learn Spanish

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.

Originally posted 2008-03-28 04:59:39. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

This video is rated “PG-13″ for language. I’ve been laughing since I found it three days ago. This is a good reason to learn Spanish, especially Spanish slang and a few ‘bad’ words. That way you won’t be like those ladies in the classroom sitting there like idiots when someone is calling you an idiot.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/5fda4_wo6JI" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Spanish Pod celebrated their 100th lesson awhile back. Their website has had a makeover and they’ve added grammar and their “comments” (forums) have been expanded. A personal RSS Feed, audio quizzes, transcripts and more. Plus Spanish Pod has been doing a lot more Spanish slang. No swear words yet, but you can get Spanish swear words here.

• audios
• visuals
• text with speaking practice
• discussion
• exercises
• flashcards
• concentration game
• and more

Materials are organized into 3 subscription levels. You select the level that suits you according to your budget and schedule.

If you really want to go above and beyond you can sign up for the Guided or Executive levels and get SpanishPod’s new Guided service, you’ll chat with an expert to tailor your studies, and then meet once a month for testing and feedback.

The site and the program have been upgraded and is worth checking out and worth checking out again if you passed them up before. Spanish Pod! Sign up with only your email here and get a free 7 day Premium trial.

Originally posted 2008-05-11 19:06:54. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

For anyone new, I’m going through Learning Spanish Like Crazy. Almost half way through at lessons 13, 14 and 15, they are going through Reflexive Verbs. There are a lot of comments in the forum about lesson 13. The narrator and the actors change, which isn’t a big deal, but this lesson is the first one I’ve had to read the transcripts to see what’s going on.

First I had to find out what a reflexive verb is. From Wikipedia:

In grammar, a reflexive verb is a verb whose semantic agent and patient (typically represented syntactically by the subject and the direct object) are the same. For example, the English verb to perjure is reflexive, since one can only perjure oneself. In a wider sense, it refers to any verb form whose grammatical object is a reflexive pronoun, regardless of semantics; such verbs are also referred to as pronominal verbs (especially in grammar of Romance languages).

That means a verb that is doing something to a pronoun. You wash yourself, they wash themselves. I shave myself, etc…

This lesson also makes you pay attention. They start out with the verb to wake up: despertarse. That’s fine, but later in the same lesson they tell you how to get up: levantarse. The narrator will go back and forth between wake up and get up and he also uses two different ways to say get dressed.

Just when I was able to get the me levanto (I get up), now they add después de levantarme (after I get up) with the rest of the sentence – yo me afeito la cara. (After I get up, I shave my face). I’m not sure why or when to use levantarme instead of me levanto, but I’m working on it.

Update: I found the answer to why it’s levantarme instead of me levanto:

In Spanish, the infinitive follows a preposition (e.g., después de, antes de, sin).

The sentences are getting longer by putting two verbs in one sentence now and the conversations at the beginning and end seem to be getting faster. There seems to be a lot packed into this one lesson and it joins together with the next two expanding into one giant lesson. Great stuff.

Also in the forums, a lot of people say that LSLC can’t be your only resource for learning. Mainly because there isn’t a lot of explanation about the grammar or why something is done the way it is. This is one of the many books I have and it’s great. It’s small, it’s cheap and packed with information.

13 is the most challenging lesson so far and I’m slowly getting better each time I go through it. I’ve started skipping to about halfway through because I’ve got the first half down pretty good.

H107 – 09, originally uploaded by Axelhouston.

A dancer in front of the National Museum of Anthropology and History in Mexico City.

Originally posted 2008-03-11 03:38:13. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Destinos is the best video series teaching Spanish ever. PBS aired these 52 episodes back in ’92 or so.

Destinos: An Introduction to Spanish
Destinos teaches speaking, listening, and comprehension skills in Spanish. This telenovela, or Spanish soap opera, immerses students in everyday situations with native speakers and introduces the cultures, accents, and dialects of Mexico, Spain, Argentina, and Puerto Rico.

Early episodes have an English speaking narrator that explains part of the story. As episodes progress, less and less English is presented and it’s soon 100% Spanish.

There’s a review of previous week’s episode, along with a short tutorial section where a picture is presented with the Spanish word, at the end of each episode is a small quiz about the Spanish in the episode. There’s a workbook available (here, if you really want it), that expands on the Spanish in the episodes. The workbook isn’t required or even missed to watch and understand Destinos!

It’s free to watch the streaming video online (here). You have to be connected to watch. DVD’s, workbooks, audio cassettes and a host of other materials are available here, but you’ve got to like it a lot for $450 for the entire series. Watch it online, it’s free! You could get the Destinos Workbook and CD and watch the video online with the workbooks.

You’ll get hooked and won’t be able to wait to get to the next episode. It’s a good story line with good production along with cultural information. The Spanish is easy to understand especially at first and you’re learning all the time!

The narrator even explains that you’re not supposed to understand every word of the conversation and to try to follow along using context and character actions to understand the conversation.

There is a Nuevos Destinos that was made several years later, but the episodes are only 15 minutes long and the people I know that have seen it, don’t think it’s as good as the original.

Sherman, Texas is going all out to get their patrol officers bilingual. Their plan is to first use Rosetta Stone’s Program, (Rosetta Stone: Free Demo)
then move to formal classes at the college, then -

Sherman Police learning Spanish
In addition to the work on the computer and in the classroom, members of the Hispanic community, like Lupe’s Tamales owner John Arriazola, will be invited to ride along with the officers themselves to better understand one another.

But the final step is a two week immersion trip to Cuerna Vaca, Mexico. A trip Sergeant Steven Dean will make Saturday. “There is a communication problem within law enforcement which is primarily English speaking white males which is typically what we have in this community.”

A multi-pronged attack! Computer work, class room, ride along with someone to practice with (I’m assuming), then immersion. Like the one article I found here, immersion with no basic foundation, is a waste.

The rest of us can take the same course. I’m not sure I can go through a college or adult education Spanish class right now, but going through a computer course, doing some grammar work through books may be just as good. Then finding a Spanish speaking buddy, then taking a two week vacation for an immersion class, sounds like a decent plan.

You may not be able to find someone to ride around with you all day so you can practice with, but there are resources on the net that may come close. I’ll get to those in a later post.

Originally posted 2008-03-03 04:00:10. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

A short clip from the movie “Despardo” with Salma Hayek & Antonio Banderas. The clip as subtitles and the Spanish is easy to understand. I suppose you can get a few phrases out of it. The website at the end isn’t working anymore.

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.

Originally posted 2008-03-20 04:55:31. Republished by Blog Post Promoter