How to Learn Spanish Quickly?

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C40
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How to Learn Spanish Quickly?

Post by C40 »

Does anyone have advice on how to learn a language (particularly Spanish) quickly? What methods/books/etc. should I use? (I need to make sure I learn ~'Mexican Spanish', I don't ever expect to go to Spain)

I'd like to go into Mexico for about 4 months this winter.

I barely know any Spanish. Just a small number of words that I remember from two years of Spanish class in highschool and a little bit more study some years ago. I've had a resistance or hesitance to learn a second language because it seems like duplicating a skill I already have, but now I really want to go to Mexico so I have a strong and urgent motivator.

I don't have much time to learn. I want to start learning soon, probably in September. And then I want to go into Mexico in November. So I have about three months of learning before I go. I can devote quite a bit of time to it, 3 or more hours every single day. I have some friends that speak Spanish and once I'm able to, I could practice with them on the phone.

(for those certain that Mexico is too dangerous and I'll be killed, I've already accepted the risk. If you have advice on how to be safe while I'm there, I'm all ears)

BRUTE
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Re: How to Learn Spanish Quickly?

Post by BRUTE »

brute no hablas español muy bien, pero tienes muchos apps y programas como Glossika, Supermemo, Pimsleur..

brute likes native speaker recordings vs. computer generated sounds, and SRS (spaced repetition systems).

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Ego
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Re: How to Learn Spanish Quickly?

Post by Ego »

I have a friend who did an immersion program in Guanajuato and came back bilingual. He attended a few classes a day and lived with a family where they only spoke Spanish. While it wasn't extremely expensive, it wasn't cheap. You could recreate your own free version of this using duolingo and peppering the old people lounging in the village square with questions. Even better, buy a child grammar book and page through it while sitting on a bench in the square. The metiches will find you.

For the drive down you can make a cheat sheet with the words you need for directions. Back in the day, Gringo drivers would carry a laminated sheet like this with numbers and symbols for things like gas station and campground.

Image

Baja first or mainland?

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C40
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Re: How to Learn Spanish Quickly?

Post by C40 »

ok, noted, thanks guys.

I expect that one I've learned enough for basic conversation and I'm in Mexico, I'll definitely spend time in towns meeting and talking to people and trying to make friends. That's why I want to learn as much as to be able to find my way around.

I'm thinking Baja. I'm expecting to go into LA for a bit to meet some people in October, then through San Diego again (I'll pop in to say hi for sure and get advice from you two), and then south. But I haven't done any research yet on where to go or why.

fips
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Re: How to Learn Spanish Quickly?

Post by fips »

On the phone right now, but some good online courses are:
https://www.memrise.com/ (Also check out one of the founders Ed Cooke, as in "Moonwalking wirh Einstein")
https://www.babbel.com/

For spaced repetition, this one is very neat to customize:
https://apps.ankiweb.net/

Also, you can look for a native speaker in your area to practice Spanish and English vice versa.

Tyler9000
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Re: How to Learn Spanish Quickly?

Post by Tyler9000 »

Judging by the people I've met who decided to pick up a second language, I'm inclined to believe that the most effective way is to date someone who speaks Spanish. ;)

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Ego
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Re: How to Learn Spanish Quickly?

Post by Ego »

If you cross in November you must go out on a panga to see the gray whale calving area from Guerrero Negro. The mothers actually push their babies up to the surface to be petted. Unbelievable experience. You can camp at Malarrimo and catch a boat from there. The owners of the camp are excellent people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcfbSPAZeRc

After you loop around Cabo and Todos Santos you can head back up to La Paz and take the ferry across to Mazatlan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhxS-j7uDaU

BRUTE
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Re: How to Learn Spanish Quickly?

Post by BRUTE »

C40 wrote:
Tue Aug 15, 2017 1:47 pm
I expect that one I've learned enough for basic conversation and I'm in Mexico, I'll definitely spend time in towns meeting and talking to people and trying to make friends.
kind of the catch 22 in brute's experience: it's impossible to become ready for conversation without having conversations. learning structure and words per se, and using them in conversation, is a completely different ball game.

what brute has heard is that professional language learners (mormon missionaries, linguists, etc.) use very different techniques from hobby learners. besides immersion, which is of course great, focussing on one topic at a time until it is "conversation ready".

i.e. having the "c40's name is" conversation down pat, then the "c40 grew up in x" conversation, then the "c40's job is photographer" conversation.. basically vertical slices instead of horizontal building upwards.

brute has not used this strategy, but he can tell from experience that the horizontal strategy feels pretty inefficient. brute knows the bottom slice of 3 languages, but can't hold even a basic conversation in any of them beyond ordering food and asking for the bathroom.
Last edited by BRUTE on Tue Aug 15, 2017 10:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Dream of Freedom
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Re: How to Learn Spanish Quickly?

Post by Dream of Freedom »

Something like 90% of all words spoken in any language are comprised of only about 2000 words or so. A frequency dictionary is a list made by linguist of all the most common words in a language. Like this one https://www.amazon.com/Frequency-Dictio ... dictionary

That should help with the vocab, but the hard thing for english speakers learning spanish is the verbs. You have to tack on the right suffix that corresponds to the person you are speaking of and weather it is in the present, past (there are 2 past tenses the second the imperfect is kind of like when we say we "used to" do something) or future. There is also something called the subjunctive tense it is used to discuss a hypothetical situation and to ask for something politely like we use "could you" or "may I". Most courses take a very gradual approach to introducing these, very very gradual so that they don't scare off students. But really it's not actually that much to memorize. So flashcard the hell out of them.

Avoid too much passive learning. There are a lot of people who can understand much of what if said to them but are unable to produce the language. So practice forming sentences in your head. Practice forming sentences on paper. Practice forming sentences in conversation. Just plain practice forming sentences.

slowtraveler
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Re: How to Learn Spanish Quickly?

Post by slowtraveler »

Spend a lot of time conversing (attempting) with someone who only speaks Spanish. Speaking exclusively Spanish for a while gets your brain thinking in Spanish. Mexico will provide a better learning environment than here unless you can spend some time in Spanish-speaking circles locally.

I took years of language from a book. Don't remember a thing. If you practice for a few weeks then stop, you'll forget most everything. That's why I think immersive is the only effective way. It forces you to learn and gives no avenue for retreat.

m741
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Re: How to Learn Spanish Quickly?

Post by m741 »

Some good advice here. I've been studying Spanish for ~15 months, somewhat haphazardly. Here's some resources that were particularly good for me:

* YouTube: "Dreaming Spanish" - amazing slow, repeated, discussions where the speaker uses a whiteboard and constantly rephrases similar ideas. Start here! Wish I had this when I was starting out, it's a little too easy for me now.
* italki.com - Personal 1:1 native-speaking tutors for $7/hour. Frequently college-educated or trained to teach languages. There's free options (language exchanges), but $7 is cheap enough that I don't want the hassle of wasting half my time teaching someone English.
* Clozemaster - Sentences where you fill in the blank (30k Spanish sentences). Has free option. Better than Duolingo while still 'gameified'.
* Podcast: "15 minute spanish for your job". Ignore the title, it's poorly named. It's a podcast with alternating Spanish/English on a subject. Nice slow pace. A good podcast app can slow it down to .9 or .8 speed, as well.
* YouTube: "Easy Spanish" - on-the-street interviews in Peru & Mexico, transcribed. Excellent and culturally interesting.
* podclub.ch -> "A mi aire" - Spanish podcast with transcription, where the transcription is highlighted as she speaks. Intermediate, but excellent. 200 episodes, all free.
* Since you're FI and may have free time, there are a ton of Spanish books on Amazon Kindle Unlimited. These are graded readers. Look up "Paco Ardit" (the author). Worth buying if you don't want to subscribe.
* Kindle in general is amazing for languages, immediate instant dictionary lookup, and you can highlight phrases to go back to to make flash cards.
* Anki is the killer app. It's the backbone of my study. I know that any word I put in here I will not forget (over months). The confidence of having that knowledge is wonderful.
* Look for Spanish-language meetup groups. Good for free conversation or hearing spoken Spanish in a bar.
Last edited by m741 on Tue Aug 15, 2017 9:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

OTCW
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Re: How to Learn Spanish Quickly?

Post by OTCW »

I like the duolingo app

anchor
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Re: How to Learn Spanish Quickly?

Post by anchor »

This isn't specific to spanish, and may not qualify as quick, but there's a site called 'All Japanese All The Time' that has some interesting thoughts on techniques/processes for language learning. I was introduced to it by a friend of a friend who used it to learn Mandarin while living in the US, after failing to learn it as a study abroad student in China, and then was able to go back to a Chinese university to get a graduate degree (all in Mandarin). The site is kind of confusing and hard to navigate, and recently it seems that you have to set up an account to read some articles, but this link organizes the ideas somewhat and I think the links are all freely accessible: http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/bl ... o-fluency/

As the name implies, the writer was focused on learning Japanese, but the ideas are pretty general and can be applied to any language. The general premise is that you create your own immersion environment wherever you are (even if you're in your home country), and focus on getting as much input as possible. That said, it goes against some common notions about language learning, so take it for what it's worth (also, I think the author was accused of doing some scammy-type things to make money from the site years ago, but I found it long after that and don't know the full story - he seems to be a bit of an enigma in the Japanese language learning sub-culture). For full disclosure, I don't have any ties to the site. But, I liked some of the ideas, and thought it kind of seemed like an ERE-approach applied to language learning, in that it advocates what would seem to many like an extreme approach, but one that is fairly systematic and outcome-focused, and it occasionally combines ideas from different fields to make a point (e.g., here). It's also kind of an entertaining read.

I think some of the ideas on that site were inspired by the site http://www.antimoon.com/, which has a much more concise description of many of the same ideas.

Not sure if any of this will be of interest in your particular situation, but I was convinced enough that I'd probably give some of these ideas a shot when I'm ready and motivated to start learning a language again, so maybe it'll be of some use to you too.

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Seppia
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Re: How to Learn Spanish Quickly?

Post by Seppia »

Tyler9000 wrote:
Tue Aug 15, 2017 2:00 pm
Judging by the people I've met who decided to pick up a second language, I'm inclined to believe that the most effective way is to date someone who speaks Spanish. ;)
This. Hands down the best and fastest method.
I was advantaged because I'm Italian and I am bilingual French, but I learnt Spanish at native speaker level in three months when I was living with a Spanish girl.

RealPerson
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Re: How to Learn Spanish Quickly?

Post by RealPerson »

m741 wrote:
Tue Aug 15, 2017 7:09 pm
Some good advice here. I've been studying Spanish for ~15 months, somewhat haphazardly. Here's some resources that were particularly good for me:

* YouTube: "Dreaming Spanish" - amazing slow, repeated, discussions where the speaker uses a whiteboard and constantly rephrases similar ideas. Start here! Wish I had this when I was starting out, it's a little too easy for me now.
* italki.com - Personal 1:1 native-speaking tutors for $7/hour. Frequently college-educated or trained to teach languages. There's free options (language exchanges), but $7 is cheap enough that I don't want the hassle of wasting half my time teaching someone English.
* Clozemaster - Sentences where you fill in the blank (30k Spanish sentences). Has free option. Better than Duolingo while still 'gameified'.
* Podcast: "15 minute spanish for your job". Ignore the title, it's poorly named. It's a podcast with alternating Spanish/English on a subject. Nice slow pace. A good podcast app can slow it down to .9 or .8 speed, as well.
* YouTube: "Easy Spanish" - on-the-street interviews in Peru & Mexico, transcribed. Excellent and culturally interesting.
* podclub.ch -> "A mi aire" - Spanish podcast with transcription, where the transcription is highlighted as she speaks. Intermediate, but excellent. 200 episodes, all free.
* Since you're FI and may have free time, there are a ton of Spanish books on Amazon Kindle Unlimited. These are graded readers. Look up "Paco Ardit" (the author). Worth buying if you don't want to subscribe.
* Kindle in general is amazing for languages, immediate instant dictionary lookup, and you can highlight phrases to go back to to make flash cards.
* Anki is the killer app. It's the backbone of my study. I know that any word I put in here I will not forget (over months). The confidence of having that knowledge is wonderful.
* Look for Spanish-language meetup groups. Good for free conversation or hearing spoken Spanish in a bar.
Fantastic list. Thank you!!

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Viktor K
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Re: How to Learn Spanish Quickly?

Post by Viktor K »

Dream of Freedom probably correctly identified the most significant challenge with Spanish: conjugation. Conjugation is a b*tch (are we allowed to say such words here?). Luckily, Chinese has no such thing. But Spanish makes it pretty challenging. Add to that the fact that there are "special" verbs that don't follow the normal rules, and you have a steep learning curve.

However, to get by and speak brokenly is definitely feasible. First, I will give my own advice, and then I will comment on how much you really need to know.

1. Look up and understand conjugation. Basically, it is similar to English. I say, I "am" American, but I say, you "are" American. That's English conjugation. The verb is actually "to be," but based on the subject, the verb changes form. Same thing happens in Spanish. Just like in English, there are general rules, but some verbs are special and follow their own rules.

E.g.

Present tense conjugation of the verb "hablar" which is normal:

I speak: hablo
You speak: hablas
He/she it speaks: habla
we speak: hablamos
they speak: hablan

E.g. "special" verbs with special conjugation like "ser":

I am: soy
you are: eres
he/she/it is: es
we are: somos
they are: son

2. Don't go beyond simple, present tense, past tense, and future tense. Luckily in Spanish, future and present are relatively easy. Present tense just uses the verb "estar" plus relevant verb for the English equivalent of "I am talking" you would say "yo estoy hablando". The verb hablar is conjugated differently but doesn't depend on the subject. Only the verb "estar" depends on the subject. Estoy hablando, estas hablando, estan hablando...etc.

3. Study and use it. Otherwise you'll likely show-up and be too embarrassed to say a word. Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you something like an INTJ? Don't wait until Mexico before you start butchering the language in front of native speakers and need to be understood. Walk into a crummy Mexican or Asian restaurant in the USA where the kitchen staff is all Mexican, and apply for dish duty twice/week. Study on your off-days, shoot the sh*t with your coworkers on your workdays. Don't feel guilty when you say, "Sorry, I found a business opportunity in Mexico, my life direction has totally changed, I have to put in my two weeks" because the job has high turn-over anyway and you made their life so easy for the 1-2 months you worked there.

4. Download an instant translator app, make sure you have some sort of functioning-in-Mexico data plan, and use it if you ever get into a bind and absolutely need to be understood or understand what they're saying.

As for commentary, I studied 5 years before graduating high school and was quite terrible. I worked at a Panda Express through college, and could make all the dirty jokes, talk about work, my week, etc. with my colleagues easily enough after about 1 year of 20 hours per week. You want to crash course it? You can try. If you put some serious effort, you may even succeed. It is very rewarding to learn the foreign language of where you're traveling, but it is also extremely frustrating because you will never be at 100%. There will always be that point in the conversation where you just have to shrug and say, "I don't understand" else your eyes gloss over. Fortunately, depending on your goals, surviving is only going to require maybe 100-200 words and (for Spanish, at least) conjugation.

My girlfriend came to China this go round and enrolled in an online course through Coursera or something like that. Relatively cheap course which she coupled with a daily smart phone flashcard app. She could stumble her way through ordering food, taking a taxi, small talk, getting directions, etc. within the first month of practice. What she couldn't do, if needed, she could manage with her smart phone.

TopHatFox
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Re: How to Learn Spanish Quickly?

Post by TopHatFox »

Assimilli is the best program hands down

RealPerson
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Re: How to Learn Spanish Quickly?

Post by RealPerson »

On Amazon, the Assimil product contains a reminder that this is Spanish as spoken in Spain. My main purpose is to learn Spanish for Latin America. Do you know if there is an Assimil product specifically for Latin America?

BRUTE
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Re: How to Learn Spanish Quickly?

Post by BRUTE »

there isn't. brute didn't find Assimil to be very good anyway. not terrible, just not very impressive.

tommytebco
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Re: How to Learn Spanish Quickly?

Post by tommytebco »

There is no easy fast way to learn a language. It depends on your memory. In the early stages, you hear or think of a statement/word in your own language and then translate to the new language.

Much much much later, you can hear and understand words in the new language as meaningful. Over time, and with immersion,( I suppose) you would eliminate the translate step.

AND even with competency with a beginners vocabulary, natives will continue to confound you with variations on your limited vocabulary.

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