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> How easy it is to live there without knowing Spanish Impossible, because if you move somewhere foreign, you're going to learn the language unconsciously with
by chiffonade 18y ago
> How easy it is to live there without knowing Spanish
Impossible, because if you move somewhere foreign, you're going to learn the language unconsciously within 6 months. People who have only lived in the US don't know this. It almost takes no effort. The human brain is good at this sort of thing.
- ido 18y agoAs someone who has been living in Vienna for the past 4 years (and whose German is his 3rd language), I can tell you that that was certainly not my experience- I could speak basic German at 6 months but it took much longer than that to become fluent. On the other hand, I've heard from friends who spent some time in South America that Spanish is an exceptionally easy language to learn, and that they could speak half-way fluently within several months. To bring in the other extreme, I know people who lived in Japan for years and have only learned fairly rudimentary Japanese. It is very dependent on the person and the language.
- Hexstream 18y agoWell, I think English and Spanish both are Latin derivatives while German and Japanese aren't. So that would explain everything.
- chiffonade 18y agoEnglish is a Germanic language. It's actually Germanic, Greek, and Latin, but...
- ido 18y agoEnglish is West Germanic (like German) but have had most of its vocabulary replaced by a Latin-derived one (see: the Norman invasion of Britain).
- chiffonade 18y ago> I can tell you that that was certainly not my experience- I could speak basic German at 6 months So in other words, you learned German within 6 months.
- ido 18y agoActually I learned it for 2 semesters before coming to Vienna. After 6 months in Vienna I could speak basic German but definitely not work & live without using English most of the time. There is a big difference between being able to exchange pleasantries & understanding the menu at a restaurant and being able to conduct an intelligent conversation or explain complex ideas in it. Maybe if you're a construction worker your requirements are different, but you cannot work as a (good) software developer without sharing a high level of understanding of at least one language with your coworkers.