[Jsprint]

OP with regards to accents I wouldn't get too caught up as to what accent to learn with. Like others have said there are variations but ultimately Spanish is Spanish and when you understand it you will understand everyone.

[Chunnel]

I love bachata music and have used that to help my oral comprehension.

Prince Royce sings remarkably clear and slow, so does Xtreme.

Once you get that down, you can graduate to Romeo Santos (Aventura) who tries to pack as many syllables as he can into one breath.

[ElFlaco]

(05-20-2017 02:29 AM)Jsprint Wrote:  

OP with regards to accents I wouldn't get too caught up as to what accent to learn with. Like others have said there are variations but ultimately Spanish is Spanish and when you understand it you will understand everyone.

From your comment I can only assume that you have either a lot of experience communicating with speakers of various dialects or you have very little. Accent (pronunciation) and vocabulary differences (part of dialect) vary considerably across regions and social class. This is fairly easy for native speakers to negotiate but not so much for learners.

[ElFlaco]

(05-20-2017 02:16 AM)Jsprint Wrote:  

Immersion is great but you can immerse yourself at home.

The advantage of in-country immersion, I think, is that motivation is high. However, as you say, it's possible -- rather common, in fact -- to be 'immersed' and do little with the language. If most of your interactions involve ordering in restaurants and asking for directions and fifteen-minute conversations twice a week, then you're missing the true immersion experience. Meaningful immersion means traveling for two weeks with a group of locals, using only Spanish. On the flip side, it's possible to not be immersed and do a lot with the language at home (self-study, videos/TV/movies, language exchanges, iTalki, etc.).

My objection to the 'immersion is key' argument is that it tends to serve as an excuse for doing little/nothing. The thinking is: If I can't improve my Spanish without immersion and if immersion is not possible right now, then I'm justified in not advancing. This attitude is extremely common.

I made tremendous strides with intensive, out-of-country self-study. When I arrived, people assumed I had lived here for years. Sadly, now that I've actually been here for many years, people rarely compliment my Spanish once they know how long I've been here.

[scrambled]

https://www.newsinslowspanish.com/ for listening comprehension training

[RoastBeefCurtains4Me]

I find that DJs and commercials on the radio seem to have the clearest enunciation. I've spent a lot of time in the Netherlands. I can just speak English all the time here, but I do find myself picking up lots of words from signs and menus and such. However, I find it very hard to recognize individual Dutch words when people are speaking. If I read a Dutch word, I would pronounce it the way it would sound as an English word. However, Dutch has different sounds for some letters, and somehow the Dutch accent renders these words almost completely beyond my ability to understand.

Like I said, people speaking on the radio seem to have the most clearly enunciated speech for me. You could probably find some internet radio stations from Spain, and try to understand them. Once you can recognize what they are saying, you might be more easily able to understand normal speech.

[Gopnik]

delete

[Gopnik]

(05-20-2017 02:29 AM)Jsprint Wrote:  

OP with regards to accents I wouldn't get too caught up as to what accent to learn with. Like others have said there are variations but ultimately Spanish is Spanish and when you understand it you will understand everyone.

Yes and no.

It's just like with English, where people in Scotland or northern England, speak differently to how a Londoner, New Yorker or someone from Texas would speak.

Not only the accent is different but even some everyday words and expressions can be different.

It works exactly the same in Spanish. In Spain for example we say "Echar de menos" whereas in most Latin countries they use "Te extraño". There's loads of similar examples .

If your Spanish is VERY good, you can understand all spoken varieties, almost like a native does. Most foreigners however speak mediocre Spanish at best, even those that say it's an easy language.

I'm a native speaker from Spain and occasionally I find it hard to understand Dominican Spanish, specially when it's poorly educated people using a lot of slang. It's almost like a creole language to an extent.

This being said though, the more educated someone is, the more "standard" his Spanish becomes, no matter the country.

Overall, it might be better to pick a variety that aligns best with your learning goals when starting out.

[buja]

(05-18-2017 08:09 PM)BrewDog Wrote:  

(05-18-2017 07:53 PM)ElFlaco Wrote:  

Quote:

"I've never had a day of English class in my life." And his English was rock solid.

People lie about that all the time. It simultaneously makes them look talented and excuses any shortcomings.

Considering this guy was a waiter and dropped out of school in the 7th grade and had no other education at all, I'll take his word for it.

I believe him. The classroom is horrible place to learn a language.
I had 1 year of high school Spanish. Met a guy who had 4 years of high school and 4 years of college Spanish classes...he couldn't carry on a conversation to save his life.

Many people try to speak Spanish after taking high school/college classes and they can only think in terms of conjugation tables and vocabulary lists.

[Jsprint]

The reason I believe accent doesn't matter is because when I first started speaking everyone would say which nationality had the clearest accent. They would say speak with an Ecuadorian or speak with a Colombian or a Spaniard from the south. But it didn't matte ho I spoke to, I just didn't know enough Spanish. At the. Whining I could have spoken to anyone from any Spanish speaking country and it wouldn't have mattered because I had no idea of what was being said. This is why I believe accent doesn't matter. When you had the vocabulary you can speak with everyone.

[Jsprint]

I agree. Some people use the whole lack of immersion as a huge excuse. With regards to people not being as impressed, learn Portuguese. Brazilians practically throw you a party everytime you speak if you take the time to learn their language.

[ElFlaco]

(05-23-2017 09:54 PM)buja Wrote:  

Met a guy who had 4 years of high school and 4 years of college Spanish classes...he couldn't carry on a conversation to save his life.

It's worse than that. There are lots of college Spanish (Chinese, etc.) majors/graduates who can't carry on a conversation outside of familiar/rudimentary topics.

The point isn't that everyone learns from a classroom experience. Far from it. For one thing, lots of classrooms are bad. Other reasons, too. The point is that it's unrealistic to think you'll achieve intermediate proficiency without it. If these people existed in sizable numbers (enough to recommend this as a strategy), I would have met them by now.

The main exceptions are people who have prior successful language-learning experience with a different language; people whose native language is closely related; also, people who think 'intermediate' means being able to carry on simple conversations on basic topics, but who lack accuracy and can't discuss things outside the areas of their immediate experience. That's more like A2 level (elementary; advanced beginner).

[lonewolf1992]

I learned English all by myself, and though I know I don't speak or write perfectly, here I am exchanging ideas with all of you folks. I Just took the basic grammar lessons when I was in highschool. The rest was because of immersion. At first ARTIFICIAL IMMERSION for 2 years helped me to gain an ear for it, I started to play american radio stations online EVERYDAY, tv shows, after 5 months I was more responsive to the language because first, I love it, and second, I immersed into it. My grandpa used to tell my mother if I had gone insane because "your son spends all day talking to himself in some strange language I don't understand".Grammar is very important, but IMMERSION IS THE KEY. You don't have to come to SA for that, just get some spanish content and consume it on a daily basis, newspapers, books, videogames, and music, but as well remember you have to ACTIVATELY USE THAT CONTENT.

On the other hand, when it comes to get proficient to a conversational level, you have to immerse naturally. Artificial immersion will not be enough for this. So how did I solve it?, well, I live in a country where there are no true opportunities and people struggle everyday to get a crappy job, but not in the call center industry, And I had the chance to work 2 years in a call center where I polished my English, and now I even have a quite decent accent. If any of you guys want to practice Spanish with me I will be more than happy to help.

[lonewolf1992]

(05-24-2017 01:53 AM)Jsprint Wrote:  

The reason I believe accent doesn't matter is because when I first started speaking everyone would say which nationality had the clearest accent. They would say speak with an Ecuadorian or speak with a Colombian or a Spaniard from the south. But it didn't matte ho I spoke to, I just didn't know enough Spanish. At the. Whining I could have spoken to anyone from any Spanish speaking country and it wouldn't have mattered because I had no idea of what was being said. This is why I believe accent doesn't matter. When you had the vocabulary you can speak with everyone.

I have a hard time understanding what the costeños in my own country say. Of course I will be able to communicate with them, but I will have to tell them to stop every five minutes to explain the slang or speak slower. I don't know if americans experience the same with British cockney or brummie, but In my case I can hardly get what they say, American is by far the clearest and easiest to me.

[ElFlaco]

(05-24-2017 12:43 PM)lonewolf1992 Wrote:  

I learned English all by myself, and though I know I don't speak or write perfectly, here I am exchanging ideas with all of you folks. I Just took the basic grammar lessons when I was in highschool.

In other words, you didn't learn without classes. Self-study can be effective once you have a base.

As I mentioned above, English is a special case. It's everywhere. It's nothing like that for Spanish, even in the American southwest.

Quote:

You don't have to come to SA for that, just get some spanish content and consume it on a daily basis, newspapers, books, videogames, and music, but as well remember you have to ACTIVATELY USE THAT CONTENT.

Agreed, once you have a decent base. That's what this discussion is about.

Quote:

On the other hand, when it comes to get proficient to a conversational level, you have to immerse naturally.

Demonstrably false. There are tons of competent second-language speakers around the world who have never left their home countries.

[Sisyphus]

For watching TV I recommend using a good pair of headphones. When I'm sitting on the couch and watching a TV which is across the room I find it much harder to understand. Suddenly all the creaking and little background noises in your place seem to be amplified. Think of it as a crutch or training wheels.

Also YouTube has a ton of novelas. Find one where it's good sound quality, the people speak clearly, and you actually care about the story. All the ones with drug kingpins (El Señor de los Cielos, La Reina del Sur) are usually really heavy on slang so I don't recommend those. I found El Rostro de la Venganza to be pretty easy to understand and the chicks to be pretty hot. Although novelas have a lot of screaming there are some dramatic passages where they speak really slowly for effect so you get a good range of tempos to deal with.