I was wondering. I would like to learn Spanish but I don’t want to waste money on something I wouldn’t get the hang of.
I’m 36, and never really had a good ability for languages. When I was little I spoke Serbo-Croat but I never used it and today cannot understand it.
My parents were Yugoslav and I never used it and they never used it to me. Thus my brothers and sister spoke it (they used it) but I never did.
So how hard is it to learn another language? What is the best way?
Well, I started learning German in high school, and then after that I had enough of the language to begin reading German web pages. So I’m on maybe eight years (?), and I think I can converse well enough to get around Deutschland.
But I have a friend who learned Spanish all by cassette tape and reading books.
Then again, now he and his wife are enrolled in the DLI (Defense Language Institute), which I should think is the fastest way to learn any language.
The fastest way is to get the basic structure through classes or tapes, then get totally immersed in a place where that is the only language spoken. If you have to sink or swim, you’ll learn to swim pretty fast.
Sure, learning a new language is hard, especially if it’s in a different family than one you already know. But you wouldn’t be asking the question if you didn’t think it would be helpful to you.
Go for it!! After all, there’s a reason they teach Spanish in junior high schools all over the country. It’s not that difficult.
IMHO, the best way to learn any language is with some serious course of study, that is, not just futzing around with tapes whenever you feel like it. Dare I suggest the local junior college? At the very least, get a good book with tapes and stick to it.
Also, if you sign up for a course, you will get practice speaking it to other people, which helps you learn even faster (you get instant feedback).
It all depends. Really. Some people are very good at picking up new languages, and others stink at it. I don’t know where you live, but here in Fort Worth, Texas, we have a large assortment of Spanish-language books and tapes available at the library and at local book and music stores. The community college offers Spanish, French, and German as “continuing education” classes…which means that you don’t have to go to college full time to take a class or two. Check out your local library first, see if you can borrow a book or tape for beginning students.
Oh, and by the way…if you plan to speak Spanish, be advised that Mexican Spanish and Spanish Spanish are not the same. I learned this the hard way when I went to live in Spain for a couple of years.
You’ll never know unless you give it a try. As has been said, the best way is probably to follow a course with an instructor to coach you through the basics, then go on on your own by reading, listening to tapes etc. And, of course, using the language as often as you can.
As for how hard - that depends, it’s a knack that some people have and others don’t. Try it, it’s hard work, but it’s rewarding.
Spiny N.
You will probably do better than the average monolingual student, since you have some background in a foreign language. I wholeheartedly recommend that you try a class, and here are three suggestions on how to prepare:
Go to the bookstore and buy an English/Spanish dictionary. Go ahead and spend $20 or $25 for a good one, if possible with an appendix on Spanish grammar, because you will need to…
Familiarize yourself with Spanish grammar, including declension of nouns (not too complicated, except that they have a gender), and conjugation and tense of verbs (a little bit more complex). Any time spent reading this will pay off in spades once the class starts. If you can’t find a dictionary with a grammar appendix, I suggest going to a used college bookstore and hunting up an old edition beginning Spanish textbook - these are usually dirt cheap after the new edition is published.
If you have access to a Spanish TV station (Isn’t there a Univision station in Chicago?) tape the news (noticias) in both English and Spanish, and then watch both. You will get a feel for the rhythm and pronunciation of the language, and pick up quite a bit of vocabulary as well.
Buena Suerte!
Thanks, I have to agree with Lynn Bodoni some people pick it up fast. I guess I’m concerned as that when I was little I spoke Serbo-Croat and I completely lost the ablility to speak it. In fact
I recall being 4 and speaking to people that I know don’t speak English but in my mind I recall it as English. Weird huh?
Also it’s odd in that we have an intern from The Netherlands and she speaks Dutch, English and French and I got a letter in Spanish and she was all like “OK I’ll figure it out and you know what she did.”
And we had another intern that was Korean trying to teach me a few words of Korean and the Dutch intern comes up and perfectly pronounces the Korean. It seems to be so easy for her…
Errgh, doggoned foreigners. Must be nice to speak 3, 4, 5, or more languages perfectly. Curse this ethnocentric U.S. where we are all absolutely convinced that one language is all you need. I’m just finishing up my first semester studying Spanish (it will be my minor, and I hope to study abroad), and it seems like such a waste since if I was born in the right situation, I could have learned Spanish and a few other languages with zero effort. So much work to achieve what so many others achieve before they are even lucid.
ahem [rant mode off] Now back to your regularly scheduled thread.
if you’re reasonably smart, and put your mind to it, you can learn a foreign language, at any age. the best way, of course, is a bit of initial instruction, then total immersion. that and to be seven years old. if you go somewhere where they speak any english, as soon as you kick in with your novice spanish, they’ll switch to english and frustrate you. even though they were trying to be nice.
if you’re a native english speaker, spanish is a good language to try, because it only has a couple sounds english doesn’t, the grammar isn’t radically different from english (this may sound dumb, but compared to say, russian or greenlandic, english and spanish aren’t radically different- word order is important, agreement is minimal, person is identical… your english intuition will work sometimes, whereas with say, japanese, it will fail every time) and finally, the written form is very regular- 99% of the time it sounds like it looks. the inverse, of course, is true for written english. also, a lot of english words have latinate or greek roots, so the corresponding spanish words will often be similar, and easier to remember or figure out if you just don’t know and have to go from context. so yes, go for it!
that said, i agree some people DO seem to have a knack for languages, especially being able to pronounce sounds not found in their native tongues. my mother could do it effortlessly, i can’t do it to save my life. i got a linguistics degree anyway. i’m stubborn. i like to think of it as a knack.
-fh
Spanish isn’t too hard, because at least Spanish was developed by Westerners (IE: people who think about language structures and grammer like native English speakers think about them). But some of the other languages are freaking hard!!
I’m studying Korean now (have been for the past 4 years, on and off), and I’m just now to the point where I can move around Seoul and do the things I want to do with no major problems… but as soon as I get into a conversation with a Korean, I’m lost! I end up nodding and saying “Yeah!” a lot, as if I understand them…
How haed can it be, like a billion people, even 2 year olds, can speak it.
Just get a lover of the language you want to learn. Want to learn latin? Get a latin lover on friday, by mon you should know it.