Quote: (10-21-2011 10:48 PM)manilaguy Wrote:
I've taught myself Spanish into a professional level, meaning that now my Spanish level is good enough that I now use it for work (in a Spanish centric business) on a daily basis. My native tongue is actually English and Tagalog.
My best advise for anyone who wants to be proficient at Spanish is to understand the requirements of learning a language. We should separate a learner according to beginners, intermediate, and advanced. Just like game, it is a matter of desire and interest that determines your level. I would say 95% of Spanish students are confined to mediocre Spanish and could hardly speak the language. The top 5%, like me, not to sound egoistical, are those who have incorporate Spanish into our lifestyle and have invested huge amount of time into language acquisitions trying which works and which doesn't.
There is not single program that will teach you to speak Spanish in 6 months. At most your level will be confined to speaking to Spanish school teachers or other Spanish students, and will not be at a level to chat a local off the street and engage them in a meaningful conversation.
You can learn the first 50% quickly, then the next 50% will require much from you at an exponentially increasing level. Meaning going from 50% to 80% will require less than say going from 95% to 97%. I believe this has to do with language decay, which is that if you don't use it, you lose it, and that the decay gets more prevalent the higher your level so much more is required of you to maintain it. You need to constantly learn and relearn, memorize as much as you can.
The only real way to learn Spanish, IMO, is to use it as much as you can and surround yourself with the language to the point that you forget your mother tongue at times. Most important if living in US or non Spanish speaking country, is to SURROUND (I cant emphasize enough) with the language.
If you have time to get immersion in a latin American country, best prepare before hand. I learned this the hard way. If you prepare before your immersion trip, meaning you study, your rate of Spanish acquisition will be so much higher than those who are beginning at 0.
There are four areas of languages: writing, speaking, listening, culture. They are equally important to a student. The writing forces your grammar, your listening tunes you in to regionalism, speaking forces you to be in an active state, and culture is the semantics -- the meaning behind the words in a cultural context giving it varying depths of meaning.
What I am now currently learning in my Spanish journey is that it is getting harder because of regionalism -- meaning that part that school does not teach you -- that Spanish is spoken differently in different regions, effectively making a finite set of Spanish dialects which in its own become mini-languages. Have you tried talking to a Dominican? Way different than talking a Spaniard.
Lastly, PM me if you have more questions. I leave with the thought that learning a language requires a HUGE commitment for the student, especially if you want to pass mundane conversations and into something like the professional world or talking to a local with zero English and no common ground. It aint easy.. but actually.. it pays monetarily and is worldly.. and is just fun to learn a language. Vale la pena.
This is priceless:
"hablas bien espanol"
"aaah.. gracias!"
very true
I will say that if you have a decent base of Spanish and then do 6 months of 1 on 1 study 6 hours a day in a spanish speaking country and don't speak English you can speak advanced level spanish. I did it and could have any conversation with someone off the street the no problems. Group conversations and following eveything on tv i couldn't do at a high level.
But you forget a language twice as fast as you learn it, so i am back to intermediate. Like manilaguy said it has to become a lifestyle to properly speak it.