What is the hardest part for a Spanish speaker to learn in English?

Question

pronunciation wise that is. For me (an English speaker trying to learn Spanish, it is definately rolling my r's)

Answer 1

Spaniards have difficulty with English pronunciation because their language has only about 30 phonemes whereas English has 44 or so. Therefore, there are sounds that the Spaniard hears as the same sound: like [s] and [z] because in Spanish, there is one phoneme /s/ which has an allophone [z] depending on the sound's position - e.g. simple [simple] but mismo [mizmo]. There are many such examples with the vowels: [bit] and [bi:t] - the early learner will pronounce English 'bit' like 'beat'. As already mentioned above, consonant clusters are difficult - strict becomes [estri:kt]. Other vowel sound differentiations that they find difficult are those found in 'walking' and 'working' (I'm talking Brit. Eng. here) because the English vowel in 'working' doesn't exist in Castilian, although a Catalan speaker will have a better chance of producing it earlier.

In all, I think it's more difficult for a Spaniard to pronounce English well than the other way around.

Answer 2

What I've noticed a lot of Spanish speakers learning English having trouble with is consonant clusters.

But probably the usual present perfect vs. simple past and present simple vs. progressive, everyone has trouble with that.

Answer 3

I would say one thing some spanish speakers never get a grip on is breaking the habit of pronouncing an "e" infront of words that begin with an "s".

"espoon"

"esharpener"

"espanish"

Answer 4

Well, you answered your own question. By the way, it is the same for english speakers. They don't know how to pronounce english either