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Thinking of learning Spanish during the lockdown

Paul David

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I have a lot of extra time on my hands at the moment and have always loved the idea of learning to speak Spanish.

My ultimate aim is to earn enough money to move to Spain full time so it certainly makes sense to learn the language beforehand.

I've been reading different methods online and from all accounts, you will learn quicker if you talk Spanish.

Baselang have a course for $150 a month where you can schedule as many 30 min online meetings with Spanish speakers. In addition to the course material.

Does anyone have any recommendations?
 
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NursingTn

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Immersion.

The idea is to live, eat, shit, speak, watch, hear, etc a particular lifestyle conducive to learn a particular skill.

Watch Spanish movies with English subtitles, talk only in Spanish to as many people as you can who understands Spanish, read Spanish books, listen to news in Spanish, study Spanish grammar, etc.

It will be insanely difficult in the first couple days, weeks, or months. But anything worthwhile will be difficult in the beginning phase.

Good luck.
 

Andy Black

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Baselang have a course for $150 a month where you can schedule as many 30 min online meetings with Spanish speakers. In addition to the course material.
Blimey. Imagine being a native Spanish speaker and you’re paid to just chat.
 

Roli

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Blimey. Imagine being a native Spanish speaker and you’re paid to just chat.

It's not quite like that. For $150 you get unlimited tutoring and can speak with a tutor as many times as you like. So an enthusiastic student chatting 3 times a day for a month is taking that fee down to about $0.70

Although the average student probably averages a few times a week. However that is still cheap, it appears the owner of Baselang gets round this by hiring cheap labour in Venezuela.

All in all though, it sounds like a good user experience, I just read this article.

 
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GPM

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Go read a book called Fluent Forever and then either use their recommendation of using Anki cards, or grab the app that the guy just released. When I was doing this properly my Spanish vocabulary absolutely exploded.
 
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Deleted78083

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Two questions: what is your native language? How many foreign languages have you learnt before (up to speaking them fluently)?

Learning a language is probably one of the most intellectually painful thing I have ever done, so one needs to be motivated. Getting a partner that speaks the language helps.

I wouldn't pay anything, not at the beginning at least. What i always do when I learn a new language is looking at the structure of the language: genders, tenses, specifications (for Dutch, it would be the order of the words that change, for Spanish, it is the "subjuntivo" and the two verbs "to be", for English, it was the notion of "continuous" tenses).

Here's what I learn in chronological order:
- the verb to be and the verb to have + any other irregular verbs
- how to conjugate the rest of the verbs at the present tense
- basic vocabulary, look for "1000 most used words in Spanish" and learn them by heart
- one past tense (you have several). Spanish from Spain uses the Pretérito perfecto compuesto the most, while Spanish from South America uses Pretérito perfecto simple
- basic grammar rules (according the adjectives with nouns, for example)
- then I learn the future.

And then, I would start paying for a coach to learn the difficult stuff (el subjuntivo). Personally, I learnt English watching How I met your mother (first with subtitles in my native language, then with subtitles in English). For Spanish, I first took a free introductory course, looking at the elements above, then once I had understood them, I moved to Spain and went to a language school.

Mind that in Spain itself, they speak with different accents and still use their dialects (to which they are reaaallllyyyyy attached), so take this into account when you choose a serie or a movie. Also the Spanish Spanish is more "complete" (and slightly more complicated to pronounce) than the South-American Spanish, so that's the one I'd recommend to go for. You can always adapt your accent later if you want to.

Best of luck!

Monfi
 

Olimac21

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Try Lingvist, I used it for french and was super good.

Otherwise I believe Italki is a good option and I also recommend Lingoda for a more structured approach.
 

Rabby

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Have you decided yet whether you are learning Spanish? What would it take for someone to either talk you into it or talk you out of it?

You described your goal like this:

My ultimate aim is to earn enough money to move to Spain full time

It's telling that "earn enough money" to move to Spain is in there. My thought: figure out exactly how much money that is and use your spare time planning and testing how to make that, if that's an accurate description of the goal.

Learning Spanish now might or might not make sense, who knows. How close are you to the goal that requires Spanish to be learned, and does learning it now bring you closer to that goal? That would by my way of thinking about it, anyway.
 

Alexander90

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[QUOTE = "Paul David, publicación: 864154, miembro: 29606"]
Tengo mucho tiempo extra en mis manos en este momento y siempre me ha encantado la idea de aprender a hablar español.

Mi objetivo final es ganar suficiente dinero para mudarme a España a tiempo completo, por lo que ciertamente tiene sentido aprender el idioma de antemano.

He estado leyendo diferentes métodos en línea y de todas las cuentas, aprenderás más rápido si hablas español.

Baselang tiene un curso por $ 150 al mes donde puede programar tantas reuniones en línea de 30 minutos con hispanohablantes. Además del material del curso.

¿Alguien tiene alguna recomendación?
[/CITAR]

Hi! I suggest that if you want to learn Spanish, read good books that help you introduce yourself to the language, spend as much time as possible practicing, make learning part of your daily routine, download audio that you can listen to on the go, see movies with subtitles, listen to music in Spanish. I have 3 pdf books with very good strategies to study Spanish, I will gladly send them to you. If you are interested send me an email to alex.g89ander@gmail.com
 

Xavier X

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I used Duolingo to learn the basics of Spanish. I have now spent a total of 12 months in 5 Spanish speaking countries over the last 2.5 years. The immersion forces you to actually speak the language in real world scenarios.

I can get by with conversations, but should be a lot more fluent than I am now. I haven't engaged the language as actively as I should.

All in all, I'd still recommend Duolingo as a decent place to start right now, for free. In an hour, you could be speaking some basic Spanish already.
 
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Alferez

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Hi, I'm a spanish guy and I would love to speak some english and teach Spanish if you want. I consider myself as fluent in English so if you like the idea you can contact me.
 
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Longinus

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Go read a book called Fluent Forever and then either use their recommendation of using Anki cards, or grab the app that the guy just released. When I was doing this properly my Spanish vocabulary absolutely exploded.

Just came back to this thread to thank you for this suggestion @GPM :praise:

Paid for private lessons for Polish for more than 6 months and super frustrated I still can't use stuff in daily life. It was a very "schoolish" approach with a ton of emphasizing on grammar. Lessons were 50% reproduction from what I learned previous lessons, it was terribly boring.

Fired my teacher from the moment I started reading Fluent Forever. Making flashcards now for pronunciation and way more motivated to learn new languages than before. Will keep you guys updated!
 

The-J

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Hellotalk, it's free and you can just talk to people
 

Anda el Diablo

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As many have echoed here, and the obvious best way is immersion. The thing that helped me most with learning languages was actually writing text back and forth. The first language I learned was Portuguese and I had a Brazilian girlfriend who didn’t speak English, my Portuguese was pretty bad when we met. We would talk via messenger when she was at work during the day, and at night when she got off, I was able to utilize what I learned verbally. The thing that is nice talking via text is you have time to read, comprehend, and respond. It also helps that you can use a translator. Google translate isn’t always spot on, but it will definitely help learning many words. It will also make you sound like an idiot from time to time, but that’s ok. After 6 years of learning Spanish, I still sound like an idiot on a daily basis. I found that at first, with the different way people speak from different places, it makes it somewhat difficult to understand verbal communication, though it is most important. Verbally, you don’t have a lot of time to comprehend everything coming at you, where as reading you can read over and over and if you don’t understand, you can attempt to translate.

If you are actually going to use the program You are talking about to it’s full potential, I’d say it could be worth the money. If they are using mostly Venezuelans, that’s a good place to start. Colombians and Venezuelans are probably the easiest Spanish speakers to understand IMO, and I say that as someone who learned Dominican Spanish, which is a pretty messed up form of Spanish, but it is easiest for me to understand since I speak to Dominicans on a daily basis (my wife is Dominican). I still to this day dread speaking to my father in law over the phone because I don’t understand half of it (he speaks ridiculously fast and barely opens his mouth. He gives 0 thought into Spanish being my second language and him needing to turn it town about 3 noches). It’s funny, sometimes I have to have my wife translate Spanish to Spanish, because I understand everything she says every time. Also, speaking on the phone is much harder than speaking in person. Duolingo is good for learning basics, it won’t get you very advanced though. As echoed above, utilize music, movies, and books. You’re going to want to learn the basics first or none of those things will make any sense to you. If you need any music or movie recommendations let me know.


One more recommendation I would make, not so much to the OP since he is married, but for any single guys.. Sign up for a popular dating site that is frequently used in Latin America. Latina girls are typically quite friendly and open to meeting foreigners. Many will have the patience to put up with crap Spanish. First you will want to learn the basics, but once you can get by a little bit (also use translate and pay attention to what you are translating) you shouldn’t have a problem finding someone who will engage you. These are essentially free Spanish lessons, but don’t make them seem like lessons, be genuine and try and have good conversation. IMO this will work better than most courses you can take. Who knows, maybe you’ll also make a friend to show you around an interesting country.

P.S. I just read your last thread where you said the classes were boring. I was going to mention that when I tried learning through classes, the same happened to me. I feel like I learn and retain info 10x faster with human interaction. My wife feels the same way, we both hate learning from classes. I have become fluent in Spanish and I learned probably less than 2% of my Spanish from classes. The only way I’d recommend classes is if it was one on one interactions where you are actually talking to a native speaker. To be completely honest, I don’t think I would have had the patience to learn a language if I hadn’t emerged myself and been obligated to learn.
 
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