IGX

I'm making a full run at Spanish.

There are now many good internet ways to learn the language of your choice. Many are free. If anyone is interested, I will review the methods I am using and give you my opinions. I will try to concentrate on free stuff.

If anyone is interested, I will put more ideas and sites up. One caveat, everyone learns differently. I will talk about the stuff that works for me.

So: my review of Duolingo.

Great. It's a little addictive actually. Each lesson takes about 5 minutes. Maybe more if you are an absolute novice. Teaches vocabulary in a way that is sort of like a game. Not study.. And yet, it is effective because it uses the spaced reptition system. That is, you hear a word, then repeat it. You say it, then they ask you to write it. Doesn't sound nearly as much fun as it actually is. For a few days they don't ask you that word. Then they spring it on you. Studies show that SRS works better at building vocab than anything else. Imbeds it in you memory.

But,,,

You have to do it every day. Ten minutes. For me. If you don't know the language, maybe 15 minutes. You have to do every day. 15 minutes. You learn a lot.

Cons: Not real good for speech. You are asked to talk into the mike on your computer, and they tell you if you pronounced it correctly. But I am intermediate in Spanish. I can hear when I fuck up. But they still pass me.

They tell you at stages that you are now 10% fluent in Spanish. But when you finish the whole smarootie, you will be 58% in your language. Why, because they are honest about it. You need to do more shit.

Which, if anyone is interested, I will explicate here. There's italki, where you can speak to a native speaker who wants to learn English. Free. Your English for their Pashtun, or whatever you want.

There are ways to talk with a tutor on Skype. To work with minimal pairs. To do flashcards on Memrise. Or Anki.

My fluency goal is to be able to understand about 80% of a native Spanish speaker talking normally. I will concentrate on the words of things I like, such as writing, artistry, architecture, hot broads, and cerveza.

If you are interested. lemme know. I will continue here with my progress and point you to other internet learning sites I have found helpful.

I always wanted to learn Spanish. I worked with an incredibly hot Columbian broad who gave me an open door policy to come home with her back home on her many visits back there.

We get a lot of Mexicans at the club. The little bastards don't last long before we throw them out as they like to get very shithouse and stand in the waitress well talking shit and pawing the girls ass's. That is really no problem normally,but they don't seem to think it necessary to tip for the pleasure.

I did one time ask some mexican americans that didn't seem to work for a landscaping business..."Hey, if i wanted to learn Spanish whats the best way?"

"Get a Latino girlfriend "

I even looked into Rosseta stone online and butchered the hell out of the repeat into the microphone scenario you described. So ..Im interested.

I second Duolingo. I've used it to help build my French back up to an ok level. Conjugation is emphasized, which is nice since some programs for vocab kinda gloss over it.

Keep up any recommendations, as this is pretty interetesting

Great. I've been thinking this since I live in Texas now and hear a lot of Spanish.

My two cents:

Great idea to learn Spanish on several levels.

I grew-up in a largely Hispanic community, Colombians, Dominicans, PR's, and so on. Also being a cop in "Spanish Harlem" back in the day. Of course, we took Spanish in high school, but the real language you'll utilize in the US is Spanglish. I will say it's a use it or lose it skill, but very valuable. I found a Mexican grocer for my chicken feet for stock and they love me for my broken Spanish. I always get 'extra' on the house. I've been to the south of France, twice, and bridged communication gaps poolside at a home that was worth like $5 million with Spanish when we'd run into a communication knot.

With that said, the school district our kids are in have reputable Immersion Programs for both Spanish and Chinese and we opted out of those for both of our kids. Our daughter takes some Spanish classes as will our son, but not Immersion.

Seeahill, do keep us posted on the internet stuff. I would also recommend one selects 100 or so words that are relevant to their lives and learn how to say it in Spanish (sopa=soup, as an example). In conjunction with the more formal stuff, it will get pulled together. My 3 nephews are half Dominican and my brother rocks a nice balance of English and Spanish with them.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rjDwm4PMJY[/youtube]

Or swedish,whichever you prefer.

Perfect timing for this post, Sea. I was just thinking about this yesterday. I pick up languages quickly but I lose them just as quickly from disuse. I grew up speaking five languages and I'm embarrassed by my current monoglot status (aside from the odd bit of broken German or French).

As with most things, meaningful time on task is key to developing and maintaining proficiency.

Drills, lists, and lessons are all good and useful, but you have to use the language for communication to get much past beginner novice stages. I'm not saying this as if no one knows this, but it's worth stating and restating from time to time.

I looked over Duolingo a while back - looks fun and promising. The feedback, reminder, levels, etc. are all great ideas for online work.

My students and I use Quizlet a lot. It's simple and free unless you want fancier options.

Duolingo's limitation is the lack of conversation, which the founder says is coming. I used it for Portuguese before deciding it wasn't going to get me where I wanted to go. For languages you already speak, I think it would be handy, but I find that 24 hours in country a lot comes back.

Immersion is always the way to go if you can do it.

Very good topic seeahill. Thanks.

It's,terrible,that I can't speak Spanish, and I've been meaning to learn. After all, it's how the Chinese and Croatians insult each other where I work. Seriously.

I studied about five years worth from junior high to college, and had a year of Latin, but can't speak it. I'm in a seemingly perfect place for immersion, which is the only way to really learn. The problem is I work with Mexicans, Dominicans, Uruguayans, Puerto Ricans, a Spaniard, a Colombian and a Brazilian, not to mention the Albanians, last American guys, and aforementioned Chinese and Croatians. Every single one of them speaks a different type of Spanish.

I don't feel/believe immersion is a high priority (with my kids, anyway). I do agree, for adults, the more you use, the better you get. Spanish in American streets is interesting in that the variations are multiple and a lot of classroom stuff borders on useless. Anyone who is conversational in Spanish who talks to a Mexican and then a Dominican will likely get an F grade with their whitey school teacher.

FWIW, the last time I used Spanglish was yesterday.

I've been wanting to learn Spanish for years. I'll check out Duolingo as well as keeping up with this thread.

Thanks, CA-Hill!

There is no doubt that taking a Spanish speaking lover will help. The Dutch (you remember, they had colonies) call this method "the talking pillow."

I've recently read two books, both of which break down the learning of a language. They are very good. Fluent Forever by Gabriel Wyner is flat out brilliant. Gabe was a guy who graduated from Stanford with a music degree. He had the chops to be a top notch opera singer. But he was monolingual and set out to learn Italian, French, and Russian to further his career. At the time, He had graduate courses and wanted to study an hour a day in the most efficient way possible. His book outlines his process. (Get the sounds first. Don't go learning words first or you will have to correct them later. If you have got the sounds Then go on to learn vocab. Then grammar.) He pretty much mastered each those languages in a year. (And yeah, he lives in Vienna and sings opera).

But here's the deal. It is a lot of work. There is none of this "learn French in a month" sorta crap. He does his Spaced Repetition on Anki cards (a computerized card system with a spaced repetition algorithm.) He makes the cards himself. Say "Perrro." You write the Spanish word on one side with and add a audio file of a native speaking saying the word, which you get from forvo.com. Then you go to google images to find an image of a dog (Maybe you love Brittanys, so you'll get one of those for the front of the card.) Now you have a card with a pic of dog on front. You say the word, tap the card and it turns over. You have the audio say the word for you. See how it is written.

Gabe insists you should do this yourself. The process of searching for the image, for the audio burns the word into your memory. I haven't done that yet. I installed Anki and used a premade deck to learn the 625 most used words. I may make my own cards later. Gabe says its actually kind of fun. But I don't enjoy dicking around with the computer that much.

(His system is backed up by a lot of the most current thinking in linguistics and many studies are mentioned. I found this very convincing)>

I must say, his system is brilliant, and it may work for others. I am using parts of it. I don't really have to do the sounds first. I"m probably lower intermediate, but my accent is pretty good. (You speak like an educated man, I have been told more than once. Which means I could brush up a bit on my street Spanish). So I went to a premade 625 most used words in a pre-made Anki deck.
Wyner says that once you have the sounds and the vocabulary, you can start thinking about grammar.
The whole last section of his book is a compendium of free or inexpensive internet tools you can use in every phase of learning, including sites like italki, where you talk with a native speaker via Skype. It's free if you want to exchange English lessons for lessons in your target language. You can also hire a tutor to work with you on italki (at a pretty moderate cost). other sites he discusses offer similar programs.
I will review a second valuable book in another post. The Telenovela Method by Andrew Tracy. It sounds like a gimmick, but it is not. There is also a lot of hard work involved. I will explain the method and the system I am using to make that all a lot easier.
As a side note: I've heard Gabe Wyner speak French, and while I only know a few word of that language, he sounds very much like a native speaker to my ear. Maybe it's his singer's ear. I've heard Andrew Tracey speak Spanish. He sounds like a gringo with an excellent accent.
(To be continued)
Aside to Mickey: if you use Duo-lingo, repeat the words. Every time. You can tap the sound button and the program will say the word (words) again. Keep doing that until you feel you sound just like the speaker. You might even use the voice recorder on your phone to record you voice). You need to get the sound, the music of the language into your head. Both Wyner and Tracey make a big poing of doing that first.

It's funny, I just got to work and I'm sitting upstairs eating, and 15 feet away is a Tibetan who speaks English as a third (I think) language. He's got a newspaper, a notebook, and his phone in front him. His phone just said "demagogue".
He started here 12 years ago as a dishwasher, couldn't speak any English at all. Just Tibetan and mandarin.
After five years he became a waiter. He's always asking me "what does this word mean?" Or "how do you use this word?"'
Before long he's going to realize he has a better vocabulary than my dumb ass.

My wife is chilean and spanish is her first language. She's also fluent in english. She was never willing to help me learn. I wanted to speak spanish around the house and particularly with the kids but my wife never put any effort into. So, now I've got 2 kids in college who just speak english like me. On the plus side they have heard enough spanish that their college spanish professors have noted that they have south american accents when speaking in class rather than gringo accents. There's some chance we'll retire to chile or at least spend a bunch of time there and I think I've got a good chance of learning it then. Maybe I can find another chilean chick for the talking pillow... ;)

When our first daughter was born my wife's grandmother came up and lived with us for a year. My daughter could talk pretty early and knew to tell my Mom, "more juice", and my wife's grandmother, "mas jugo". When abuela went back to chile that was the end of spanish in the house. Abuela used to sit and talk to me for extended periods (kind of a loopy old lady). I got to where I could tell what was a sentence, what was a phrase, and what individual words were but there was no context so I never knew what she was saying. There was value in hearing it though in that it didn't just seem like a blur of sound. Years later I played bass and piano for a salsa/merengue group in a spanish speaking church. I could understand a fair bit from context there (although I never got their way of naming chords - the use solfege, do re mi, instead of C d e).

I used duolingo for about 6 months and don't feel like it got me any closer to having a conversation with someone who only speaks spanish... I may suck though.

In Texas, we had friends from the Flemish side of Belgium. They were A players in European Schutzhund (essentially a dog sport which involved bite work). Everytime they came back, their English was exceptionally better. They said it was mostly from watching "Friends" on TV. I shit you not.

Ayuda, mi cabina está en llamas !

Duolingo is good. Volunteers do the lessons. So the breadth of lessons is dependent upon who did the volunteering.

I had to punt the French because the recordings were muffled. The Russki is pretty good except that there is no provision for typing in Cyrillic. You have to swap back and forth on the keypad. Italiano seems pretty good, my colleagues who speak the language don't seem to give me odd looks when I talk to them. The spanish modules are nice, as far as I can tell.

To really learn a language, try this:
First, marry someone who is a native speaker of that language, and agree that each parent should speak their own language EXCLUSIVELY to any kids you have.
Next, listen.
Then, watch movies and TV shows in that language.
Also, go to many social engagements where you are the only English speaker.
It worked for me.

nafod wrote:Ayuda, mi cabina está en llamas !

No, no. llamas means "you call." Por exemplo: i"Como te llama." What do you call yourself? Or "what is your name?"

"Mi cabina esta en fuego" Eso es correcto.

But "en lllamas" can mean the same thing, "in flames." It just seems to me an awkward (google) translation. We need a native speaker to say which is more gooder.

I think.

The Venerable Bogatir X wrote:In Texas, we had friends from the Flemish side of Belgium. They were A players in European Schutzhund (essentially a dog sport which involved bite work). Everytime they came back, their English was exceptionally better. They said it was mostly from watching "Friends" on TV. I shit you not.

Back in the day, I did some work with an actor from Tijuana who spoke flawless, unaccented English. He said he learned by watching San Diego television stations.

It's a pretty common story - immigrants spending a ton of time in front of a television and learning the language. Social interaction can be hard to come by when you're "the new kid on the block"... I wonder if things are different now that kids can have access to entertainment in any language with the interwebs...

The pluses are that it's a ton of input and you learn a lot about the culture. The minuses are that it's passive and there's very little interaction.

WildGorillaMan wrote:I pick up languages quickly but I lose them just as quickly from disuse.

Same here. I used to be fluent in Latvian and Hebrew (latter not reading or writing). Lost both within about two years of not using. I love learning languages, but I know that it is useless for me to try learn one outside of the environment.