I have decided I am going to spend the next few months trying to learn Spanish prior to heading to Arizona in December, and was wondering if any of you wanted to do it with me. I’m researching free online courses and would love recommendations should any of you have some, but the other thing I think might be fun is if there are others who want to learn with me, we could have weekly or bi-weekly zooms where we talk together. I’m sure there are also some multilingual folks who might want to join us. Just a thought.
FYI- when I was talking to Watergirl about this, I mentioned the zooms and the potential of multilingual commenters joining and she quipped “to do what, point and laugh” and I got a good belly laugh out of that.
As to the makeup of the courses, what is the best way to learn a language? I think I would benefit most from a blending of audio, video, and text. I don’t know how other people’s minds work but I see words in my head and think it would be best for me to be able to associate the written form of the word with the spoken form as well as how people’s lips and mouths move when they say it. I don’t know if I am weird that way (and yes, I know I am weird in many ways), but when I meet someone if they tell me their name is Katherine, I need to know if it is spelled Katherine or Kathryn or Catherine or Katharine or you get the point. Because then when I think about them from that time on I will see the spelling, my mental image of them, and the essence of that person all at once, if that makes sense.
So what say you all? You want to do this?
On another note, I would like to once again thank you all for the peace of mind your donations this weekend have provided. On the other hand, I fully recognize that I did in fact say “If you ever you were inclined to have the thought ‘hey, I think I will send John Cole millions so he can spend it on hookers and blow,’” I must admit that I did not anticipate opening my email this morning and realizing that you all would in fact put “HOOKERS AND BLOW” in the note/memo portion of the paypal/venmo thingamabob. That’s gonna be fun explaining to the accountant, you fuckers.
pika
How many donations did Baud make then?
Tom Levenson
I’d be interested. Duolingo has worked for me in the past. (I had to cram whatever Spanish in me I could when my nephew gave me 5 weeks notice that he was going to get married in Peru and would I please come.) Never got passed the gifts several lessons, but it suited my brain.
Happy to learn of alternatives.
mrmoshpotato
As so you started a website for fellow travelers. 😁
I need to restrain myself, because my laughter would break the margins beyond repair.
mrmoshpotato
@pika: All of them, Katie!
pika
@Tom Levenson: So glad Duolingo worked for you! I tried it for French when going to Senegal. I knew how to read and write things like “the gentlemen are calm,” but I didn’t learn much in the way of everyday use. (And the terribleness of my French pronunciation is on me…). When I learned some basic Wolof instead, I found that online guides put together for Peace Corps volunteers in various nations were really helpful, especially for what John seems to be looking for
FelonyGovt
I use Duolingo and also Clozemaster http://www.clozemaster.com. They’re both good but neither will help much with being able to speak the language, they’re mostly good with being able to read it and understand it spoken.
Lyrebird
Duolingo can be annoying but since you like to know how words are written out, it might be a great starting point. You can do a ton for free. I’ve looked into Busuu but have not tried it. Rosetta Stone & Pimsleur might not be as well suited to what you’re looking for.
I also recommend you ask some of the Spanish-speaking commentariat to suggest kids’ shows and/or YouTube videos. Why kids’ shows? They speak with fewer idioms etc. Like can you watch Kung Fu Panda voiced in Spanish? Or youtubers talking about your favorite video games, only in Spanish, so you will know some of the terms.
I have no idea how much Spanish Humboldt Blue speaks, but since you love to cook, you might enjoy watching those videos he posted a while ago, something like From My Ranch to Your Kitchen (but in Spanish), because you can follow along pretty well even before knowing a ton of Spanish.
Joy in FL
I’ve been using the Duolingo app for almost 2 years. I use the paid version- $79ish annually. I started it because I was trying to learn some Latin and brush up on French. But for the past 4 months, I’ve been using it for Spanish only. I am going to Madrid in November, and I would like to be able to read some of the signs and maybe communicate a bit and eavesdrop : )
I am super shy about using a language other than English because I know I am a slacker about pronunciation. But I would try with some Jackals (los chacales) on a Zoom. I think it would be fun. I bet we would laugh as much as we used any Spanish.
As for the best way to learn? I don’t think Duolingo is the best, but it is accessible and affordable for me and better than nothing. Live, personal learning is the best, and doing that with other, interested people makes it that much better.
I would like to participate if we do español por los chacales : )
Suzanne
Spawn the Elder has great success with Duolingo.
When you go to AZ in December, can you take any time in Mexico? Go drive around Sonora a bit? You’ll learn more.
Ruckus
Audio, visual, textual seems a lot better to me. I think it helps wrap your mind around the structure and the words of different languages. And spanish and english are languages with different structures and obviously words. I think it helps to learn the structure of the language against the one that you normally speak first because that can change the message conveyed. And you need good audio to help you learn to speak.
IOW it’s all of a piece, learning a new language. It’s all important. And do not forget slang. Every language has slang, in some it can be more obvious.
Lyrebird
Sir Cole, just explain to the accountant that you were getting married and your friends thought thiis would be funny. (ETA: most accountants I have met are very normal. Now I wish I knew how our own David Koch insrts little alien emojis in here.)
It’s probably a more tasteful joke than lots of bachelor party stuff.
Brachiator
That is so goddam funny. A very jackal thing to do.
Interesting. When I first learned Spanish, the emphasis was on a conversational approach, immediately speaking given simple contexts. Spelling and vocabulary came later. I can’t say that this is the best approach, and didn’t work for other students. For all that, I could generally read Spanish better than I could speak it.
Jackie
@mrmoshpotato: Great job, Jackals!!!
😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂
Suzanne
@Joy in FL: From living in AZ so long, I can only understand Mexican Spanish. Spain-ish is, like, a totally different language to me.
mrmoshpotato
@pika:
No. That’s on every letter in French being SILENT!
What? You didn’t hear what I didn’t say? Listen harder to the silence.
schrodingers_cat
Watch Spanish movies. That’s how I learned Hindi/Urdu/Hindustani. I could speak and understand it long before I encountered it in school (At grade 5). To really be able to speak a language you need to immersed in it. Everyone I knew could speak either Marathi or English so never ended up speaking much Hindi.
Now I am getting a refresher course by listening to Hindi YouTube channels about Indian history and politics.
Cameron
Good for you, Mr. Cole. I’ve lived in Florida for almost seven years and I still don’t speak Spanish. “Any day, now…any day……”
Joy in FL
I also need to know how a word is spelled before I feel like I know it.
Andrew Abshier
I’m about B2/C1 level in Spanish at this point and I did it almost entirely with live lessons with teachers. To me it’s the only way to go to truly get conversational. I had tried the books/apps/Youtube video routes beforehand and was not satisfied with my results. Remember that in the end learning a language is about communicating, and the only way to learn to communicate is to practice it with others.
Baselang in Medellin, Colombia offers what’s called the “Grammarless” program that goes from zero to being able to hold a 30-minute conversation in 1 month (4 hours a day, 5 days a week) or 2 months (2 hours a day, 5 days a week). It’s a big time/financial commitment, but if you want to get there fast, it’s the way to go. I can tell you that I reached 30-minute proficiency about 4 weeks into the program.
cckids
I would also be interested in joining the lesson group; though between West Coast time zone and the whole two job thing I’ve got going, I may only participate sporadically. Spanish would be helpful in both jobs and in my life – I have a great-nephew who is 4 and bilingual English/Spanish. Whenever I attempt some Spanish with him, I get side-eye and a polite reply in English. Hey, kid, I’m trying here!
JMG
I am constantly trying to improve my French (written comprehension good, verbal comprehension less so, speaking ability not good at all) since my daughter lives in France. Once in a laundromat in Bordeaux, a voluble older Frenchman told me the way to do this was watch more television. I think it does help me when I’m there. Try Telemundo.
toine
Point taken… we will put “explosives & fake passport” next time…
SpaceUnit
Buena suerte y vaya con queso!
Joy in FL
@Suzanne: I remember my high school Spanish teacher telling us that we were learning Castilian Spanish and that Spanish speakers from other countries would not readily understand us nor we them. That teacher was great, but the class was only a year, and not academically intense, and I never pursued the language until now.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I’ve used Duolingo for free. A friend whose Spanish is pretty good recommends watching telenovellas, though obviously that’s more for understanding than speaking. But the acting is exaggerated so you the meaning.
schrodingers_cat
@JMG: Speaking ability is the hardest to acquire. Being able to think in a language is really hard. I can think in English and Marathi but not Hindi.
One reason I love Twitter is because I can’t interact with native speakers of Hindi and Marathi.
OzarkHillbilly
Move to Mexico, John. Live with a Mexican family for 6 months or a year. Seriously.
Elizabelle
@Joy in FL:
Good for you for looking that up!
I’d be interested, too. FWIW, I have heard that Colombian Spanish is spoken rather slowly, and thus more easy to understand.
Watching Spanish language TV, with subtitles in either English (first) and then Spanish, could be good. Telenovelas! I think I would start with kid stuff.
I can read way more Spanish than I can speak. Little kids are so much better at learning languages. They cannot wait to make themselves heard. They have important things to say!
Yarrow
So disappointed nobody put “TIRE RIMS AND ANTHRAX” in the note/memo line.
Suzanne
@Joy in FL: I took some Spanish in middle and high school, but honestly, most of my exposure to the language was from Latino (mostly but not exclusively Mexican) classmates and friends and neighbors. And from Food City. :) So I can get around in Mexican Spanish. I know the swear words!
Mr. Suzanne, who is fluent, says my accent is good and that I don’t sound like a guera. So: yay?
schrodingers_cat
@OzarkHillbilly: Truth. Being in Mumbai I learned Bengali and Gujarati and Konkani, just by being around who spoke the languages, without hardly any effort on my part.
I tried to learn German in graduate school and I totally sucked at it.
schrodingers_cat
@Yarrow: Subaru in the field with mustard.
FelonyGovt
I would participate in the Zoom sessions. I’m reasonably fluent in Spanish because my late mother in law didn’t speak any English and I had to learn to be able to communicate. Since she passed away I’m not speaking it as much and my skills are rusty.
Agree with watching television as a good way to learn. Try a news program, where they speak a little more deliberately, and articulate.
FelonyGovt
@Suzanne: Every time I spoke Spanish to my mother-in-law’s friends and neighbors, they would compliment me on my Spanish but then would immediately say “you’re norteamericana and you learned Spanish from Cubans, right?” (Guilty on both counts.) 😀
Yarrow
@Elizabelle: I was also told by a Spanish instructor to watch Spanish language TV. Anything – news, telenovelas, variety shows, whatever. It’s all helpful.
Andrew Abshier
@Elizabelle: Colombian Spanish varies. Coastal Spanish is very rapid, and much like island Spanish (DR, Cuba, Puerto Rico). In the interior it is slightly slower but still can be very fast for someone new to the language. There’s also particular idioms in Spanish from country to country that can be vexing even for native speakers from other countries or areas. But overall Colombian Spanish is probably the way to go if you want to learn Latin American Spanish.
FastEdD
Mi tio es enfermo pero la calle es verde.
Yarrow
¿Donde está la biblioteca?
Betsy
I’d participate. Learned conversational Spanish from seeing advertisements side by side in English and Spanish. Also listening to music with lyrics in Spanish. I’ve forgotten almost more than I learned, though.
vulgarian
I (briefly) got to touristy Czech and Turkish by listening to audio and repeating it in the car. I recommend a similar approach to Spanish because it is so phonetic that if you can catch the ear, you can easily read it later.
Elizabelle
@Yarrow: A friend was wise to buy a bunch of Hitchcock VCR tapes in Spain, with Spanish and English subtitles. I thought that would be a great way to learn!
And maybe comic books too. You need not endure a long soliloquy.
Also, it is great to see you back here. Tick tock, motherfuckers.
Elizabelle
@Andrew Abshier: Interesting. I was learning Castilian Spanish.
But learning ANY Spanish would be a plus.
hilts
@Elizabelle:
This is an interesting about variations of Spanish
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_dialects_and_varieties
Jinchi
https://www.fsi-language-courses.org/fsi-spanish-basic-course/
These are a set of language courses that were put together years ago, by the Foreign Service Institute to quickly teach American diplomats how to communicate to people in the country they were assigned to. They all used native speakers, and primarily involve narratives that build up in complexity over the course of the series. I knew about these because my Dad was involved in the language program when he was young. They’re all audio (originally they were cassette tapes), but pretty good overall.
RedDirtGirl
Totally interested in working on my Spanish. I have some basics.
Yarrow
@Elizabelle: If you don’t know anything about a language it’s good to get some basics of grammar and vocabulary. So a course can be helpful. But video, tv, music, etc. can really help with learning more. Subtitles can be really helpful.
And, thank you
Suzanne
@Yarrow: Al lado de la taquería.
Sofa Cat
I’ve lost most of my Spanish… but I enjoyed learning from Rob & Lis (a Brit & a Colombiana couple) whose online course, Spanish Obsessed, is a lot more spontaneous-sounding than most courses (and often based on Rob & Lis’s actual life).
You can try out the courses for free (but won’t get access to the transcripts, exercises or online notes).
https://www.spanishobsessed.com/spanish-from-scratch/
I have a learning disability so I really was only able to learn by going to Colombia & taking a 3-hours/day course for a couple months.
Amir Khalid
You might try the Oxford Take Off In Spanish self-instruction kit. It’s not expensive, and it will take you to about an intermediate level. I’ve used the German and French kits too, and they’re all pretty good.
Narya
I might also be interested in joining zoom sessions. I’ve been thinking about trying to learn Spanish for awhile. I also want to see words as well as hear them.
Redshift
My trouble with languages has always been that it doesn’t stick. I’m not bad with pronunciation (according to teachers) but comprehension is harder. I used Duolingo to try to learn some Russian when we were hosting kids from Belarus, and also took a class, and I learned some, but not a lot, and I forgot most of it.
So I’m also interested in hearing about what actually works.
frosty
Ms. F and I signed up for Spanish lessons at the beginning of the year to get ready for a future trip to South America*. We found a teacher through takelessons.com ($40/hr for the two of us at the same time, a real bargain). His approach is to start by conversing in Spanish, asking about what we’re doing. We have to come up with vocabulary on the fly which isn’t easy, but it would be just like standing on a street corner in Santiago. Google Translate helps us get the words sort of fast.
It’s supplemented with reading essays, workbooks on conjugation and ser/estar (curses!) and other grammatical things. All in all a good approach. You can’t learn to think on your feet without the conversation, but you can’t learn to speak correctly without the grammar.
I’d be up for a Zoom to be pointed and laughed at!
* Spanish would also be helpful for canvassing if I ever suck it up to do that again. The first thing the organizers in Allentown asked was if any of us were Spanish-speakers.
ETA When we were in Bolivia 24 years ago I had a laptop with Rosetta Stone and worked on it every night or so. Finally learned all the prepositions! And I’ve lost most of it in the intervening time.
Roberto el oso
Others have mentioned Duolingo and I second that. My wife has been at it for about a year and has progressed pretty impressively. My own command of Spanish is serviceable but eccentric and so she’s gotten to the point where she can question those oddities as well as laugh at my bad jokes.
Sofa Cat
If you’re at an advanced beginner or intermediate level, give the ‘News in Slow Spanish’ podcast a try. They’ve got a 7-day free trial so you can make up your mind whether it’s worth the $23/month subscription. https://www.newsinslowspanish.com/subscription-rates
planetjanet
Add my name to the list of those who rely on Duolingo. I have been doing just a couple of lessons each morning for the last couple of years. My vocabulary is quite good, and I have a good handle on the basic verb tenses. I have even attempted a few short conversations on business trips. I learn visually so reading and writing come easier. Duolingo has extra practice lessons to work on listening, which I find very useful. They have a good sense of humor as well. I could not resist signing up to learn “High Valyrian”. You never know when you will need to order your dragons to terrorize a village.
Valdivia
Native spanish speaker here, happy to help with anything you need John.
I actually recommend watching telenovelas, everything is so exaggerated and dramatic you will get the gist of it and connect the words to the ridiculous goings on. A lot fo them are on youtube as well with subs. (edit: I see I am not the first to mention the telenovela approach :) ! )
There is Radio Ambulante, a kind of This American life in Spanish which has a program for learning spanish. Here: https://radioambulante.org/en/education/study-spanish
Elizabelle
@hilts: Way above my pay grade. But thank you!
@Jinchi: Bookmarked it. They emphasize the best way to master a language is by getting out there and speaking it. Which is the hardest thing to do! But maybe just at first ….
Elizabelle
@Valdivia: Hello Valdivia!!
Joy in FL
All these mentions of telenovelas makes me think of the episode of Psyche! where Shawn pretends to be an actor in a Spanish-language soap opera and he tries to use his high school Spanish. It’s so funny (if you like Psych!). I may watch it tonight or tomorrow.
mali muso
Also on the Duolingo train, taking Spanish and Portuguese as well as brushing up on my French grammar. I find it pretty fun and accessible.
Another app you may find useful is Memrise. Lots of short video and audio clips of native speakers with the written phrases below. It’s organized by functional/situational scenarios z
Valdivia
@Elizabelle:
Hello there!
Its always so nice to come visit, I am generally so swamped with work but today I have a rare night off
Brachiator
@FelonyGovt:
Also, with national news in Spanish, it may be easier to match the language to the context of the story.
Tom Levenson
@Andrew Abshier: Cool. I’ve only been to Medellin once, but it is a gorgeous city and setting.
Miss Bee
@Ruckus: I like Coffee Break Spanish–it’s conversational and the hosts/teachers are enjoyable.
I’ve tried Pimsleur and find it a bit dull.
Joy in FL
@Valdivia: Thank you for that link. I bookmarked it.
BR
Check out Language Transfer — it’s a set of free recordings that are all about learning conversational speech by transferring our understanding from English to that language. It’s really different than anything else I’ve tried and I find it works great:
https://www.languagetransfer.org/free-courses-1
patrick II
@Joy in FL:
Then I wouldn’t take on Chinese any time soon.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
I think different things work for different people.
I’ve done in-person language classes (that became Zoom-based during lockdown) and those have a lot of value, when you’re trying to express yourself on random topics and you have a native speaker helping you.
Barring that, I really like Pimsleur for technology-based courses. I did a couple of months of Italian starting from scratch and that was sufficient to travel to Italy and pretty much get by. Pimsleur is mostly an audio course. It focuses on listening comprehension and speaking, two of the more difficult skills, and teaches grammar and verb conjugation by example rather than by giving you formal grammar rules or conjugation tables.
You don’t get very far into it before they’re throwing conversations at you at nearly full speed, you say “what the hell was that? I didn’t get a word” and suddenly you realize that in fact you got a lot of it. The listening training really works. I had a couple of experiences of people ranting at me in Italy for one reason or another and I was just grinning because I was understanding so much of it.
I’m getting ready for a trip to Germany and going through the Pimsleur German courses right now.
Another Scott
@Ruckus:
+1
Whoever came up with the alphabet song, and writing the alphabet, and reading the alphabet, was on to something. The more ways the information gets into our brains, the better. There should be a “complete the square” song. ;-)
I think that the “tricks” for remembering lists or faces by relating them to colors or whatever is the same kinda thing – the more parts of our brains that are involved, the better we learn and retain stuff.
The public TV station around Atlanta in the 1960s had a woman who put on several shows on learning Spanish, for different grade levels. I can’t remember her or the show’s name, but it was well done. (Not that I watched enough of it to learn any usable Spanish, of course.)
Good luck JC, and all.
Cheers,
Scott.
Martin
I just started relearning French. I had quite a bit in HS, and I can tell it’s still in my brain, in the back of some cabinets I forgot existed.
Ms Martin is doing the Duolingo path and I don’t want to say it’s not working but it’s not getting her where she expected to get. It’s helping a lot, but she needs to get past vocabulary and some rote expressions and get into conversation and it’s not that useful for that.
I’m taking a different approach. I have a particularly good memory for music, so I’m learning French songs, and taking the time in learning them to go through the exercise of translating them, understanding the conjugation, etc. You get colloquial speech and an interesting diversity due to how songwriters manipulate expression to maintain meter and rhyme so you get common shorthands to speech. And because it’s memorized, I can just sing the song in my head which helps me to return to thinking in French – which is really the inflection point you need to reach for learning to take off. Learning the language for a trip tends to get people overcommitted to reading the language vs hearing it, and especially for languages like European Spanish which tends to be very quickly spoken, French which is both kind of fast and kind of smeared out and lacking the hard edges that English has simply takes listening practice. Songs are also helpful because they force that tempo. You can start with lower BPM songs (I’m doing a lot of jazz) and then move up to faster tempo stuff. A song a day or so is a good cadence.
Around that is watching French shows on YouTube or wherever. French comedy is largely centered on puns or like most things cultural assumptions so you really have to have a given knowledge of the language and culture to get them, and I’m really not there yet. Working on it. I’m thinking of getting a TikTok account to just do French TikTok.
I remember the things I struggled with in school, and that’s causing some problems. Reflexive verbs were a big annoyance and I’m trying to not hate them irrationally all over again. This would be so much easier if I had my 8th grade French teacher back – I had the biggest crush on her that I didn’t mind when she corrected me.
Valdivia
@Joy in FL: so welcome
They do amazing stories, very worth it I think.
Cheryl from Maryland
@Suzanne: Yes, Spanish comes in so many varieties. A professor I had insisted we pronounce everything as if we were from Madrid (well, it was 17th C European Spanish painting), and now I cannot get rid of the lisp.
Scamp Dog
I’ve used Duolingo for Spanish and Latin with some success. I started off using it for Mandarin Chinese, but it kept flagging any use of traditional characters as an error, and since I started learning the language in Taiwan, that made me give up on their Mandarin course.
I’m currently doing the Duolingo Cantonese class, which uses Mandarin as the base language, so it’s an effort, but a fun one.
SiubhanDuinne
@Valdivia:
Hey there! Great to see you!
Ceci n est pas mon nym
FWIW, my experience with Spanish learning in recent years has been with this school. It was in-person (downtown Philadelphia) but then moved to Zoom-only. I know the head of the school really well, she’s a very good teacher, a native speaker. I kind of finished her curriculum so now I mostly practice my Spanish by reading or watching YouTubes. No opportunity to speak.
Elizabelle
@Martin: Music would be great. It is generally slower, and what a good way to learn to repeat it.
Bonne chance!
Elizabelle
Thank you to everybody for such good links. Checking them all out.
TaMara
I’m in. I’ve never been successful at learning more than rudimentary French and Spanish, but I’d love to try again.
Jinchi
@BR:
Interesting. Thanks
Valdivia
@SiubhanDuinne:
HI there!
Yes been a long long time. But I do lurk from time to time and when I have a quiet night like tonight nothing better than coming to say to you all
Jinchi
@Scamp Dog:
Duolingo teaches Latin?!
TaMara
As someone who works with folks’ finances, I have to tell you, most of us have a no-judgment policy. On the other hand, most of us won’t sign anything, either. So you’re on your own for explaining your transgressions to the IRS, etc
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Cole, you mentioned that it helps you to see it written out. I may share some of that. I’ve found that despite years of on-again, off-again practice with Spanish, I still really struggle with the language spoken at normal speed. For instance, my last Spanish teacher liked to assign us TED talks to listen to and that was often a struggle.
But I’ve found that if closed-captioning is available, I’ll turn on the Spanish-subtitles and see the written version of what is being said, and I can get 80-90% of it that way.
Redshift
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Hmm, that might be good for me. I’m good with grammar rules (because I started with Latin), but I don’t feel like they’re helpful for really learning. (On the other hand, they can be great for stumbling through a newspaper or other written text with only a half-assed grasp of the language.)
SiubhanDuinne
@Another Scott:
Every elementary school classroom I was ever in* had the alphabet encircling the room, above the blackboards. The first few years, it was the printed letters (capitals and lower case), and from about third grade on, the cursive script. Do schools still do that? I know a lot of them no longer teach cursive.
*Every classroom also had a huge wall calendar, and a great big analog clock — so we learned to tell time and calculate dates almost by osmosis, the way we learned the alphabet and the shapes of letters.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Joy in FL: Not familiar with that, but long ago when Kenan Thompson was a teenager, he was on a kid sketch show called “All That” and they had a great bit with a telenovela called “Uno, Dos, Tres” where all the dialog was super elementary high-school Spanish.
The Moar You Know
I grew up in SoCal and had a lot of ESL kids in my classes and ended learning Spanish because, well, pretty much everyone who grows up here knows at least a little bit.
The overwhelming agreement is that the best method for any language acquisition is via TV. Especially Sesame Street (Plaza Sésamo) and there’s obviously a Spanish language version of that. It’s on YouTube. But that’s the only way you’re going to learn to speak/listen/converse in it, because Spanish gets delivered and received VERY quickly.
It’s tempting to go the Duolingo route because it’s reading, and that’s easier. But you will NEVER learn to hold a conversation that way.
Plaza Sésamo!
SiubhanDuinne
@Valdivia:
Well, it’s lovely to have you here. I hope you can stop by more frequently, and make your presence known!
John Cole
It sounds like there is at least some interest. I will ask Watergirl to set up a signup and schedule, and if someone wants to work with me and set weekly attainable goals and exercises/benchmarks, I can whip up an informal syllabus/chedule/resource list.
Elizabelle
A funny thing about us trying to learn a new language — we are so lucky, and cursed, that English is one of the “universal” languages.
You will run into a LOT of people who would rather speak English with you, than put up with your baby steps Spanish or whatever language. As mentioned above, they will listen to your
tortuoustortured Spanish, and then answer back in much better English.Jinchi
Travel to France and you won’t have that problem, at all.
Lyrebird
@cckids:
FWIW lots of little kids who speak more than one language seem to get “I talk this way with Aunt Susie” before they get “This is English”
Elizabelle
@Jinchi: C’est vrai.
Valdivia
@SiubhanDuinne:
It is super lovely to visit with you all
Hope things are good with you
Gin & Tonic
@Lyrebird: As I have bi-lingual children and grandchildren (and expecting tri-lingual grandchildren in the future) this is spot-on.
Ohio Mom
One thing I learned raising a child with a language impairment is the difference between receptive and expressive language.
Most babies and toddlers develop receptive language first — they can understand a lot of what they hear (receive) before they can say very much (express).
Ohio Son did that a little backwards. He had some phrases memorized but didn’t always understand what was said in response. A friend said it reminded her of going to Central America. She knew a few phrases — the usual stuff like “How much does this cost?” — but often found herself unable to understand what she was told in reply.
Anyway, just something to let in mind when you monitor your progress.
zhena gogolia
Listen to Pedro Guerra and Marc Anthony records. Just kidding, I’ve listened to hundreds of hours of them but still don’t speak Spanish. I can understand a few words about love.
Joy in FL
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: I bet that was great. I love Kenan Thompson.
Scamp Dog
@Jinchi: Yes! It doesn’t go all that far compared to Spanish and such, but it’s there! The choir I’m in sometimes does requiems and other works in Latin, so I wanted to give it a go.
Tinare
I used Duolingo during the pandemic to try to get better at French after taking it in high school and college a million years ago. I then vacationed in Montreal last summer thinking I’d get in some real world practice, but found it useful exactly once with the parking garage attendant who told me my parking fee was “dix-huit”. My attempt to order in a restaurant ended with the waiter laughing at me. So, I prefer to tell myself that French is just really hard. If there is a good app to use for Spanish, I’d be willing to try that out too and join in on learning.
BCHS Class of 1980
@FelonyGovt: Must be a real conflict. We angloparlantes do love our consonants while in Cuban Spanish, consonants are kinda optional. Particularly the S.
Old Dan and Little Ann
Do they provide Spanish subtitles on Netflix? Watching familiar and new shows while reading Spanish would probably help me. I took 5 years of French. Zut alors. I wish I had taken Spanish instead.
eclare
Along with telenovelas try some soccer matches on Telemundo. I don’t know any Spanish but when I’ve watched matches on Telemundo because they weren’t broadcast in English I could figure out a lot of what the announcers were saying. And of course nothing beats the exagerrated “Goooooaaaaallll!!!”
eclare
@Old Dan and Little Ann:
I took three years of Latin, I also wish I had taken Spanish.
Martin
@Jinchi: France has gotten a lot better on that front thanks to the internet. Being stubborn about English locks you out of a lot of the internet.
hotshoe
@Suzanne:
Yep. I don’t like the “accent” of Spain-ish Spanish when I listen to some lessons; it sounds unnatural to my ears attuned to south-of-the-border Spanish.
I don’t actually speak Spanish — my fault, no excuse — I hear it every day (just passing by). I can understand a few words but not enough. I should learn at least a little more given the citizens’ multilingual preference here in town.
I’d be happy to zoom it with los chacales, only Mexican Spanish.
Another Scott
@Tinare: My J took French in HS and college and has an excellent standard French accent.
During a vacation in Montreal a few years ago, a waiter tried to tell her that she was pronouncing things wrong. It didn’t go over well… ;-)
Canadian French is a different language.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jane2
Count me in. My ambition is to sing along to quarteto music…or failing that, be able to order more than beer and tacos, por favor.
Sister Golden Bear
@Suzanne:
Mexican Spanish is renowned for its creative profanity.
I tried Duolingo but then ended complementing it with more traditional learning sources because I wanted to get a better grasp of the actual grammar and structure.
Of course when I went to Spain the accent and some of the words were very different. Even more so when I was Argentina for a month. Between the rapid-fire pace and the strong Italian accent, I barely understood it at all.
CaseyL
I keep trying to learn Spanish, and keep pooping out once we’re past the very elementary stuff.
I had Spanish in High School – in Miami, where most of the Spanish is Cuban, but our teacher insisted that we were learning Castilian pronunciation. I have some kind of regional accent when I do try to speak (“d” in the middle of a word comes out as a “th,” “v” comes out as a “b”) that I’ve gotten teased about, but I don’t know if it’s Castilian or Cuban. In Miami, you pick up Cuban pronunciation whether you want to or not!
I echo the recommendation to spend time somewhere where Spanish is the lingua franca. About 12 years ago, I went to the Galapagos, where we were on a yacht that went from island to island. The ship’s crew were all locals, and I politely asked if they’d mind if I tried to remember my high school Spanish. They were very sweet and supportive, and we’d have simple conversations. I was amazed at how much of it did come back in just 10 days! (Only to be lost again when I came home…)
CAM-WA
@schrodingers_cat: Wow! It never would have occurred to me that a great way to learn Urdu was to watch Spanish movies! I’ll have to see if that works for me. :)
Scout211
I agree. Immersion is the way to go to be able to have a conversation. My daughter is a dual language kindergarten teacher and the process of learning the language while learning the lessons is the most effective for both the Spanish learners and the English learners.
I tried duolingo when she married her husband so I could speak with him in Spanish (and brush up on my forgotten high school Spanish) but he asked us all to speak to him only in English when they first married so he could learn by immersion. It was really good for him but a miss for me. Sigh.
So in conclusion, let’s all move to Mexico or Costa Rico for 6 months! It’s the only way, people. Who’s in?
JoyceH
I’ve been doing Spanish Duolingo for a couple years but I still can’t understand a Spanish conversation if I overhear one and doubt if I could carry on a rudimentary conversation. In Duo’s defense, I’m only doing one lesson a day. I ought to do several and I have Spanish language movies in my queue. But yeah, I’m up for BJ Spanish.
PJ
This isn’t what you asked for, but I think the easiest way to learn a language is by hearing it and speaking it. Ideally, you would be in an environment where you would have to hear it and speak it every day, but I gather this is not the environment of Bethany, WV. So I’d recommend Pimsleur, or something similar. These are audio lessons where you listen and respond to prompts. It won’t help you writing an essay in Spanish, but if you are just trying to get around in a language, this is by far the easiest in terms of retention, and it only take a half hour a day. And because it is aural, you can do it while you are walking or driving or whatever.
PJ
The other advantage of Pimsleur courses is that most libraries have the CDs, so you can just check them out and download them to your computer, rather than having to pay for them.
Martin
@Scout211: A few years ago we hired a house painter – high recommended. The owner of the business is Korean, and only speaks Korean and Spanish – because he needs to be able to speak to the crew. His foreman speaks English and Spanish, and translates for the owner. And his crew speak Spanish or Spanish and English.
So there are a lot of different ways to get there. Instead of moving, take a job as a house painter, learn Spanish and maybe some Korean.
Joy in FL
It looks like there are several of us who use Duolingo for Spanish.
Maybe we could friend each other in the app and encourage one another that way. I’m Joy199292 on Duolingo.
Martin
@PJ: One benefit of working at a college is that at a minimum, every common language is spoken there. And at a big university, every uncommon language is also spoken. Might need to poke around to find a match, but I guarantee they’re there, even in West By God Virginia.
Odie Hugh Manatee
At least I said have a nice dinner… or something…lol! Hookers and blow falls under “something”. Maybe “something” is code for ummm… something that you’ll still have to explain to your accountant!
I’ll stay out of the second language since I regularly slaughter my first language… ;)
Martin
So, regarding hookers and blow. Years ago at work I had a coworker who ran a small business out of his office – undercutting the university soda machines with Costco and a dorm fridge. So he’d get this stack of singles that now and then he’d need to take it to the bank – also on campus. So we’d walk over at lunch one day, him with this huge fucking roll of 1s and 5s and stand in line, and I’m make a point to fabricate a conversation on my end that implied he was running an illegal strip club on campus just loud enough for the tellers and other customers to pick up on, and he’d do his best to figure out how to deal with this.
arrieve
Interesting to see so many Duolingo users. I’m getting close to two years with Spanish now. Interestingly, I began because I started teaching English to adult immigrants, most of whom have Spanish as a first language, and it’s very helpful in the classroom to be able to make connections. “I know you say it this way in Spanish, but in English you have to say it this way.”
Since I just got a master’s in teaching English as a second language I’ve been exposed to all of the schools of thought on language acquistion, and seeing the Duolingo approach in practice is interesting. They teach grammar implicitly, which drives me crazy. This means they don’t explain any of the rules, they just give you lots of examples and you deduce the rules from that. Sometimes I just want them to tell me, This is how direct objects work. (Too much explicit grammar teaching is also not a good idea; it’s boring and doesn’t allow for enough practice.) The other big problem with Duolingo is that it’s not interactive, which is key to language learning. Doing a zoom together could give us all practice in that.
The other thing I’ve learned is that no one approach works for everyone. I’m another one who needs to be able to see a word in order to learn it. (I have used Pimsleur for Arabic and Farsi, where I was never going to learn the script and just wanted to be able to say a few phrases.)
I would just add that one thing I do for practice is to watch a movie I’ve already seen on the Spanish HBO channel. If I already know more or less what’s going on, I can try to focus on the language.
Just Visiting
De-lurking to say – would love to participate if the logistics work.
Maxim
I’m on the West Coast, but it would be fun to try to improve my very rusty Spanish. Give me a dictionary for unfamiliar words, and I can do a decent translation of something like a newspaper article, but my spoken Spanish is largely forgotten and I can’t understand native speakers. I do okay with other English-speaking second-language learners. The kids’ tv shows and telenovelas are a good idea.
Miss Bianca
Hmm, the group Spanish lesson sounds intriguing to me! Just sayin’.
PJ
@Martin: I learned Czech from my next door neighbors.
Torrey
Consider taking a course in the language remotely at a local community college or possibly as a non-degree-seeking student at a local college/university. It will be helpful to have a teacher to explain things, and, as several people here have noted, Duolingo won’t really enable you to hold much of a conversation, and ultimately, there is really no substitute for having to speak the language. (As a veteran you may be able to get reduced tuition. )
This isn’t to say that Duolingo is useless, though. If you decide to use it, check out this video on how to make Duolingo actually work by Language Jones, who is a professional linguist, i.e., a specialist in the scientific analysis of language and languages, not, as the term is sometimes unfortunately used, a polyglot.
(I’ve been using Duolingo, the free version, to pick up a bit of Ukrainian. It’s good for some vocabulary and an idea of how the grammar works. I couldn’t hold even a segment of a coherent conversation, although I can say “I want to cancel the meeting,” one of my favorite sentences in any language.).
Lee in Mexico
Great App!!!
Mel
I’d be up for this.
BigJimSlade
Goddammit. I didn’t think of putting that in the memo. I didn’t realize this was an opportunity to be clever or a smartass… I feel so stupid now. John, can you please write that in for me?
Martin
Everything is fine. Totally normal. Nothing to be alarmed about.
TheMightyTrowel
Bottom of the thread so no clue if anyone will read this far, but for languages I really like Mango languages app – it’s a bit more traditional in format than duolingo and has some great features to help with pronunciation. The material it covers are things you actually need and it’s well structured. ALSO! lots of public libraries have subscriptions so you can use it through them – i have the app via my public library.
Origuy
I started out with Duolingo Russian, after having studied it with books and the Pimsleur recordings. I’d already been to Moscow and gave up Russian after realizing I’d probably never be back. I worked on Spanish for a while; Duolingo lets you test out of preliminary stuff and I had Spanish in high school and dabbled with it occasionally after. I put it aside to work on Italian; the Duolingo Italian isn’t very extensive and I finished it after a year and a half. I am still using Pimsleur Italian in the car, but I’ve gone back to Spanish for Duolingo. I’m about halfway through; Spanish is much more extensive.
Not a big fan of Rosetta Stone. They do no explanations of why things work the way they do, believing that you should learn like a child does. Well, I’m not a child and I like to know the rules. Pimsleur does some explanation and Duolingo does more, but you also want to check with websites for grammar details.
I decided during the pandemic that learning languages for me is a hobby. I’ve played around with Finnish as I have Suomi friends and may go there next year. I wanted to try something outside the Indo-European family, too.
Dave
I’d love to be part of this as I am still learning Spanish. I studied Spanish in school and lived in Spain for a year a while back but in the States I lived in Maine where there were very few people to speak with. I am back in Spain, so I am going full immersion, which is challenging but learning a lot.
What I found most effective to learn, in no particular order, was Duolingo for vocabulary, watching television shows using Spanish subtitles, intercambios, and total immersion. There is a large intercambio organized on Meetup by two people in Mexico City that I like.
It can be found here – https://www.meetup.com/new-york/
You join the Zoom call and then they create small rooms with two English speakers and two Spanish speakers. You spend two hours talking in the group, changing back and forth between English and Spanish every 30 minutes.
Argiope
@Martin: oh boy. Couldn’t sleep so tuned in to a nice relaxing thread about language acquisition to try to doze back off and now I’m really really awake. Quel dommage, zut alors et sacre Bleu! Merde, even. It’s starting to feel like the wheels are really coming off, even here in the usually smoke-free Midwest.
Origuy
Anyone tried Lingopie? It’s a site for learning using video. You watch a short program with or without subtitles in English or the target language. You can stop and replay any section and click on words to work on with a flash card system. They have several languages.
A while back, I put together a Google Sheet that shows the various language learning apps and the languages they teach. It may be out of date now, but it may help.
Languages available for English Speakers
Martin
@Argiope: Yeah. Scientists are not prone to outburst, but we have countless measures around the globe that puts us 3-4 standard deviations above the mean. The global sea temps are just as bad. Antarctic sea ice is as well (winter down there now). Greenland ice loss is as well.
The problem is that we know the planet can shift from one point of local stability to a different one. The shift from the Pleistocene to the Holocene. And we know those shifts can happen pretty darn fast, with some speculation that they require extraordinary events to trigger – asteroid impact, volcanic activity, etc. So when you see a pattern of relative stability, even one where the mean is slowly increasing, and then you see a line just yeet off like that, experts start to wonder if we’ve busted the local stability and feedback loops and have shot off into something new, and there’s a lot of that wondering going on right now, because the normal instinct is to assume that we’ll just regress to the mean, but that dynamic should have kept it from diverging so strongly to begin with. That the measurements are where they are suggests that we shouldn’t be so confident things will return to normal. They may just stay here, or keep going. We just don’t know until we better understand the underlying dynamics which are causing this sudden departure, and we simply don’t understand them.
NotMax
More or less right on time, tropical storm Calvin creeping in on big soggy cat feet as of 7 p,m. here, an hour ago. Was in town (at sea level) most of the day Tuesday ahead of inclemency; no rain, scattered but fast moving clouds zipping by overhead, fierce winds.
From the latest forecast:
…very strong easterly winds with ample tropical moisture will produce periods of heavy rain over the windward areas and especially over the windward mountains. Rainfall totals of 3 to 6 inches with isolated higher amounts will be possible tonight through Wednesday. A Flood Watch will be in effect starting tonight through Wednesday.
Aside from the heavy rain threat, damaging winds will be possible with the strongest winds downwind of terrain or leeward areas. Wind gusts of over 60 mph will be possible and a High Wind Warning remains in effect starting this evening, with peak winds expected late tonight through Wednesday morning. Winds this strong will be capable of knocking down trees and causing power outages.
TUESDAY NIGHT
Tropical storm conditions possible. Scattered showers in the evening, then showers and isolated thunderstorms after midnight. Locally heavy rainfall possible after midnight. Lows 70 to 76 near the shore to 53 to 58 near 4000 feet. North winds up to 30 mph increasing to northeast 10 to 40 mph after midnight. Gusts up to 60 mph. Chance of rain near 100 percent.
.
WEDNESDAY
Tropical storm conditions possible. Showers and isolated thunderstorms until late afternoon, then numerous showers and isolated thunderstorms late in the afternoon. Locally heavy rainfall possible. Highs around 88 near the shore to around 73 near 4000 feet. East winds up to 45 mph. Chance of rain near 100 percent.
.
WEDNESDAY NIGHT
Partly cloudy. Windy. Scattered showers in the evening. Lows 70 to 75 near the shore to 53 to 58 near 4000 feet. East winds up to 30 mph becoming 10 to 15 mph after midnight. Chance of rain 40 percent.
.
Redshift
@Jinchi:
But at all true in my experience. I learned from Rick Steves that despite the reputation for being snooty and Francais-chauvinistic, many French people don’t feel they speak English well enough and are embarrassed to speak it with a native speaker. If you make the effort to speak French badly first, they’ll speak English if they can.
I went to Paris about ten years after my last French class, and I spoke French just well enough that French people could tell I was trying to speak it and would say “in English, please.”
Tony Jay
I’m also enjoying learning German on Duolingo. Well, maybe enjoying is the wrong word. Such a sensible, spookily similar language which they had to ruin with FRIGGING MASCULINE. FEMININE (and, just to be total berks) NEUTER BITS.
Why is a cat feminine while a dog is masculine, huh? What’s wrong with the word ‘the’? It’s super useful and you can take it anywhere!
But I’m enjoying it. Straight up addictive when you get the urge to win a League.
mrmoshpotato
@Tony Jay:
Remember that changing the article (der, die, das) can change the entire meaning of some words. :)
Steve Crickmore
@pika: Na nga def
cokane
I’ve become fluent in Spanish, living in Central America for about the past decade. My advice is to find any activity you like to do and to try and find a way to do it in Spanish. Especially activities that you would do alone.
This includes watching movies, watching TV shows, reading books, and even playing video games (many games have full Spanish text options at the least). For movies and TV, I would recommend watching stuff that is originally in Spanish as opposed to stuff that’s in English and subtitled or dubbed. As this will improve your ability to hear real world conversations. Streaming sites are often great for Spanish language content, I know Netflix has a decent library. One movie recommendation to kick it off is The Endless Trench (La Trinchera Infinita) something that Netflix bought the rights to. A Hitchcockian film about a couple surviving the Spanish Civil War. A gripping thriller. While I wasn’t a huge fan of how this series turned out, Netflix’s Green Frontier was an okay single season series set in Colombia.
Books are especially key IMO. And best read with a translation dictionary at your side, either via a phone or an actual hardcopy dictionary. If you are a reader, do this! more than anything else. The quiet, alone time will allow you to focus and it’s the single best way to build vocabulary. If you have access to it, reading some kind of Spanish-language newspaper can work well. If you’re in a Spanish-speaking community, reading something like that will also give you conversation subjects to talk about that go beyond the basic small talk.
It’s not a terrible idea to read translated books that you might know but are perhaps at a lower reading level than you’d normally do in English. Young adult books for example. Honestly, translated Harry Potter books, just to use a super famous example can work. If you want to read native Spanish stuff, I would start with some book of short stories. Despite his reputation as being complex, Borges is great here. His stories are often extremely short and hold up well to being re-read, even immediately. In fact, re-reading a short story immediately after making a list of words you looked up in the dictionary is a great strategy that helped me improve.
I know you like to game too John, so I highly recommend that too. Any kind of narrative-based game will work.
One specific recommendation I would give about Spanish is to really focus in on verb conjugations and how verb phrases with pronouns function. This is critical to unlocking an understanding of everyday speech in Spanish. Pronoun rules in Spanish grammar can follow a logic that’s very alien to English natives, with object pronouns appearing first in a phrase, followed by the conjugated verb. A very simple example is if at a restaurant you order food the simple phrase: “‘Me da X?” where X is the menu item you’re ordering. Might seem weird or even rude for English speakers to put the “me” part first in that sentence but it’s literally a common way natives speak.
I can go further but that’s already alot. Shoot me an email or I’ll check here if you want more advice.
cokane
Forgot to mention but listening to music too, especially by yourself is huge. Music is repetitive and will stick in your memory even if you don’t want it to. I would recommend Salsa classics as they tend to be slow, clearly pronounced singing, and it’s also a form of music that just about every Latino will be somewhat familiar with, so it makes for conversation fodder.
Celia Cruz, Willie Colon, Hector Lavoe, Ruben Blades, Sonora Ponceña have been some of my favorites. Something like Youtube or Spotify can work here. But don’t just listen, go look up the lyrics (letra) online and follow along!
cokane
@eclare: I would recommend against this. Announcing is done at such a rapid fire pace that unless you are already advanced, you will not get anything out of it. Moreover, much of the announcing is literally just saying the players name as they call the action. It’s better than nothing but it won’t beat watching TV, movies, reading or playing video games imo.
However, if you can play sports with a group of native speakers, learning some of the quick communication you need to do on the field can help.
Elizabelle
@cokane: You’ve had great suggestions. Fun, even. Thank you.
Have bookmarked this thread.
Tony Jay
@mrmoshpotato:
That’s even worse! Not only do I have to try to remember which gender to use to avoid looking like, well, like I’m English, but now I also have to get it right or else I risk informing some poor shopkeeper that I intend to anally fist his beloved auntie when all I really want is a bag of marshmallows and a bottle of fizzy pop!
I know they’re German, and therefore a seething entrepôt of unusual kinks, but there should be some limits!
MomSense
I’m learning Spanish with duolingo and you can set up groups using their app. I think it’s a good program. Easy and fun to use.
mrmoshpotato
I don’t see how this hasn’t been mentioned yet!
MY HOVERCRAFT IS FULL OF EELS!
Unkown known
@mrmoshpotato:
Yeah. You can feel all out on sea, stranded on an island with all these subtle drops. So tough. Never succumb. I’ll just want a sword to fight those silent oiks right outta my castle
A Lurker
Delurking, since this seems like an appropriate time to do so.
I started Spanish seriously in January. At this point I can nearly read newsprint independently and mostly understand shows for kids in the 10 -12yr old range. Just recently I’ve been able to completely turn off the subtitles. I definitely need more practice writing and speaking though, and there isn’t a lot of opportunity locally for me. Potentially interested in some activities with people here.
I actually started with BBC Mundo news, just flipping google translate back and forth from English to Spanish and getting a feel for how sentences looked in both languages. You can read the basic intro to theory of the noun, adjective, and verb systems anywhere on the internet. After about 3 months of a pretty difficult slog with Google Translate and SpanishDict.com, I got to the point where reading was no longer a painful experience.
Watch a series called Destinos, it’s free to stream online from the publisher Annenberg Learning’s webpage. 52 episode instructional telenovela. Old timers will probably enjoy some of the late 80s educational VHS vibes here. After finishing that, I was ready to jump into kids’ shows for native speakers.
I’ve found that I really like the Star Wars Clone Wars animated series on Disney+. The Spanish dubs are good, the language is clear, and the subs match them very closely. Also, a really nice thing is that there is a lot of visual exposition, 10-20 second periods without speech are common. This gives me a lot of time to think about what I just heard if I need to, repeat it or say a response, and even maybe look up a definition on the phone.
Ruckus
This thread reminded me of a BBQ I went to on Mallorca while in the USN and met a Spanish woman my age and danced with her for 2-3 hrs. Had a wonderful time although my Spanish was at best minimal and based upon Mexican Spanish that I’d learned a bit in HS and from living in SoCal and her English was more limited than my Spanish.
I’ve traveled in several countries in Europe and most often we found that someone would speak English at least minimally and most in the northern countries spoke English rather well.
Once in Copenhagen a buddy and I were shopping in a store for something for his girlfriend. A small store, tops on the ground floor and bottoms down a spiral staircase to the basement. I thought the concept was funny, tops on top, bottoms on the bottom. The sales girl spoke Oxford English and I asked her if she was English and she said she was Danish born and raised but her English teacher was an Oxford grad and she was amazed that I recognized her accent. We had a grand time discussing language.
Once in Naples, Italy 6 of us went to what we thought was a bar but it turned out to be a whorehouse. We left and were walking down the street and 2 guys pulled switchblades on us and told us in good English to give them our money. We asked them which two of us they were going to cut first. Why? Because the other 4 of us are going to beat the ever loving fuck out of you. They put their switchblades away and walked away. Good times in the USN. BTW that was 51 yrs ago. Strange some of the things one remembers like it was yesterday.
Another great city was Amsterdam, where we took an hour or so ride in tour boats. The guides were women who spoke in 4 or 5 languages, so different groups would laugh at the jokes in the different languages. It was fun, interesting and hilarious.
My time in the USN was not all fun and games but there were some good times. And yes, I know that many died in Vietnam and that I served half way around the world. And yes I know the number of lives that were lost and the lives that were ruined in so many ways. I still see many of them at the VA, from that war and from far more recent times. I often wonder, to this day, was it worth it, those approx. 100,000K men and women who died for their country, fighting in some of the wars that we have in the last 75 yrs? During my lifetime the 2 largest wars were Korea and Vietnam. During those 2 conflicts the US had about 90,000 men and women dead, and far more wounded, and there have been more since in the middle east. A military is necessary, no question. How many of the wars in all of humanity have been necessary? How many have been because men decided that millions of lives lost is the cost of power? Can we ever do better, be better?
Bobby Thomson
You may remember that I live in a 30% Spanish-speaking area of SEPA. I’ve spent the last couple years mainly using Duolingo, but also doing some side reading and watching shows, e.g. Nailed It – Mexico. Tip: watching in Spanish with Spanish subtitles is a big help. Different techniques work for different people, and I believe in each individual using as many methods as help and ignoring the ones that don’t.
As far as instructional programs go, Rosetta Stone is meh. I’ve heard Babel is good
BruceFromOhio
Blookers and how.
prostratedragon
“Que bueno baila usted,” Oscar D’Leon. Some nice person put the lyrics in the comments.
lowtechcyclist
@Unkown known:
Shouldn’t that be ‘Yeah’ and ‘You’?
‘Island’ brought back a memory of not connecting the ‘is-land’ that I was reading with the spoken ‘i-land.’ Probably hadn’t thought about that in sixty years!
LiminalOwl
@Joy in FL: Me too. And in response to your next post: I was so glad my NYC high-school Spanish classes had the opposite approach, teaching Latin American forms rather than castellano. (I had a teacher from Panama, a teacher from, um, somewhere in South America…and one non-native speaker who, in hindsight, I realized had probably been a Maryknoll missionary.)
LiminalOwl
I feel so much less alone! Yes, my mind is similarly weird—though primarily about the subtitles across my field of vision, captioning all dialogue. Or, as happened once when I was first learning to use word-processing: a nightmare where I needed to scream but couldn’t—because I couldn’t remember how to boldface the subtitles.
LiminalOwl
@LiminalOwl: Oh, and I annoyed a substitute teacher who asked about class members’ motivation for learning Spanish by replying, quite truthfully, that I wanted to eavesdrop on subway conversations better.
Yarrow
@Tony Jay:
Not in British English you can’t! You can’t take it to “the” hospital. It’s right out when going to hospital.
Amir Khalid
@mrmoshpotato:
You mean, z.B. der Leiter = the leader in the nominative, but die Leiter = the ladder? The German case system is actually way more complicated than that. A proper study thereof is well beyond the scope of something like duolingo. I’ve found I needed something like the grammar textbooks published by Routledge.
Tony Jay
@Yarrow:
Yes you can.
“Where are you taking him?”
“I’m taking him the hospital.”
It’s working class English, but English all the same.
schrodingers_cat
@CAM-WA: Ha ha funny.
grandmaBear
Very late to this thread but thought I’d put my 2 cents in. I have made learning languages a bit of a hobby – currently renewing my high school French in an on-line first-year intensive class at a local university. What you do is going to depend on your time-line and how much time and money you can stand. I used to teach Greek and Latin as a grad student and lecturer and I would advise students at the beginning that learning the language was more like weight training than an ‘intellectual pursuit’ like a philosophy class. You need to do it every day and it hurts a bit. I also recommend multiple fronts. I don’t think much of the duolingo approach, because of lack of grammar and conversation – adults usually want that. I recommend a beginning text for grammar and useful phrases. I think McGraw Hill has an inexpensive one I’ve used (Spanish step by step). Pick something that has recordings on-line. I highly recommend the Slow News in Spanish – especially to learn current vocabulary – and telenovelas for listening skills. You also must find someplace to converse and I think smaller groups are better for this. Look into local schools and colleges. My senior citizen center has Spanish, Italian and German groups. If you can, even a month or two with an on-line tutor can help. I used TakeLessons for Italian last year. It helps to have someone to correct you.
Yarrow
@Tony Jay: Choose an article or preposition but not both! So confusing!
Tony Jay
@Yarrow:
It’s just an invisible comma!
Yarrow
@Tony Jay: It’s not invisible. It’s not there!
RA
An excellent ambition and you will do very well.
Over the last 35 years I have taken university courses in Spanish, private class lessons in Spanish, attended an immersion Spanish week long camp (3 years in a row), used Duolingo, Babbel and Rosetta Stone, and had 6 students from Spain and Mexico living with me for various school years. I really like Duolingo because it is great for reviewing what you know and it’s mostly free. All my instructors recommended watching Spanish language TV just to get an ear for the language.
Sounds like I am a real expert, doesn’t it? HA! Nope!
I can understand and read Spanish pretty well but I have total stage fright speaking it and my mind goes blank when trying to answer simple questions or have a conversation. I think I really need to go to a small village in Mexico, where English is not spoken, for a month or two to try and get past my problem.
I do recommend “Spanish All in One for Dummies” as a learning aid. It’s great with the basics. I downloaded it from my library for my e-reader and I liked it so much I bought it.
I believe it is critical from the very beginning to start with the alphabet and learn how and why the letters are pronounced the way they are. Why is ‘h’ used often but always silent, and how and why an accent is needed in a word, for example. Learning is easier for me if I know why something is the way it is.
MinuteMan
Last I heard, they still speak English in Arizona.
For learning Spanish I would go with Duolingo; I ended up subscribing to avoid all the stinking commercials (they used to call things like this nagware). I’ve been doing it for French for a few months, 15′ in the morning and another session in the evening and it seems like I’ve learned a lot.
If you’re going south of the border, complement it with a Berlitz phrasebook (one using Latin American rather than European Spanish) as this seems a good way to add specific nouns and phrases for specific situations (you can pick and choose). Learning a goodly batch of food words helps with reading restaurant menus. Berlitz probably has a section on road signs as well.
Another interesting additional tool is Google Translate. You can have it give you the translation of things you want to say. You can also try your hand at typing in something and having it tell you what you actually said. You can even speak into a microphone and see if it understands what you’re saying. Not perfect but it can be fun.
Nancy
I have no recommendations but would like to join the zooms and use whatever program chosen by group consensus. Can’t wait for the pointing and laughing.
Uncle Cosmo
Suerta, Cole – learning a new language at your advanced age tends to be an ejercicio in futility unless fueled by sheer terrified desperation.
I’m already embroiled in trying to recover my high-school French, college German and night-school Italian, and taking up Spanish would play hob in particular with the latter. (A Spanish teacher in that night-school class dropped out when she started to confuse the two.)
(FWIW In ’94 my significant-soon-to-be-ex wanted to go on holiday to France and Spain. I was OK with French but had never studied Spanish and had no interest in it, but pointed out that one of us ought to know something about the language. To her credit, she got a pile of books from the library, found a show on community TV, and dug in… but when the Toulouse-Barcelona train crossed the border into Catalunya, guess who, with his 12 words of español and a phrase book, ended up doing the talking? She was terrified of making a mistake; I’d been making them in multiple languages over years of Eurotravel and had no qualms about possibly making a fool of myself in the pursuit of communication…)
Darkrose
I would be thrilled to join Zoom. I’ve been doing a lot of work with the Chicanx/Latinx student community on campus (Don’t @ me; that’s the name the students use for themselves) and I really want to learn Spanish. I’ve been using SpanishPod101; I haven’t paid for it, so mostly I get the Word of the Day in my email. I’ve also been listening to the Giants Spanish broadcasts, just to hear the sound of the language. As soon as I get my library card renewed (Bad Librarian!), I’ll sign up with Mango; it’s free through the Sac Public Library
Greg Ferguson
Kind of depends on your fluency goals. Visiting Arizona, it makes little difference – I have been here since 2010 and I know tons of, like 3rd generation kids who do not even know Spanish. Friends who grew up bilingual are legion.
Also, remember that with Spanish there is Old World Spanish and New World Spanish and then …. what have you! LOL. Mexico is different from everything further south. Also, very important, the viceregal capitals of the Spanish empire in the New World were Lima and Mexico City. Places of high culture.
God, Mexico is such a huge and various country. Talk to your friends. I studied french in HS with ALM abd never saw the written language for a semester – fked my vocabulary, but gave me a good Paris accent!
IF you are ever in Tucson, please give a high 5!!! Love you, man!
jame
For those who struggle with French pronunciation, a glass or two of wine helps quite a bit.
The Lodger
@Tony Jay: Growing up in the UK, you may have missed being exposed to Mark Twain’s The Awful German Language. You’d appreciate it.
Mark Haag
John I found Destinos helpful when I was working on my own. A very entertaining telenovela story designed for Spanish Language learners. I need a lot of repetition to learn, and this helped me a lot. https://www.learner.org/series/destinos-an-introduction-to-spanish/unit-i/‘
Athenaze
I know I’m late to this party (work, etc), but I’d be interested in a Spanish-learning group.
Neldob
@Joy in FL: KatharineG535778 and I am interested in the zoom.
Eugene
Hello, All!
Depending on the times of the sessions, I would love to join (I live in Bloemfontein [lit. ‘Flower Fountain’, aka ‘The City of Roses’], Free State province, South Africa, UTC +02:00).
My aspiration to learn Spanish arose after watching the first season of Narcos on Netflix. But for the past year or more, my health situation has prevented me from learning much more than the bare basics using Duolingo. I am a bilingual language practitioner (very different from a linguist; I am what one might call a language mechanic, one who specializes in translation, proofreading, and editing). I am fluent in English and Afrikaans, a language in the Germanic family, although it is easier to learn to speak, read, and write in it than German, in my limited experience.
I was fortunate enough to have a US-based colleague from Ohio refer me to this website as a reputable news source this past week.
I just wanted to pop in and say thank you to Mr Cole and everyone who commented their helpful tips; I have discovered a wealth of resources thanks to you all!
triviaboy
Lots of good ideas and comments, particularly the ones that note that this journey is different for everyone. I’m around your age and making serious plans to spend up to a third of each year in Mexico, and here are the tools in my own box:
1. Duolingo. Good for getting the very basic stuff in the present tense down, so-so otherwise. Useful enough to still pay the full subscription fee because among other things, that lets you make as many mistakes in one sitting as you want. The free version cuts you off for a few hours once you reach five mistakes, even if it’s in the middle of a lesson.
2. Spotify. Music is one of the great loves of my life, and there’s a whole lot of excellent latin music out there, a lot of it with lyrics available in the app to follow along with. Since it’s something I already love, I use it to reinforce my other lessons. It also gives you a proper realization that Spanish, like English, is not a monolithic language: There are a lot of regional, cultural and age differences.
3. Microsoft Translate. The Google app is better at spot translations, but the Microsoft app has an extra feature that makes it invaluable. It has a mode where you can split the screen into two parts for two people, with a little microphone icon for each. This lets you practice speaking even if the person you’re practicing with is saying stuff in English.
The most important things IMO in getting to where you want to be are patience and perseverance. My own goal is to be able to read Borges in his original Spanish I’m a year into pursuing that and still at the first grade reader level, knowing that there are years left to get there.
Hope you have fun with this… I’m having a blast.