Like, English is a famously difficult language, and Spanish is supposed to be easier. But babies learn English or any language instinctually.

So do babies learn faster if the native language is easier, or do they acquire language at a constant rate depending on their brain development or whatever?

  • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    Since the main question here has already been answered by the Danish/Norwegian post, I would like to address something different. My native language is Spanish, and I completely disagree with you.

    English is a lot easier to learn to speak than Spanish. Spanish has everything English has, plus:

    • Conjugations (corro, corres, corre, corremos, corréis, corren, corrés, corría, corrías, corríamos, corríais, corrían, corrí, corriste, corrió, corrimos, etc, etc, etc vs run, runs, ran, running)
    • Gendered words (La Tienda, Las Tiendas, El Pape, Los Papeles l vs The shop, The shops, The Paper, The Papers)
    • Purposefully misgendered words in certain contexts (i.e. Feminine words that use the masculine article in some occasions: El alarma, Los alarmas)
    • Particles that change because of sound (Ostras o mejillones/mejillones u ostras : oysters or / mussels/mussels or ousters; insectos y arañas/arañas e insectos : insects and spiders/spiders and insects)
    • Extra sounds (hard R as in “Raton”)
    • Temporary being verb (Ella es rubia/ella está rubia VS she is blonde/she is currently blonde)

    The complications in English are later, after you know how to speak and have to learn how to write it, but we’re talking babies learning here. Spanish writing is much easier than English because it’s very phonetic, but just the conjugations are enough to drive English speakers insane trying to learn them because in English you use constructions to achieve the same effect, e.g. I run: yo corro; I ran: yo corrí; I would run: yo correría; I will run: yo correré; I used to run: yo corría; so that I would run; para que yo corra; so that I could run: para que yo corriera; run!: corre!; don’t run!: no corras!. Different verbs would use the same construction in English but may be different sounds for different verbs in Spanish: e.g. I ran, I walked, I had vs Yo corrí, yo caminé yo tuve (and yes, I get that using run is a bad example here since it’s irregular, but it’s only one of a handful, whereas Spanish has different conjugations for different verbs plus some irregular ones)

    • sem@piefed.blahaj.zoneOP
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      1 hour ago

      I think this stuff is tricky for an older language learner, but for a baby I think they would just learn it without thinking about it.

      In English you have lots of words that sound the same but mean different things and in Spanish you don’t have that as much.