woodelf68:

thatvermilionflycatcher:

sarashouldbestudying:

thatvermilionflycatcher:

sarashouldbestudying:

I’m taking Spanish classes, and I think I’ve identified three kinds of Spanish words so far

1) It’s pronounced like in Italian, but it’s written differently

2) It’s written like in Italian, but it’s pronounced differently.

3) It fucking looks like French but has a completely different pronunciation.

So, basically, I’m confused but happy as fuck. I love Spanish. 

How I picture Sara every time 1, 2 or 3 happen:

At least Spanish has rules of pronunciation (?)

Btw, I think this is why a native speaker of a romance language can read and understand the basic meaning of texts in other romance languages, but is totally or almost totally lost when it comes to understand someone speaking in those same languages.

Yes, thankfully Spanish does have pronunciation rules, and they’re not even that hard to remember. I still distractedly write gn instead of ñ from time to time, but I’m getting better at it. 

Honestly, the funniest thing about these Spanish classes is how literally every one of us instinctively resorts to other foreign languages when struggling with Spanish. It’s like our brains collectively go: “Okay, I need to speak a foreign language, I’ve got this. Is it English? French?? Latin??? Oh fuck it”

I just realized your eyes must bleed when you see words like “ñoqui” or “capuchino” XD

I think number 3 was kicking in for me when I took both Spanish and French in the 9th grade. At first similarities between the two languages made learning two at once easier, but by the end of the year, I remember sometimes thinking of a word and not being able to remember which language it belonged to.

I had my Bat Mitzvah when I was first learning Spanish and I would keep pronouncing all the “j” sounds in Spanish words as “ch” like in Hebrew (that really guttural, throaty sound for people who don’t know) and then the other kids would look at me funny.