Americans:Do you know Spanish?

[Profileid]

Mostly directed at non-Hispanic Americans.
My area is mostly white but I've picked up a lot of it even though I can't speak as well as I can understand spoken and read. I've only recently made a conscious effort to teach myself it, but I read the threads in the Latin American section and was surprised how much I already knew.

[Dandelion]

Mejicans are a huge discouraging factor in learning the language I would imagine. If Spaniards were to live next door however,... it might be the same. Cristiano Viejo coming to live next door to Etain. Imagine.

Anyway, I'm no American, but I voted for 'A little'. My Spanish is very rudimentary. I got curious during one point in my life what the language is about, then moved on. I can read quite a bit of their news articles. It was a useful endeavour.

[Inquizzzitor]

I can read it absolutely fine after years of study and my speaking is between conversational and fluent. Spend a month or two in Mexico and I'm sure I'd be spittin' it out no problemo.

Luckily as far as languages go Spanish is one of the easiest to learn. Not as difficult as Italian, which I also know, and about the same as Portuguese, which is also quite easy. I'm learning Greek now which is more difficult because of grammatical cases (accusative, nominative, etc.).

[LieDetector]

Took Spanish in HS and had a couple of Latino friends as well that taught me certain slangs and cuss words. So yea I think I can speak it almost fluently. It was actually pretty easy to learn IMO.

[Inquizzzitor]

I have chosen to downvote Danelion because why vote when the poll is explicitly for Americans only? Do you also not speak English? Sigh.

[Dandelion]

I have chosen to downvote Danelion because why vote when the poll is explicitly for Americans only? Do you also not speak English? Sigh.

I don't. It's very hard.

At least her poll is public (making the harm done minimal). Many people here were French citizens able to vote on another thread.

[Profileid]

I have chosen to downvote Danelion because why vote when the poll is explicitly for Americans only? Do you also not speak English? Sigh.

He can vote if he wants to. It's obvious from the thread he's not American.

Mejicans are a huge discouraging factor in learning the language I would imagine. If Spaniards were to live next door however,... it might be the same. Cristiano Viejo coming to live next door to Etain. Imagine.

Anyway, I'm no American, but I voted for 'A little'. My Spanish is very rudimentary. I got curious during one point in my life what the language is about, then moved on. I can read quite a bit of their news articles. It was a useful endeavour.

We thankfully don't have a lot of Mexicans here but I've seen a few. I have trouble understanding their Spanish.
There are some Puerto Ricans around and I see signs in Spanish in Youngstown, where they have a community. I don't find it to be particularly beautiful, but I'd like to go to Cali soon and it's useful to know there.

[Dandelion]

Spanish to me sound neutral. Even the stereotypically lispy Spanish from Castille has its charm to me. One misconception about Spanish I think is the claim that it's an 'easy language'. Is it?

[Dandelion]

Longbowman identifies with the UK the most as well as Jewishness, however, he also claimed many times he holds US citizenship and I've seen him converse in Spanish with Cristiano Viejo. Really erudite fluent Spanish at that. He really thoroughly learned the language from what I noticed.

[Profileid]

I'm sure it was easy for LBM to sound erudite with access to dictionaries from his comfy chair. But he seems to know it well.
As for difficulty, I would say it's a 2/5 in terms of that. (Scando languages as 1/5) The hardest part for me as a native English speaker is gender,but that's not too bad even.