Learning a language, realistic expectations?

[TheVP]

I mentioned before that I'm trying to learn Spanish the best and as fast I can. I don't really have time to take classes now, but I was figuring, that if I can learn just five new words a day, that in a month, I would know 150 words.

 

I'm very goal orientated so five words a day seems like a pretty modest goal to me, but I don't know. Also, about how many words do you typically have to know in a language until you have a good idea of what's going on?

[Chillihead]

VP, I took Spanish classes for a few weeks, and while they are all good, I didn't learn any conversational Spanish.

 

However, I stumbled accross a series of lessons by Michel Thomas (called strangely enough "Learning Spanish with Michel Thomas", which does not follow the same pattern, but instead starts immediately with basic useful conversational type sentences. It works a treat. If you can get your hands on this I highly recommend it.

[chitown9]

I took Spanish in high school and college. It is more than vocabulary building. It is the grammar that got me; especially the conjugation of verbs. Also, adjative follows the noun in Spanish, so to say The pretty girl, you would say La muchacha bonita. The verb: to be is said depending on whether the condition is permanent or temporary. Example: Yo soy un mejicana. I am a mexican. (female) PERMANENT CONDITION Yo estoy cansada. I am tired. TEMPORARY CONDITION. In the above example soy is the present tense of the action word to be PERMANENT CONDITION estoy is the present tense for to be TEMPORARY CONDITION. Now, I am just giving you the present tense. There are still all the other tenses to deal with.

Estar=to be

Ser=to be

 

You conjugate from the above conditions of to be

 

Are you getting my drift?

 

I would recommend getting a basic grammar book for Spanish. Also, the pronunciation needs to be learned.

 

You will soon be on your way to learning Spanglish!

[agatha]

get 'spanish for dummies', it's a quick read (one weekend - don't study it, just read until the end. then later, if you feel the need, go back to the not so easy parts). I learned it while living with some mexican folks that lived next door to me (and the peruvians, argentinians, bolivians...) in about... 3 months. at least enough to communicate and joke in an intermediate level (and hook up with some of them =).

 

I'm studying french now, and either way, my approach to learning a new language is cultural immersion - all my ipod songs and movies and readings are done in that language. start with cartoons, they usually deal with basic vocabulary and grammar constructions (I absolutely love pocoyo - you can get it in virtually any language )

 

as long as you don't need to write it, you should be just fine with that. for writing, 3-4 years, depending on how hard do you want to do it. get a dictionary app for your smartphone too, so you can quickly search for that one word that's breaking your whole line of thought.

 

p.s.: or if you have any time, there should be some conversational spanish classes that don't get you so stuck up on the details.

p.p.s.: omg, there's pocoyo in arabic as well o.O gotta luv it =)

p.p.p.s: sorry, not arabic. turkish.

[Stay_home]

I would start on the Sesame Street level, just like we did when we learned how to speak English. Then work your way up.