Re: Romance or Romanic?

On Mon, 9 Aug 1999, nicole perrin wrote:

> Patrick Dunn wrote:
>
> > Heh.  I was at a friend's house the other day, and he said he wanted to
> > learn Spanish.  I said, "good choice.  Of the romance languages, it's
> > probably the easiest.  Except maybe for Portugese."
> >
> > "Oh," he said, "I don't care about romance.  I just want to learn
> > Spanish."
> >
> > Pop came out of my nose.  :)
> >
> > --Patrick
>
> Does anyone know a real reason why people think Spanish is easier to
> learn than, say, French or Italian?  Have any of you noticed in your
> communities a persistent mindset that causes people to think French is
> incredibly difficult?  Barely anyone at my high school takes it because
> they all say Spanish is so much easier, which makes it very difficult to
> find a class to sign up for.
>
> Nicole
Probably the fact that French pronounciation is incredibly boroque and its
use of verbal prepositions completely unpredictable.

But then, Spanish has a large number of irregular verbs -- but most of
them follow just a few patterns.

I know nothing about Italian except that there are a huge number of
dialects, which make practical use somewhat difficult.