Learning Spanish...

Essendon

Hola! To keep me from going insane studying for the VCAP5 - DCA, I figure I need something completely non-technical. I think Spanish is a cool language, love the way it's spoken. So can someone please recommend any resources - books/DVD's/websites etc. I have googled around and couldnt find something free that could walk me through the baby-steps. It all just dives into translation and pronunciation. Surely there are plenty of people on the boards who know Spanish.

Gracias!

Trueno

Hola! Yep, it sure is! Not sure about sites or materials though. I will see what i can do. Will need a bit more time though.

Roguetadhg

I've always wanted to learn French, or Japanese. Spanish. Meh.

For Business sakes, Chinese would be the best!

Michael2

Good luck learning Spanish.

Apollo80

Roguetadhg wrote: »

I've always wanted to learn French, or Japanese. Spanish. Meh.

For Business sakes, Chinese would be the best!

And one of the hardest, if I am not mistaken.

yoshiiaki

Spanish, I assume being from Australia you would like to learn actual spanish from spain... Sorry but here in Cali we only learn mexican so that's where all my resources lie. But if you don't care either way then I can try to help you out there. I love languages, and it's defitely my tactic away from technical things as well. If you don't have a passion for it it will become painful, so pick a language you will enjoy regardless of its usefulness. One tool I like to use is Byki, it's not free, but rather a much cheaper alternative to rosetta stone if your a visual learner. If your an auditory learning i would reccommend Pimsleur approach, again not free. My personal tactic consists of going to the web and finding "1000 most used words in X" and making flash cards out of those. usually can find grammar sites online, quick "spanish grammar" google and cliking on the first link led me here. Spanish Grammar seems right up your alley, but i didn't look at it at all. Also i have recently discovered the usefulness of a partner. I have studied german for almost 2 years now, and knew I was missing something. I knew the words and grammar, I could read the paper and write the essay, I was just always really slow at it. I assumed that after a while I would pick up a pace but never happened. My girlfriend decided she wanted to learn german too so we can talk together and even though she's going through the German 1 course at the JC, I can tell it has helped me out by being able to actually speak to someone. So I'm definitely going to try to incorporate that in my next language.

As for chinese, is it the hardest? I would say that is debatable. Being an asian, with japanese background and growing up with japanese and chinese speakers (I don't speak any dialect of chinese) words sounds distinguishable. I think that's where the difficultly lies for non-asians. Mandarin is a tonal language, ie; "ma" can be pronounced with 4 different tones, each meaning a different word all unrelated. If you can pass that then I would argue it is the easiest language to learn because it from what I have seen there are no tenses (a mandarin speaker can correct me on that). As for cantonese, it is a non-tonal language and I suspect would be much easier for a non-asian to learn, however I don't know any grammar rules on that.

Difficulty would arise from what You already know, when you master one it's much easier to chain off it. All of us here know English, English being a germanic language makes it easier for us to learn German. Once you learn German you can learn swedish, norse, icelandic or many other germanic languages. Can you teach a chinese man German? sure, but it would be very difficult for him/her.

Yep yep, I can rant about languages all day long, I have spent forever trying to learn languages, and I have failed at most of them . But that is because I start my training in chinese, and after a month or two say "Wow I want to start russian!" and drop chinese...Which is why I have and will continue to pursue my german until i am satified with my fluency level. My goal is to one day be able to call myself a Polyglot.

lordy

Ich finde es toll, das du deutsch lernst, Yoshilaki

Being a native german speaker and having learned english at school I also still want to learn spanish. I think it gets you far and the difference between european spanish and latin america spanish is not that big. It sure is a difference but if you can get your message across on either continent I am sure that you will also be fine on the other side of the atlantic.

I have read that Pimsleur is a great way to learn languages but haven't tried that myself. Having a partner to learn and speak the language is definitely a good idea. It might also help to put post-it's on things in your environment with their foreign names on them.

The most difficult to learn are probably the tonal languages like Thai, Vietnamese and other asian languages. Getting the tonal aspect right is hard. I would love to speak a few sentences of Thai but I always feel that my tone is off and it makes me sound silly. I think in Thai there are eight versions of the word "me" with meanings reaching from "mother" to "horse" so I try hard not to insult anybody

yoshiiaki

Danke lordy. Ich wusste jemand Deutsch sprechen. Ich benutze Google Chrome auf Deutsch. Deshalb kann ich nicht Englisch Auto-Korrektur. haha

Spanish is very useful, whether it be on either side of the ocean. And really at the end of the day if you learn castillian spain spanish (the most prominant version) or any other dialect you honestly will be able to get around any other spanish speaking country just fine. There will be a few discrepancies here and there, but you would know enough spanish at that time to find other ways of stating the words I'm sure. However I personally do like to seperate various dialects and languages when I can. Spanish isn't just spanish, but rather Castilian, Catalan, argentian, mexican...etc. But certainly I will just group all (both sides of the continents) to just "Spanish" when speaking to most people.

Pimsleur is good for auditory learners, it does come with a book for reading for lessons 10 and up, meaning they have both an audio only and an audio with book following so you can listen to two tapes a day or continue with 1 tape a day approach. I find the tapes to be useful but there is no one there correcting you for so it can become like this unless you are really self-disciplined:
9GAG - Learning french with Joey

Also, lordy, were you not required to learn spanish/french at some point during your schooling? I was always under the impression that most europeans (obviously that is not everyone) learn their native language, English, and 1 surrounding country language too all by the time they graduate high school. Would be great if you could clear that up for me. Thanks.

discount81

Fluenz
End of thread.

Honestly as someone who had to learn French I tried most of the stuff out there.

Rosetta is garbage, don't even consider it.
Pimsleur is ok

However don't expect miracles, learning languages when you aren't around native speakers to practice with is very difficult.
When you aren't seeing/using these words and phrases 100x per day you will forget very quickly.

I've been in Montreal for 3 years and I still speak French like a 5 year old child would.

ptilsen

I don't have any specific recommendations. Instructor-led was easier for me than self-study.

I took Spanish in high school, and again in college. All I will say is that it is probably the easiest spoken and written language a native English speaker can learn, other than possibly German. English cognates are so omnipresent in Spanish that the hardest words to learn will be those few false cognates. Most other vocab is basically a variation of the English word. You will see jokes in movies and such when someone tries to speak Spanish by adding "O" to the end of English words. It's not actually that far from the truth.

Grammar is a bigger departure, but the structure is not too hard to wrap your head around. Romantic and Germanic languages in general are going to be much easier for a native English speaker than Asian languages and Aramaic languages, both for structure and for the convenience of sharing the Latin alphabet. You really can't go wrong with Spanish or German in terms of difficulty. The differences between dialects are just as trivial as those between English dialects, and without years of practice you will just sound like an Australian (in your case) speaking Spanish, not a Mexican or a Spaniard because of whichever dialect you primarily studied.

As discount said, it is ultimately difficult to learn it quickly without access to a truly fluent speaker, preferably native. I don't know about Fluenz, but what I've seen of Rosetta is that it will give you some basic conversational skills, but not a deep enough understanding to actually reason out how to say something less common. By contrast, after just over three years of classroom training (the equivalent of two at a college level), I could probably get through any Spanish conversation if I'd just spent more time on vocabulary. After a few years of not practicing and taking it again, I can speak it about as well, but I can barely understand it, because it's spoken too fast and I haven't been around it being spoken fluently in years. That immersion is huge, and you will have an uphill battle.

Either way, good luck.

Mike-Mike

discount81 wrote: »

Fluenz
End of thread.

never heard of that before this, looks pretty cool

the_Grinch

I took Chinese for a term when I was in school. Overall it wasn't too bad, but you have to do it everyday or you'll never truly learn it. It's tonal and boy does that throw you for a loop. The word for pencil, said incorrectly, is an insulting curse word. Good times!

QHalo

Whenever I find some time, I really want to learn Russian. Not for anything specifically, but it's always intrigued me.

tpatt100

Roguetadhg wrote: »

I've always wanted to learn French, or Japanese. Spanish. Meh.

For Business sakes, Chinese would be the best!

Yeah Manadarin I hear is in high demand and will only continue to grow.

Essendon

Thank you for the advice everyone. I'll look into Fluenz, seems like a great idea. A colleague of mine is from El Salvador and speaks Spanish, so I'll have someone to converse with. This should be fun!