from both local Guineans and Cameroonian Germans. 

Coda: If you decide to take Spanish courses, whether for professional purposes or to travel, you should ask your instructor or programme director about the dialects available. The most common response is Castillian. That will work roughly 98 percent of the time, but consider the regional and cultural context before making a decision! Please contact us for more information about ALTA's online language instruction for businesses and government organisations.

The modern Spanish language is developed from a dialect of spoken Latin brought to the Iberian Peninsula by the Romans during their colonisation of the peninsula in the late third century BC. Hispano-Romance variations borrowed significant vocabulary from Arabic during the peninsular rule of Al-Andalus in the early Middle Ages. During the Kingdom of Castile's southward territorial expansion, Hispano-Romance norms supplanted both Arabic and Mozarabic romance types in conquered lands, albeit the resultant speech also acquired elements from the latter in the process.

Following the Spanish conquests in the Americas, the Spanish language spread throughout the world throughout the Early Modern period (as well as the Canary Islands). Apart from the Caribbean, the colonial administration in the new territories had its main centres of power in Mexico City and Lima, which retained more features from the central peninsular norm than other more peripheral territories of the Spanish empire, where adoption of patterns from the southern peninsular norm of Seville (the Crown's largest city in the 16th century and the port linking the Americas) was more pervasive, even if in other ways the southwestern peninsular norm was more prevalent, even though in other ways the southwestern peninsula.

Castilian Spanish began as a continuation of spoken Latin in certain parts of northern and central Spain when the Roman Empire fell apart. The variation spoken in Toledo in the 13th century eventually became the basis for the written norm. With the Reconquista, this northern dialect migrated south, nearly completely replacing or absorbing local Romance dialects while borrowing numerous terms from Andalusi Arabic and being affected by Mozarabic (the Romance language of Christians residing in Moorish territory) and mediaeval Judaeo-Spanish (Ladino). By the late 16th century, these languages were all but gone from the Iberian Peninsula.

The Glosas Emilianenses at San Millán de la Cogolla, La Rioja, were long thought to contain the "first written Spanish." These are "glosses" (translations of isolated words and phrases in a style that is more akin to Hispanic Romance than Latin) inserted between the lines of a Latin text. The Glosas Emilianenses' language is now thought to be closer to the Navarro-Aragonese language than to Spanish proper. Their age is estimated to be between the late 10th and early 11th centuries.

Throughout the Middle Ages and into the contemporary era, adjacent Romance languages such as Galician/Portuguese, Catalan, French, and Occitan made significant contributions to the Spanish lexicon.  Borrowing from Italian was particularly common in the 16th and 17th centuries, owing to the Italian Renaissance's impact. The Spanish Empire's establishment in the New World resulted in lexical borrowing from indigenous languages in the Americas, particularly terminology dealing with flora, fauna, and cultural notions peculiar to the Americas. Beginning in the twentieth century, borrowing from English has been exceptionally robust, with words adopted from a wide range of disciplines, including sports, technology, and business.

In Francoist Spain, language politics established Spanish to be the only official language, and it is still the most commonly spoken language in government, business, public education, the workplace, the arts, and the media. Following Franco's death in 1975, Spain has evolved into a multi-party democracy and a decentralised country made up of autonomous communities.

For some direct objects (the so-called "personal a," see differential object marking for a more comprehensive explanation), Spanish grammar utilises clitic doubling, in which a "redundant" pronoun (le, les) occurs even when an explicit noun phrase is present. (Neither characteristic appears in other Western Romance languages, although both are present in Romanian, with pe PER equivalent to Spanish a.) Spanish is a pro-drop language when it comes to subject pronouns, which means that the verb phrase may often be stand-alone without the usage of a subject pronoun (or a subject noun phrase). Spanish has a more open syntax than other Romance languages, with less limits on subject-verb-object word order.

Romance languages are much closer to one another, according to historical linguistic study. Spain expanded its imperial empire after the Reconquest. The Spanish language thereafter grew much further.

There are languages that are comparable to Spanish in terms of history and features. Including:

Italian goes well with Spanish, French, and Latin. If you already know Spanish or French, learning Italian is simple and quick, and it will offer you a competitive advantage in the global marketplace. Spanish and Italian are phonologically quite similar, therefore a Spanish speaker might easily pronounce Italian. Even without any prior official instruction, Spanish speakers are typically able to comprehend a great deal of Italian (and Portuguese, for that matter), primarily in written form, but also in spoken form. The enormous similarities between Spanish and Italian allow for mutual understanding, as well as between these two languages and other Romance languages such as Romanian and Portuguese.

 

The Portuguese language is derived from Galicia, a region in northwest Spain. It is, by far, the most related language to Spanish. In many respects, they are linked and comparable. They both inhabit the Iberian Peninsula's distinctive geographic arrangement. For hundreds of years, the Iberian Peninsula was ruled by Islam. That is why Arabic has such a strong effect on Spanish and Portuguese. The lexical similarity between Spanish and Portuguese is greater, at 89 percent. In written form, this signifies those two languages are comparable. However, this fact is obscured by their different phonetic systems.

The border between France and Spain is shared. In terms of culture and language, they are comparable. Through colonialism, the French and Spanish spread over the world. They are both members of the "Latin" language family.

The writing systems of Spanish and French are identical. And they share 75% of their lexical commonalities. There are also a lot of fake pals. Despite the fact that Spanish and French have a lot of terminology in common. The pronunciation of French and Spanish terms is significantly different. It's more difficult to grasp spoken French than it is to understand Portuguese. The same word in French can have several pronunciations depending on how the letters are arranged. As a result, more nasal and guttural sounds are produced.

Catalonia is one of Spain's few autonomous regions. Its capital is Barcelona. Catalan is a separate language in Catalonia and is not widely spoken. Valencian is a nickname for it. Similar to Spanish, this language has its origins in "Latin." Catalan, on the other hand, is the same as Spanish. With the exception of a few spelling differences, certain terms are spelled differently. Both languages have a silent 'h' and a trilled 'r.' The lexical similarity between Spanish and Catalan is 85%. Many similarities exist between Spanish and Catalan grammar. Both languages have a lot of inflected words in them. There are two genders and numbers for nouns in each language.

Similarly, to Spanish, Romanian is a Romance language. Phonetic languages are Spanish and Romanian. All words are pronounced as spelled in both languages, with the exception of a few minor guidelines. A comparable sentence construction may be found in both languages. Because there is a 70 percent lexical similarity between Spanish and Romanian, many cognates are identical. Both languages are not mutually intelligible due to a large role in dialect and pronunciation variances. Due to the impact of nearby nations and their respective languages, many changes have occurred within each language.

 

If you've already studied Spanish, learning Romanian will come more smoothly. Romanian, on the other hand, is a Level I language that is more challenging to learn for a natural English speaker. The Philippines' predominant language is Tagalog. It's an Austronesian dialect. While the Romance language is spoken in Spain. Tagalog is, nonetheless, a language that is comparable to Spanish. How? Spaniards ruled the Philippines as a colony for about 300 years beginning in the late 16th century. The Philippines' language has been influenced by Spanish in a substantial way. Approximately 4,000 terms were derived from Spanish in Tagalog. But it's no surprise that they sound same. Consider the following scenario: The Tagalog greeting "Kamusta?" derives from the Spanish "Como Esta?" and meaning "How are you?

Philippine-Spanish dialect is not widely understood in other parts of the world. The Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname all speak Dutch. Despite being a Germanic language, Dutch is closely linked to German and English. Between the 16th and 17th centuries, Spain governed the Netherlands for nearly a century. As a result, there are many parallels between Dutch and Spanish. Both Dutch and Spanish are Indo-European languages that use Latin alphabets. Their phonetics are quite similar. In contrast to several English terms, the spellings in Spanish and Dutch are not ambiguous. The letters 'A' and 'E' in Dutch are similar to those in Spanish.

 The sole distinction between "Español" and "Spanish" is that one is a Spanish term and the other is an English term. The meaning of both terms is the same. In Spanish, you say "Spanish" using the word "Español." As a result, the question "Do you speak Español?" genuinely means "Do you speak Spanish?" "No, no hablo Español," or "No, I don't speak Español," would be a fair response. "Castellano" is another word for Spanish that you may hear instead of Español. The last name Castellano means "Spanish" and is a common last name in Latin America. It literally means "from Castile," a historical location in Spain where our language evolved.

 

What is the location of Spain's Castile region? Castilla is a Spanish province on the middle Iberian Peninsula, encompassing the majority of the southern sub-plateau. Castilla has a diverse cultural and natural history, with three cities designated as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. This Romance language is derived from Latin and belongs to the Italian subfamily of the Indo-European set; it is the official language of Spain and the countries of South and Central America (except Brazil, the Guianas, and Belize), as well as Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean; it has approximately 400 million speakers, including Hispanics in the United States and hundreds of thousands of Filipinos, as well as Saharan national groups and Eurasian national groups; it is the language of Spain

 

According to their constitutions, Spanish is the official language of numerous Latin American nations. Other nations, on the other hand, refer to Castellano as their official language, a reference to the province of Castile in Spain, where the peninsula's language originated.  Castilian is the term given to this language in honour of the mediaeval linguistic group who spoke this Romanesque modality: Castilla. The term "Spanish" is relatively new, and many bilingual speakers of the Spanish State do not accept it because they understand that Spanish includes languages such as Valencian, Galician, Catalan, and Basque, all of which originated in Spain and are considered official within the territory of their respective autonomous communities. These multilingual speakers began to embrace the usage of the language's most ancient name: Castilian, which means "the language of Castile."

The Franco administration attempted to impose Castilian on Iberian minorities and speakers of other languages by violence, and ruled that the language would be known as "Spanish," thus associating it with the same-named country. There are various reasons, though, to prefer the word "Castilian": When the language matured, there was no such thing as "Spain," but rather a multinational empire populated by people who spoke a variety of languages. When the Spanish State was established, it absorbed other Spanish-speaking countries, which lasted for centuries in certain cases. The term "Lengua Española" was used as the official appellation of the Royal Spanish Academy when it was created in 1713 in Spain.

There is no distinction between Español and Spanish. Both terms have the same meaning, however they are written in different languages. Español is the Spanish word for "Spanish." Hopefully, Español, or Spanish, signifies not only a remarkable history but also a promising future full of opportunities and obligations. Spanish is the world's second most spoken language, behind Mandarin Chinese, with over 400 million speakers and expected to reach 500 million by the end of the century. And it is precisely this that we must consider rather than engaging in pointless debates.

Tapas, tapas (official term). You're giving up lithps and cured ham in exchange for a crisper pronunciation and even crisper tacos. The good news is that you don't have to give up your churro addiction! With 400 million people globally rolling their r's, Spanish is the official language of 20 nations. As a result, you should probably start brushing up! But where should you travel when there are so many nations to select from and so many Hispanophones on the planet? We've already eliminated Spain (lo siento), so Latin America and the Caribbean are the only options. Let's confine ourselves to Latin America for the sake of argument.

These are just a handful of the many places to practise rolling your r's in Latin America. Whether you want to spend your mornings eating menudo or your afternoons on the beach sipping a cool agua pipa, there's no better way to learn Spanish than by living in one of these five countries.

Some may disagree, but I'm not required to be impartial: Mexico is the finest Latin American country in which to study Spanish. Mexico is the place to go if you want to learn the purest form of Spanish. It follows all of the Spaniards' grammatical norms, but with the clear enunciation of indigenous languages. You'll discover an experience unique to each city and area, each with its own customs and terminology, whether you're in Mexico City, Monterrey, Oaxaca, or any of the other lovely cities and villages around the nation. Prepare to study Spanish in Mexico with your u's and n's accented, and get ready for a completely immersive experience.

You've had enough of simply *hearing* about pura vida, and you're ready to live it! Isn't it true that learning a new language feels like you're in the jungle? As a result, studying Spanish in Costa Rica will be a very immersing experience, especially if you practise your pronunciation the Tico way. Costa Rica is the greatest Spanish-speaking country for outdoor adventure and language study. Mornings may be spent surfing or channelling your inner environmentalist, and afternoons can be spent practising interactions with classmates and teachers. After completing language school in Costa Rica, you'll undoubtedly know how to get to San Jose—even if you wind up in Monteverde or Tamarindo instead.