learn Spanish

Guest post by Bliss at blissbloggin.blogspot.com

I had one Spanish class in third grade because I was a Texas kid. In my 20s I went to Mexico with two other women, we spent a couple of weeks playing around with an old Spanish textbook we found. When my husband and I sailed to Mexico in 1997 we took a Jr. College course, but didn’t finish it. I still have the textbook. I also have Spanish for dummies, a couple of good dictionaries, a verb book, and I use Ultralingua on my computer for translations.

But best of all I found a teacher in Guaymas, 20 min. from home, who spends an hour with me on Spanish and an hour singing Mexican songs with me. I’ve learned a lot about pronunciation and Mexican culture by singing. She’s helping me translate my blog into Spanish, goes over newspaper articles with me so I’m beginning to read more Mexican news, and helped me break into conjugating, an area where I was clueless. I could be working a lot harder (and plan to) but I’m already able to have limited conversations with Mexicans. It’s my goal to be able to have unlimited conversations on any subject and make friends with Mexicans wherever I go.

Bliss
blissbloggin.blogspot.com

Even if you don’t swear or use bad words in English, you know what they are. You learned what they were at some point in your life, even if the only reason was to avoid them. The same principle can be used while learning Spanish. I don’t swear a lot in English, right now. There was a time when I swore a lot. I’m not planning on swearing a lot in Spanish, but I wanted to know, partly for curiosity and partly to know when I was being insulted or made fun of.

Also you want to make sure you’re not insulting anyone by accident by saying the wrong word or a word in the wrong way. Knowing profanity doesn’t make you a profane person, it makes you smarter so you know which words to avoid.

What I found was that it depends on what country you’re going to or in my case, where the people you’re talking to came from. Swearing has more to do with the local slang and how certain words have a meaning in one country and may mean something completely different in another country or the biggest point - In what context it’s used. Do I have to use an example? Balls. Perfectly normal everyday, family rated word used all of the time. But used in a certain context, has a completely different meaning.

I don’t endorse swearing or insulting anyone, but for educational purposes, here are a few resources I’ve found if you’re looking to learn what the guy yelling at you was saying!

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En la fiesta del carnaval Silacayoapan, Oaxaca.
In the carnival on Silacayoapan, Oaxaca.

Carnaval Silacayoapan, originally uploaded by BurrodeOaxaca..

 

Words Galore is a free program for Windows only. Words Galore has thousands of Spanish words made into several different lists you can choose from.

You’re able to move the words you know into the “known” list so you won’t see them again and you can concentrate on words you don’t know.

Features

• Make your own lists - Choose from several lists available on the program or download others from the website or make your own customized list of words.
• Student Testing - You can test yourself (or someone else) on Spanish vocabulary. The test will alternate between knowing the Spanish for an English word and then randomly reverse it to being tested on knowing the English for a Spanish word.
• Flash Cards - Choose a list and learn from the words on the screen. It can’t print actual cards to carry around. Adjustable settings and it remembers the words you’ve learned.
• Search - A search feature if your looking for a specific English or Spanish word.
• Create Mp3 files - Take your flash card list and make a Mp3. You have to download the English version of the sound files to hear both English along with the Spanish.
• Hangman - It’s not in the program, but there’s a link to a hangman game on the front page.

This is a great program to learn thousands (9,100 to be exact) of Spanish vocabulary words. There aren’t phrases and you can’t split the lists into categories unless you go in manually and edit the files. If there’s demand for that, let me know and I’ll do it or put up a tutorial showing how to do it.

For a flash card program and to create flash card mp3’s this does a great job! Here’s the link for it again.

After my post about Beyonce’s singing in Spanish, I keep running into a lot of other American pop stars singing in Spanish.

This is a little disappointing because the video wasn’t redone for the Spanish version because on the closeups you can tell she’s not singing the words you’re hearing.

My opinion is, that if you’re going to do a video for a different language, do a video, don’t just dub the one that’s already done. I still put this up just because it’s Mariah Carey.

Guest post by Brenda at Brenda and Roy Going To Mexico

When we first came to Guaymas, Sonora, Mexico it was supposed to be for only six months to get away from the cold Alberta, Canada winter. I tried to learn some common words that I thought that we would need to survive. I just did this by finding free stuff on the web. I tried to learn how to ask for essential things, words for foodstuffs, simple things like that. Other than that I bought a small English/Spanish dictionary to take with us.

When we liked it so much here that we decided we wanted to retire here, we returned to Canada for 3 months to sell everything we owned, property, possessions, etc.. Needless to say this was a very busy time and I had no time for learning Spanish. The area we lived in, in Canada had no Spanish speakers to converse with. I purchased a verb book, a larger dictionary and a course of CD’s called Visual Link Spanish. With our time constraints in Canada I had very little time to use it there so we returned here still knowing next to nothing of the language.

After we settled in here, I began to use the above mentioned course and also free stuff online. The Visual Link Spanish is good for beginners like we were and I learned a lot from it.

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A short tour of Miraflores Peru an upscale shopping and business district. Concerts in the park with an amphitheater. The video gives a tour of each area within Miraflores and views from the walking paths above the cliffs overlooking the ocean. Really incredible scenery.

Miraflores, dubbed ‘Heroic City’ (Ciudad Historica) in 1881 after the Battle of Miraflores, is one of the most opulent districts in the City of Lima.

Why? When the second unofficial language in America is Spanish and in some cities it’s number one. You would think there would be several immersion schools around the US. You could be in a school in El Paso or Laredo in a classroom for a few hours, then reading Spanish newspapers, listening to the radio or watching Univision or Telemundo after classes, then go to a Mexican restaurant or a club at night. Have cross border trips on the weekends. I would pass through the border towns right now, but after you get deeper into Mexico it gets safer.

You could do the same thing in any city in the Southwest. Phoenix, Anywhere in California south of Sacramento, Tucson or San Antonio. I think it might be a little more effort to stay immersed once you get further north like Dallas or Las Vegas, but it would still be possible.

There are newspapers, magazines and radio stations to fit almost any taste. There are almost as many Spanish speaking TV stations on cable as there are English speaking. Enough news, sports, telenovelas, game shows, talk shows and movies to keep someone immersed forever, if you really wanted to. Most large cities have at least one neighborhood that is completely Spanish. Store signs, menus, even churches, everything completely in Spanish.

Two Week Total Immersion

A two week vacation somewhere exotic would be cool for tourists, but realistically, two weeks and you’re probably just getting started. What about a month or more where you can still go to work for 8 hours then go to Spanish immersion for the rest of the day. Staying immersed when you go home may take some effort if you’re the only one in a household learning, but what about having the entire family participate? Or stay in a hotel or dorm next to the school and participate in evening activities.

If any Venture Capitalists think that’s a good idea, call me. Otherwise I hope someone starts one or if there’s some already out there that I can’t find, let me know.

After trying a bunch of different ways to study, I’ve decided on sticking with a couple of core items like Learning Spanish Like Crazy for the core. Spanish Pod or Spanish Connection Podcast for something short and different. Destinos for something to watch that has a story line to follow (Destinos Workbook and CD). Plus I’m always trying different things I run into.

With Spanish Pod you get a lesson as an MP3 with a PDF that covers a specific topic of conversation. The hosts translate and dissect the grammar of the conversation. They usually end with a short comment about Mexican or Latin American culture. The beginner lessons translate a lot and explain in English, the intermediate and advanced lessons use more and more Spanish in their explanations. The website has a comment section for each lesson that you can participate in. There are premium memberships with extended lessons and vocabulary.

My Spanish Connection the Learn Spanish - Survival Guide concentrates giving you vocabulary about a particular subject. Restaurants, movies, pharmacies and a lot of other situations. There are job specific podcasts for landscaping, construction and restaurants with plans for more.

The host is a Spanish teacher and has a complete podcast explaining the different Spanish dialects which was extremely interesting. He breaks vocabulary down into syllables when it’s needed and there’s plenty of time to repeat and practice. You can see the vocabulary list on your iPod by hitting the center button, which is the best use of the info screen I’ve ever seen, too bad the iPod doesn’t hold on that screen. Plus, he has started leaving the vocabulary list on a post on the Spanish Connection website and you can leave comments for each episode.

Since there’s no link to grab his iTunes feed on his website, you can search on iTunes or click on this: Learn Spanish Survival Guide or click the iTunes icon.

I’m still undecided about Live Mocha, I like it, but I’m trying to get through each lesson, they start at a very, very beginner level, which is good, but I think just living the Southwest someone would know hombre and niño. So, I’m trying to get to where I’m actually learning something.

I thought they set you up with someone to practice with, not exactly. You record your speaking and someone grades your work. I’m still looking for something a little better for speaking practice.

This doesn’t even include all of the books I’ve bought, which I’ll get reviewed here eventually. Speaking of reviews - All of the reviews here are things I actually own. If I don’t and I’ve only tried the free trial, I say so. I’m not going to say something is a great resource and then I don’t own it myself, that’s not going to happen here. That’s why I can’t review every single product out here. I do the best research I can reading other reviews (probably from people that don’t own the products) and anything else I can find, then I buy it, just like you. I’ve purchased a few things that were crap and I don’t use anymore, but that’s going to happen.