I’m hoping I get good responses in this forum - I considered GQ, but I thought it would get moved.
Recently I’ve been trying to learn some Spanish to make myself more marketable in my job search. Also I enjoy languages (this will be my fourth after French, Japanese, and Latin). Taking a class isn’t really an option for me, so I’ve been investingating the “learn independantly” options. The Foreign Service Institute CDs (also available from Barron’s) is a CD and book, like I’d like, but it’s overly formal and old-fashioned (not to mention, rumor has it it’s got a lot of “Where are the war planes?” sort of things.)
The Pimsleur method is supposed to be more “modern”, but has no book - all CD. It’s expensive, but there’s a “Quick and Easy” version that’s just the first 8 lessons, so you can try it out, for 19.99. I tried that, and it’s okay… but for “nice to meet you” it teaches “Encantada”, which I know isn’t current at all. It’s also teaching me to say “Castellano” as opposed to “Espanol”. This isn’t useful to me! These are things I know are bad - what happens when I “learn” something else wrong that I’m not sophisticated enough to sniff out?
There’s also this much talked about learningspanishlikecrazy.com thing. I’ve heard it mentioned but not really reviewed online. It’s a set of CDs (you also get some of the competition’s CDs too) as well as some interactive help. It’s pretty expensive, but then again if it’s really more correct and useful, that would be worth it to me.
Does anybody have any direct experience with this? The website looks… suspicious. Any good or bad experiences? Anything anybody knows could really be helpful.
FYI, Castellano is basically the form of Spanish spoken in Spain. The main differences between it and Latin American Spanish are some of the world choices and the fact that they have a separate second person plural verb form, called the vosotros.
I like learnspanish.com, which is completely free. I always used it in conjunction with school lessons though, so I don’t know how it would be by itself. Can’t hurt to try though.
I’d also like to applaud you on your initiative. Spanish is an incredibly useful language to know in this country. Greetings to a fellow language lover.
Well, yes, I know in Spain they call it Castellano, but I and nearly every American trying to learn it from CDs in their cars expect to be taught Latin American Spanish. I need to be able to talk to cleaning ladies and migrant workers from Guatemala and Mexico, and if I tell them I hablo Castellano, everywhere I go at work I’ll hear little tittering laughter, and “mumble mumble mumble Castellano mumble mumble!” And my pride really can’t take that.
Oh, I forgot to mention that whatever CD set I get, I’m supplementing with a textbook - Spanish the Easy Way, which is the same thing as Spanish Now I except it has the answers in the back. I don’t feel any of the CDs give you enough vocabulary.
No need to rip on something that teaches Castilian Spanish, unless it’s claiming to do otherwise. I spent 2 years in Spain and castellano and encantada sound perfectly fine to me. It seems to be perceived kind of like British English would be hear. When I speak with working class folks from Mexico or Central America they do seem to find my accent a little formal.
I do value studying Latin American Spanish, too, and have taught myself a lot, also. One thing I find very helpful is listening to music. You probably have Spanish language radio you can listen to for free in your car. Spanish language TV is also an option.
We have free Spanish language publications available in a lot of local Mexican restaurants.
I was looking at (and listening to) some Pimsleur CDs lately. They did have a little booklet for very brief “read along” assignments in the one I listened to. And I could swear that they also had a Latin American version, or subset. I can’t afford to buy this stuff so I just check it out from the library. Some libraries have it and others don’t.
Maybe you could find someone who speaks Spanish in the dialect you want to learn to exchange Spanish for English lessons?
I’m thinking I may lay down the cash for the rest of Pimsleur I. They’ve got a lot of different packages, but the “complete” one is quite expensive. (I don’t mind paying if I’m getting what I think I ought to from it.) It’s not that I’m upset about learning a mix of Spanish and Latin American Spanish, but I’d like them to say “We say “encantada” in Spain and “mucho gusto” in Latin America!” - there weren’t any locational suggestions at all.
I was interested in learningspanishlikecrazy.com because it claims to teach the authentic Latin American version, but I’m concerned because all the reviews I can find online seem rather like shills. Also, it’s not the most polite Spanish in the world; Pimsleur and others are rather “formal” in that I’m on lesson 7 and haven’t heard anything but “usted”, but then agian I’m a librarian and need to learn formal workplace Spanish first and foremost.
Yeah, their German was all Sie and Ihnen, which is correct but just not the (only) way it’s spoken anymore. It’s a lot quicker switch to the informal than it used to be, and it’s no longer unheard of to use the informal case with strangers. So it does come across as a bit quaint, but you still get the gist of things from it.
