Learning/retaining Spanish

[JJSCOTT2]

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I always hear this about watching Spanish language TV to learn the language, and I guess intuitively this makes sense because it's basically how we learn our native language in the first place. Having people speak at you and around you until you start understanding.

Although I haven't spent a lot of time on this I've tried this before and I never seem to be able to pick up on ANYTHING even with context, mostly because they speak way too fast and I just don't understand how, without speaking it to other people how this would work.

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I'm with JJ. They are way too fast for me. No chance of keeping up.
But I've been learning a few words here and there with a translation book and the occasional CD listen.

Watching the spanish programming with the closed-captioning helps me a lot. When they say the word super-fast and slur them all together like people normally do I can't catch it.
But when I can read it while they are saying it then I can figure out much better what's going on.

I also think you could do okay watching English programming with spanish captioning or sub-titles and pick up a little bit as you go if you are concentrating.

Even better if DVD's of movies are TV shows that you are really familiar with have an option to view it with Spanish dubbing and captioning.

Whether it's a movie like Star Wars or Dude, Where's my Car? if you've seen it enough times and pretty much know most of the lines then you should be able to learn something if you focus on it pretty closely in spanish because you always have some idea of what it is they're supposed to be saying.

Something like this is what I'm thinking of trying in the future. It just takes effort and I haven't put too much into it although I know more than I did 2 years ago.
I'll get there eventually.

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Does the close captioning delay give you many problems.....given that you don't know what you're listening to in the first place, how can you be sure what the captions are referring to?

[lennytheduck]

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I was sitting with two Cubans at a poker table in Vegas. We talked in between almost every hand.

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Nobody brought up the idea of 'english only at the table'?

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Yeah they did, thats why we did in between hands. THere were some asians there as well obv and two israelis speaking hebrew.

[MicroBob]

I already know a few words. Not many, but enough to give me a start.
And some of the other words that I wouldn't have known are kind of obvious because they're so close.

And on something like the Jay Leno show they go back and forth obviously and you can tell which words are supposed to be attributed to which person.

With a spanish program like the news it just helps me to see the word in captioning because they say everything so fast and run so many of the words together (not too badly of course, but just too much for somebody like me who is barely hanging in there).
I'm able to pick up enough with the captioning to barely begin to comprehend it but there are a lot of words that I know which I wouldn't have recognized in the sentence if I hadn't seen it in the captioning too.

A lot of it becomes intuitive after awhile because of the combo of a few words you already know combined with enough words that are similar enough to the english word.


But it definitely helps if you have somebody there who you can ask, "Did he just say such-and-such?" plus you really need SOME kind of a foundation in the language.
And I'm certainly not picking up every bit and understanding the whole story because my spanish isn't nearly good enough. I'm just happy trying to pick out 1 or 2 words at a time.

To start with and get some kind of a foundation just the Berlitz pocket-book with basic spanish phrases is probably okay.
You need SOMETHING.

You don't need to spend a ton on Rosetta Stone CD packages although others really like them I guess.

Some of the cheaper CD/Computer DVD packages that are available at Barnes and Noble or other places are probably almost as good and will at least give you a start.

[yingyang0]

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I'm really interesting in learning Spanish and would like to do an immersion program next summer (ideally spain, mexico if not). Has anyone done one of these, knowing basically nothing going in? How long does it take you to get to conversationally competent assuming it's pretty intensive one? If anyone has done this is Spain recommendations would be great, but thats a long shot.

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If you're from the US you should do a program in central or south america, not spain. Why? Because you're going to hear mexican/cuban/south american spanish in the US, not "spain" spanish.

I've lived in both Spain and Uruguay. I did an immersion program in Uruguay (1 semester and summer in college). I can't tell you how long it takes because it is different for everybody. People with a solid understanding of the roots of english words (Latin) will pick up spanish very quickly. If you do it for the summer (3+ months) you should be able to hold basic conversation by the end.

Again, if you're an american do yourself a favor and don't do a program in spain. I love the country but if you learn spanish there then when you come back you'll have to learn a new dialect to speak with mexicans and cubans. The difference between american english and British is very much like the difference between mexican/cuban spanish and "spain" spanish.

[selurah]

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Take an extended vacation around South and Central America.

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This is by far the best and quickest way to learn to speak fluently IMO, but it's just not a reasonable option for most.

[Sooga]

1) read a couple books to start with
2) start practicing with random spanish-speakers
3) move to a spanish-speaking country
4) ganar dinero

[Duke]

Why, again, did you choose Spanish? I'd imagine that you only had to take a foreign language, and not that specifically.

[Tyrannosaurus]

Watch a Seinfeld DVD or a Movie you already know but still want to watch, and put it on in spanish.

[emon87]

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Why, again, did you choose Spanish? I'd imagine that you only had to take a foreign language, and not that specifically.

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Proclaimed by many to be the easiest.

[JOEL_]

Espanglishchat.com

English spanish chat room where they go to practice either spanish or english.