New Hobby

Decided to teach myself Spanish...
Purchased 4 books from Amazon, two dictionaries, a verb book and a phrase book... should be "fun".
Livin' in FL, I'll get lots of opportunities to use it, hell half of my family is from Costa Rica and Mexico or the like these days... I'm not kidding.
Any tips?

[Kitsune]

I've been toying with the idea myself, lately. Girlfriend speaks it and there really are serious advantages to it here. If you do pick it up, make sure you converse with it on a normal basis or you'll lose it quick. My four years of German evaporated so fast because I never used it.

[Spexxvet]

Only two things you need to say in Spanish (spelling is phonetic, I've never had a day of Spanish instruction):

"Donday esta el banyo?"

"Dos cervesa fria, por favor"

And if you're angry:

"Como may carne"

[Cyclefrance]

Nothing beats immersing yourself in a country where they speak the language you want to learn.

Having said that, I was sent on a course at a language laboratory by my company to learn Spanish years back - they used a stylus and earphones method, so you picked up the accent and emphahsis for spoken words and used the electronic stylus to choose answers on a multiple choice revision test several times during each session. I was surprised how much stuck. Pretty basic stuff like maletas, montequilla, burro, nino, mujer, casa, mesa and so on, but enough to survive and then pick up extra when in situ.

Books are fine but you need something that is aural as well otherwise you don't learn pronunciation.

[Kitsune]

Originally Posted by Cyclefrance

Nothing beats immersing yourself in a country where they speak the language you want to learn.

That's where rkzenrage and I are at an advantage -- we just drive to Miami.

Originally Posted by Kitsune

That's where rkzenrage and I are at an advantage -- we just drive to Miami.

Hell, I have neighborhoods here that do just fine.

[seakdivers]

Well let us know which books (or more important, the publisher) you like the best. My husband and I would like to learn Chinese, but most of the books & tapes are really horrible.

One thing I am saving toward is the software used by the FBI, my old company (GEICO), & the State Dept., Rosetta Stone.
But I will let you know which of the books I like.

[Tonchi]

...Funny you should mention this

I can tell you anything you would like to know about learning Spanish. I started on it in high school back in North Carolina in an era when there were no native Spanish-speakers anywhere to be found. Then I went through Jr. College, summer school in Guadalajara one year and Georgetown University School of Foreign Service summer school the next year, on the way to getting a degree in Latin American Studies at the University of Colorado. All of the other kids in my class were already Latin Americans, it was like when the Black kids get a degree in African American Studies, but oh well. They all went into foreign service and I went with IBM. Still couldn't find anybody who spoke Spanish other than in passing - they were all busy learning English and didn't want to let me practice on them. 30 years after graduating from college I can read the Spanish newspapers and order in a restaurant and thank people for coming to a party but that's all. Which I found out under embarrassing circumstances after applying for a bilingual job and not being able to get through the interview. Back to school. Dragged out all my old textbooks, bought new books, tried to memorize the verb charts. Found out I could now talk to Spanish teachers but the gardner in Tucson couldn't understand a word I said. Finally got to lovely Fresno California, just about the time that 10 million Mexicans and other Central American natives headed North. Whooooooah! At last I can hear Spanish spoken every day, but it's nothing I ever heard before because it comes from the farms and ranches and people who are warm and charming but who never made it past 4th grade in their own countries and never read any of the "Spanish Lit" I studied. Final blow - I turned on the local Spanish-lauguage television station and I might as well have been listening to Russian The next week I went back to college, this time to Interpreters School. I finished that 2-year program in Legal Interpreting, moved on to Interpreting for Health Care, Schools, Social Services, any course that was offered and any work experience where I could use the language. Now I have a library of more than 3 shelves of books which teach or explain the nuances of Spanish, 30 of them are DICTIONARIES. The radio in my car and my home are only tuned to Spanish stations and I watch exclusively Spanish-language television during weekdays and I buy movies and CDs by Spanish artists. I finally KNOW Spanish. It only took 40 years.

The point of the story is, you will not learn Spanish or ANY language unless you MUST use it. Anything else you are only fooling yourself. Native speakers will be very polite and reassuring to you but they are really just indulging your mistakes. Immersion is the only way to learn a language, anything else you are only playing. Why do you think the Europeans all know 4 or 5 languages? Because they HAVE TO

[seakdivers]

Tonchi - I completely agree. My sister was a foreign exchange student in Germany during her senior year of high school. When she came back, she could not only speak German, but she could recognize the different regional dialects. After being back home for a couple of years she couldn't speak it at all!
As far as the other countries knowing other languages, it's true - they HAVE to learn it in school. The big advantage they have is that they start kids on foreign languages when they are very young.
I swear, most non-Americans know more about American history & language than we do. Scary stuff.....

[Tonchi]

In Europe they have to learn because from one side to the other of most countries there is only a day's drive. There may be 4 other languages spoken within easy distance of your home. Television and radio broadcasts from all those locations are beamed into your sphere every minute. Now that they are not fighting each other in Northern Europe, everybody wants the business and commerce which lies across those borders in neighboring countries. Every day of their lives, many Europeans have to switch languages several times, and many of them can do it seamlessly. I really admire that, wish I had the advantage. America was huge and isolated by oceans, people were assimilated linguistically in the past, if not culturally, and until very recently they were spoiled by having everything their way. Latin America had the same situation, except for Brazil it is all Spanish from border to border. Latin American and U.S. "intellectuals" learned other languages because intellectuals do stuff like that, but it meant nothing in the national overview.

My brother-in-law was born in Surrey, England, but has worked and lived in Germany, France, Italy, and Switzerland. He vacations in places like India and the Dutch Antilles. He has Japanese clients. There is no language he can't get control of in a few months. This is both from expectations and necessity, his field is software development and international banking. It will not surprise me if one day he starts learning Inuit. I wish I had had the same opportunities to learn so much, but I can console myself that there are two things I can do that he can't: drive a diesel van and speak Spanish

I got the books and I started... bad pain week this week (I am disabled), but I am lookin' at them and it will be a lot of fun.

[Beestie]

The Rosetta Stone software is just unbelievable. Best software I have ever seen for anything. I hesitated for a long time because its not cheap but now I see why.

I've been using the Chinese CD/DVD and it is just excellent. The most difficult thing about Chinese is the inflection - one word can have completely different meanings depending on where the inflection is placed. The software has a module where you can speak the word into a microphone connected to your sound card ($15 bucks), and see a graphic representation of how you pronounce it next to a graphic representation of how it is supposed to be pronounced. And you can slow down the sample pronounciation slower and slower to pick up the subleties. You can keep saying it over and over till you get it exactly right. That's the big advantage over books and classes. I take my kids to Chinese class once a week - its an immersion class and almost no English is spoken and I come away feeling like I missed about 80% of what was conveyed. And books are worthless for Chinese - maybe not so much for Spanish, though.

Rather than what seems to be the traditional way to teach language, the software just starts right off with sentences. You learn some sentences then you are immediately tested by having to choose which of four pictures represents the sentence "spoken" by the software. Somehow, when you learn it that way it just sticks - probably because of the strong visual association it creates.

I can't recommend that software strongly enough - you'll be speaking the language you are studying correctly in no time. Its hard learning a new language at this point but its not frustrating because playing a CD and picking pictures is kind of fun and its nice to take note of how your score keeps getting better on the drills.

[TiddyBaby]

Rkszenrage... have you a decent voice recorder, to hear what you sound like?

I'm one on one with Brazilians, Mex, Czech and Poles all week... Even if ya get them to pronounce over and over certain phrases... it sucks if ya can't hear what you are saying (as pronounciation comparisons)


2) The Rosetta software you mentioned... is that the program for designing new proteins to fight diseases such as HIV, Malaria, Cancer, and Alzheimer's

(I have my Boinc Manager crunching numbers in background at all times, except when burning dvd/cds)

3) Don't forget to watch the movie "Day Without a Mexican" (it has nothing to do with learning espanol,... its just a whacky movie)

I do have a decent voice recorder, I was a pro-actor.
Nope, it is Spanish software and supposed to be very good.
I will check out the flick. Thanks for the tip.