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?
Spanish is phonetic, what you see is what you get. There’s a few rules around the pronunciation of the letter c and (q)u/h not being pronounced, but it’s otherwise pretty standard. Gender in Spanish isn’t that difficult.
English is a complete mess of a bastard language with more exceptions than rules.
This doesn’t have anything to do with language acquisition by babies, though. Spelling is a completely different subject than natural, spoken, language, and obviously not something babies will come into contact with.
l am German and have learned French as my second foreign language.
French’s two genders are slightly nightmarish and German’s three genders are no better.
Similar for the slavish languages with genders I had a peak into. I expected this to also be similar for Spanish, at least compared to English that I perceived to be quite easy to learn.
Interesting to hear otherwise.
So I now wish that Spanish had been an option at my schools. :-)
Je connais aussi le français :) C’est un peu plus difficile que l’espagnol à cause des lettres qu’on ne prononce jamais, mais pas beaucoup en fait
* Spanish and English are my native tongues, French is extra