Yo estudio espaï¿½ol

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Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2007 6:36 pm

Wish me luck, I'm heading back to class to learn Spanish. English is my native tongue and I've also studied Spanish, German and Russian. But I've never studied any one language long enough to get good.

I was beginning to get somewhat functional at German when I lived in Stuttgart, but then I had to return to the US. So now when I try to speak Spanish I often slip in a German wort.

Here in New Mexico where I currently live, Spanish is close to being the majority language and I have many employees that speak it. So I'll have plenty of opportunity to practicar.

Sid

Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2007 9:01 pm

Good luck Sid Very Happy

Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2007 9:07 pm

viel Erfolg Sid

I found it frustrating to learn Spanish with a German/Spanish dictionary
coudn't remember the German words when I was on holidays so my old dictionary was totally useless when I traveled in Spain Sad

this was a good one I thought:
Collins Easy Learning Spanish Dictionary
ISBN 0-00-472417-8

419Eater is my life Joined: 26 Jan 2007 Posts: 356

Buena suerte. Very Happy

Some dumbass up here in Oregon tried to get people interested in making a law banning the teaching of non-English languages a while back. Needless to say, it very quickly went nowhere.

Baiting Guru Joined: 04 Dec 2005 Posts: 3551

Sid, you can check out language tapes at libraries rather than buying them. The repetition is very helpful.

Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2007 10:20 pm

@Hammerthief: You've got to be a glutton for punishment. Laughing

Thanks for the diccionario tip. I currently use one of those Franklin/Merriam-Webster handheld electronic dictionaries. I like it when I'm traveling because it's a very quick lookup and it contains far more words than a typical pocket dictionary.

@Dolores -- How many Americans know that Dolores means "pains" in Spanish? -- I digress. There was noise about one official language in Michigan as well. Strangely, there was actually a ballot initiative on the matter in Arizona. This is just thinly veiled bigotry.

Old joke worth retelling: If a person who speaks two languages is bilingual and a person who speaks three languages is trilingual, what do you call a person who speaks one language?

Answer: An American.

Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2007 4:25 pm

DoloresOnTheDottedLine wrote:

...non-English languages....

This mangled garbage we speak is actually a LANGUAGE??? Shocked

Boa sorte amigo! Mas lembre-se isso para aprende bem isto, voce ten que falar frequentmente (hey, it's kinda similar to espanol, but not really...)

Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2007 5:10 pm

Spanish is the easiet language to learn.

Somehow it just came naturally to me Laughing

If you need help just PM me.

Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2007 5:45 pm

rumbero wrote:

If you need help just PM me.

Yes, I need help right now. What the hell is Callum talking about?

Shocked

** SUSPENDED ** Joined: 05 Dec 2006 Posts: 135

I feel for ya, SGreen. I live next door, in Arizona, and I'm learning Spanish as well. Good luck. Smile

Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2007 6:02 pm

sgreenstreet wrote:

Yes, I need help right now. What the hell is Callum talking about?

Practicing my Brasillian portuguese, which I am finding far easier to read than to write or speak. I expect it'll just start to click then we'll be back off home again.

"Good luck! But remember that to learn it well, you need to speak it often."

Wink

Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2007 9:16 pm

callum wrote:

Boa sorte amigo! Mas lembre-se isso para aprende bem isto, voce ten que falar frequentmente

Ma dai, dire che questo casino di una lingua assomiglia lo spagnolo e come dire che l'olandese fosse un dialetto tedesco...beh...aspetta...magari... Cool

Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2007 10:16 pm

@sgreenstreet: For learning a new language there is nothing better than going to a place where everybody speaks that language EXCLUSIVELY. It is called "a full immersion crash course".

For Spanish I recommend Miami or Los Angeles ... After you get back home you will have to take refresher courses in English, which you will not have used at all in those places ...

** SUSPENDED ** Joined: 05 Dec 2006 Posts: 135

Or go down to Mexico. Smile

Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2007 11:33 pm

@Joaquin - I know exactly what you're talking about. I haven't been to LA or Miami, but I've been to Brownsville, Texas and it's the same way. Here in Albuquerque, it is possible to live your entire life without getting functional in English -- and some people do. Unfortunately, the Spanish spoken here is a spanglish dialect that reeks of the lower class. So as a businessman I think it's important that I learn correct Spanish that will work anywheres in the Spanish speaking world.

BTW, I'll be taking classes at Instituto Cervantes. It's cultural organization that is operated by the Government of Spain. I think I'm lucky to have a resource this close to my home. Speaking of complete immersion, I'm thinking of taking a week of immersion in Mexico at Instituto Baden Powell. That will probably have to wait until the summer of 2008.

Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2007 12:39 am

@sgreenstreet : Those 2 are very good choices for good Spanish. And then again, the way the World economic powers are developing, if anybody wants to be fluent in the business language of the future, Chinese 101 looks like the course to get enrolled into right now.

Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2007 1:32 am

^^^^^^^^^^
I've been to China on business and I can tell you that I'm simply not good enough to learn Chinese. Embarassed

Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2007 6:18 am

Chinese is the easiest language in the world by an arm and a leg!

Think about it:

Russian - Six denclenations for nouns with three cases; masculine, feminine and neuter - Different sets of each for singular/plural with various overlapping areas and numerous (I should say infinite) exceptions depending on goodness only knows what. There's enough grammar in that language to blow a hole in your brain. The spelling is awkward, the pronunciation requires oral surgery and reading it for the first time is like walking a minefield of letters you think you recognise, but actually don't.

Then we have Chinese.
A noun is a noun, a verb is a verb. Neither conjugate/denclenate/morph for any reason in any case - ever. There are no plural nouns in Chinese, with the exception of pronouns which require only the addition of a single syllable.

The verb to be:
I am / Wo Shi
you are / Ni Shi
he she it is / Ta Shi....etc

It's the same for all of them. Once you learn a word - that's it - you've got it. It's the only language I know, where all you have to do is learn a big pile of words and just start saying them. You could learn Chinese grammar in a day and be speaking it conversationally within six months tops.

Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2007 11:10 am

مرحبا

How about learning some Arabic? Not quiet as easy as battery says Chinese is, but not impossible either. The biggest thing is learning to read & write again Razz

Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2007 2:45 pm

The european languages all share many words. So an English speaking person can usually pick up on Spanish or German quickly. French and Polish are a bit harder and Russian adds the additional challenge of cyrillic.

There is a theory that all european languages derive from an ancient sanskrit root. When I traveled in India I would occasionally pick up on some of these similarities. I discovered that the Hindi word for bread is "nan", which sounds suspiciously similar to "pan" in Spanish.

But when I got to China the words were ALL different. There were no hooks to help with memorization. I suspect that written Chinese may actually be easier for a westerner to learn than the spoken language, as some of the characters look something like the thing they represent.

Learning any language (after our mother tongues) is hard work. If it were easy, more people would do it.

Sid

Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2007 5:06 pm

sgreenstreet wrote:

....as some of the characters look something like the thing they represent.

This one doesn't, or am I looking at it from the wrong angle?

Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2007 8:05 pm

Xing (fourth - falling tone)

It variously means:
1)nature or charactaristic
2)property (quality)
3)sex (gender)
4)sex (intercourse)

And is a part of many dy/polysyllabic words related to each of the four meanings such as jiu xing (alcoholic - the property), nan xing (male), bian tai xing (perverted) etc etc.

It doesn't look like a fuck, but it's made of two pieces; the "heart" radical on the left and the charater meaning "life" or "production" on the right. I'm totally guessing here, but it could originally have had something to do with production or natural properties. In any case it is a word which embodies an important concept rather than a thing so it is likely to be more ideomatic than figurative.

This is a figurative character, meaning turtle

if you turn it over on it's side you can see its head on the left, it's shell on the top, the tail on the right and it's two little feet underneath.

cute huh?