Could It Be So Simple?

After my encounter with the Danish girl Lucia and I talked a bit about Spanish and Norwegian, namely, my varying degrees of proficiency in the two. This is what it boils down to:

I have been learning Spanish for 6 1/2 years, steadily, in school and with time spent on it out of school. I have spent 5 weeks in Spanish speaking countries, but only 2 1/2 were spent using Spanish often.
I have been learning Norwegian for 3 years off and on, and I've probably spent 4-6 months total earnestly studying it. I have spent 3 weeks in Norway, but only 4 days were spent using Norwegian often.

Therefore, I should be much better at Spanish in pretty much every respect. The great mystery is that I am not.

My vocabulary is definitely bigger in Spanish. I routinely forget words in Norwegian that would be laughable for me to forget in Spanish. This evens out the playing field noticeably.

My cool headed understanding of grammar is also decidedly bigger in Spanish. If I have the time to collect my thoughts on paper, even without a book, then it is about 98% correct where I'm not trying to stretch myself or get fancy. In Norwegian it might be 85%.

But. When I'm actually speaking, the distance between the two narrows to almost nothing. I have approximately equal accents and fluency in each of them, about equal command of grammar in the heat of the moment, and I am actually more comfortable speaking in Norwegian than in Spanish.

I've tried to think of various ways to explain this. My current theory is remarkably simple and... well... logical. It doesn't take into account certain things, like the way that it is easier for me to remember passages in Norwegian than in English, but on the whole I think it may explain a good deal of the difference.


1.) Since I was taught Spanish in a school environment, I am more used to being tested. Therefore I get more nervous speaking, am more likely to hear my mistakes, and are more likely to be emotionally crippled by hearing the mistakes, instead of just thinking, 'ah, they understand', and moving forward.

2.) Since I was taught Spanish almost exclusively (My teacher from last semester was a native, and Lucia and Jorge have helped a bit here and there. ;)) by Americans, and Norwegian almost exclusively (Evan... XD) by native speakers, this may help to explain something about my accent and my general 'feeling' for things that are difficult to translate or explain, like the modal indicators in Norwegian. My American Spanish teachers were excellent, but they were Americans, struggling with the same things I do, deep down, and probably making just enough mistakes or avoiding just enough insecurities or speaking a Spanish just influenced enough by English to impair my own 'feeling' of the language. And aside from just teachers, being in school exposed me to my classmates (! :O) Spanish quite often. Often I heard and sorted out their mistakes, but inevitably I absorbed some of them as well.

Anyway, this is the new theory, quite simple but I think there might be truth in it. :D