[scotian]

Hi guys, I started an intensive Spanish course today and so far, so good.

A few days ago I was introduced to a lady who offered to tutor me in Spanish, she also speaks French fluently, as do I (my second language).

I'm wondering if that would help me to learn Spanish, having a teacher who would explain things to me in French instead of my native English, or would it be best to have a tutor who only speaks Spanish?

Your thoughts please!

[gringochileno]

I guess it couldn't hurt to have someone who also speaks French and could explain things if they happen to be similar between French and Spanish, but I'd also advise staying away from mixing up the languages too much. When I learned Portuguese after learning Spanish, I had a tendency to unintentionally switch from one language to the other in mid-sentence if I said a word that was similar in both of them (like "ahora" and "agora"). Knowing another romance language is great for quickly learning the grammar and helping you recognize vocabulary words but you want to be mindful of this danger and try to keep them separate if possible. The ideal would be to have someone teach you in English, but be able to make the connection for you when something comes up that's analogous between French and Spanish.

[Parlay44]

My parents are each from a different country so I grew up speaking both languages. Yugoslavian and Bulgarian. The languages are pretty similar but the dialects are way different. Like comparing American English to British English. Yeah you can fumble through it but it's not the same as being a native speaker. They have their own idioms and colloquialisms. I actually learned English as my 3rd language growing up. It may sound stupid but I learned it by watching TV shows like Sesame Street and all the kids' shows. By the time I was 5 and in school I was fluent in 3 languages. I went back to visit family a while back and spent a month in Europe and I was forced to speak it all day everyday. After about a week or two you'll forget all about English. You'll know when it's starting to sink in when you start having dreams in the other language.

[el mechanico]

I think it maybe confusing from French but try both ways and see.

[joehoya]

One of the nice things about having a Spanish instructor who also speaks French is that she can give you a heads up on how to exploit the similarities between French and Spanish to your advantage, and can also tell you where most folks who speak French trip up when learning Spanish.

In my own case, French was my second language, and I got reasonably proficient at it (enough to travel around Paris for extended periods, without having to speak English to anyone other than other tourists), When I decided to learn Spanish, my French kept invading my attempts at Spanish speech. Eventually, my focus was so heavily on Spanish (I almost never use French, other than to talk to the occasional Haitian girl in the DR) that the Spanish completely took over.

I recently had an experience where a French tourist was staying at my hotel in Costa Rica, and it was extremely difficult to talk to him because my Spanish kept invading. I think that had I continued to maintain my French (by watching French movies, reading French newspapers, and listening to French music) while focusing on Spanish, my Spanish development would have been a little slower, but in the end I would have retained my French proficiency.

As it stands now, I am going to refresh my French in the Fall.

[wolf]

Damn with people having 3 languages I've been getting lazy on keeping up with my Russian.

I heard French is easier to learn after you learn Spanish, is it true?

[Parlay44]

(01-10-2012 09:24 PM)wolf Wrote:  

Damn with people having 3 languages I've been getting lazy on keeping up with my Russian.

Dude my mother speaks like 7 fluently ...and she's just a little farm girl from former Yugoslavia. She grew up dirt poor. They have a certain emphasis to learn languages in Europe. There's a joke she used to say. People who speak 3 languages are trilingual. People who speak 2 languages are bilingual. People who speak one language are Americans

Russian is a really cool language by the way. Keep up with your studies.

[Hencredible Casanova]

Knowing French will help with learning Spanish grammar. However, the pronunciations are much different.

Since English is your mother tongue, Spanish pronunciations shouldn't be hard for you.

The most important thing to take away from Spanish as a beginner is the constancy of the vowel sounds. As a rule of thumb, they rarely change.

The vowel sounds in Spanish seldom change (a, e, i, o, u).

For example, a name like Abraham. In Spanish, each instance of the vowel "a" has the same sound; Ah-Brah-Ha-m. Every instance of the letter "a" in that name has an "ah" pronunciation.

For a non-native speaker, I think English grammar rules are much harder to learn because they are arbitrary. Unlike Spanish, you can't just look at a word and assume you know how to pronounce it because the vowel sounds are different depending on the word.

Saying the name Abraham in English, for example, each instance of the letter "a" has a different pronunciation. A-bra-ham. Just focus on the "a" sound in that name. In each instance, it's a different pronunciation. It goes from the sound of the letter "A" to the sound "Ah" and then "the sound of a in the word ham." That's three different pronunciations in three different instances of the letter "a" in a single name.

Spanish is much more scalable to learn. You just got to keep speaking. Make use of the opportunity to do so while you're down in Colombia. Once you get back to North America, it's going to be harder to maintain, even if you have Spanish-speaking friends. English is just too dominant.

Don't be shy or scared when practicing. Keep making mistakes and failing. It's like the game; that's how you learn. Also, people in Spanish countries are mad patient with you when you try to speak. You chose a good place to learn the language because the Colombian accent is probably the most neutral and elegant. I love hearing Colombianas speak Spanish. I'm jealous right now man haha. Have fun!