What Is The Most Important Part Of a Language?

When people start learning Spanish (or any other language; they all act the same, really) they often have an idea of what is the most important thing for them.

What part of your Spanish are you feeding this?

Photo by Team Dalog

Many argue that because they only want to talk they don’t need to learn how to read or write Spanish. Others just want to read great novels in Spanish and therefore say that there’s no need to speak, listen or even write. But are they right? Is it really possible to just learn one part of a language and rock at it?

This blog is all about learn Spanish well. It’s all about learning Spanish fluently, almost like a native. Okay, there are natives that suck when it comes to reading and writing and live a good life just speaking and listening Spanish. But do you want to be such a person?

If I’m honest I’m a huge fan of listening Spanish. Yes, I’m kind of addicted to watching TV (funny that this is actually a good thing since I started with Spanish, hehe) and that I listen more music than is good for me. So you can say that my if my listening were a person, he’d be Arnold Schwarzenegger.

But then there’s my reading. As a kid I loved reading, especially in Dutch. It helped me a lot as I have a huge vocabulary in my native tongue and I know reading benefits everyone. But in Spanish I’m just lazy when it comes to reading. If my reading were a person, he’d be a bit fat… with glasses and zits (no offence to fat persons that have zits and wear glasses!).

But does that mean that I’m happy with the situation? That it’s ok to leave out certain parts of a language in your daily diet (not that my reading isn’t getting any ‘food’, but it’s just McDonalds and Burger King he gets; that’s why he is fat and has zits). No, I’m not really happy with it.

Therefore I think that people that really think that one part of Spanish isn’t important are kidding themselves. Okay, it’s possible that you only learn Spanish to read books in it. Okay, it’s possible that you only want to see telenovelas. But does that mean that you can leave out the other parts entirely?

A language is build on a fundament that consists out of different parts, like listening, speaking, writing, reading and more. Leaving one part out will still make it a language, but it’ll be a bit shaky. Also, listening can reinforce speaking, and reading can reinforce writing. Heck, if I think about it any input skill will benefit all the others!

So no, you can’t leave out other things you’re not interested in. Sure, it’s possible you don’t need those skills (at the moment!), but be sure to feed it with good stuff from time to time. You’ll be glad you did it when you actually need them or when you want to enjoy other things than junk food.

Tagged as: beginning learning spanish, language learning, learning philosophy, learning spanish