Welp no Chinese for me.
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Free foreign language training course materials. It’s stuff from the US State Dept foreign services so it’s in the public domain. 72 languages covered
How different is Spain Spanish from Latin American Spanish?
Funnily enough, I used to think chinese would be so hard to learn because of the characters, but that’s turning out to be the easiest part of the language to learn :/
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Different but not so much that you would care which you learned imo. Spaniards use an extra verb conjugation.
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It’s akin to choosing whether to learn British English or American English. Both are perfectly fine and just have some small differences.
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I was just curious because I have an old Spanish for Dummies book lying around somewhere and it says in the first couple of pages that it focuses on “Spanish spoken in Latin America” which to me implied some kind of significant difference
Just don’t learn Australian English.
Like half of the polysyllabic words in Waltzing Matilda are just not English.
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If you see yourself traveling to places like Mexico, Colombia, Peru, etc, then I definitely wouldn’t learn Spanish from Spain. The Spanish accent sounds really silly here (they pronounce a couple letters with a lisp) and use a couple different tenses. A lot of the vocab can mean completely different things as well. A big one is “coger” which means to fuck in Latin Am. and “to pick something up” in Spain.
Spanish is a bit frustrating in that even in Latin American there are quite a few differences in vocab between Mexico and Colombia, and even moreso with Spain. This difference doesn’t feel as pronounced between the main English versions nor France and Quebecois French.
That said, it’s not a massive difference and you’ll be fine with whichever Spanish you pick and understood in the other places.
I mostly struggle with accent/speaking style, combined with the very different idioms. I learned castilian Spanish and I really struggle with listening and understanding the Mexican Spanish I hear most around here.
This is a good point.
While the grammar and syntax are not that different the accents are WAY different.
I can understand most South and Central Americans pretty well. Spaniards often sound like they are not speaking Spanish to me.
I’ve been trying to transition my Mexican girlfriend into an online Spanish teacher on italki. I’ve been a full-time online poker player for awhile now and think it would be cool if she had the same flexibility as me to work on the road so that we could travel easier.
She started at the end of February and has slowly been getting more students. Classes range from 30-90 minutes each and in March gave only 24 the whole month, but increased that to 78 in May. Interestingly enough, her students have tended to be middle-aged and from the USA.
I asked if she ever gets flirted with during classes and she said that nearly all are very professional. The one exception was a younger girl who booked one class and was hitting on my girlfriend, but my girlfriend didn’t really reciprocate so she didn’t book any more classes.
Anyway, I figured there might be some here interested in taking up or improving their Spanish. My girlfriend just started up an Instagram page with grammar and Mexican culture stuff and you can also find a link to her italki teacher page if interested in booking online classes (usually done via Skype). Here account name is SpanishWithGaby.
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When the KC Royals went to the WS in 2014 there was a really fun subplot of guy named Sung Woo from S. Korea who somehow decided to become a huge fan our sad sack (for 29 years) baseball team to help him learn English.
He came to visit KC (like his one two week vacation he gets every 5 years or something) and the Royals won 10 games in a row while he was in town.
The team to their credit caught wind of it and invited him to be a big guest of the stadium where he celebrated the 10th win.
Sorry I know most of that isn’t relevant I just couldn’t help myself.
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At least for me I needed a good reason for wanting to learn (road trip through Latin America) - and then just keep plugging away. I had 2 Spanish teachers in the US, Spanish podcasts, and studied at 3 different Spanish schools for a total of 6-7 weeks along the way. I’m probably toddler level, and still so proud because I never thought I’d even be able to converse in another language.
It’s still frustrating though. Because I can’t have anything close to a real conversation in Spanish, and don’t know if I ever will unless I live in a Spanish-speaking country for 5 years or something.
When I was traveling and hit the Caribbean side of the coast in most of the Central American countries, and all of Belize, people spoke English. It was such a relief to be able to crack a joke with a local, or have a conversation beyond where are you from, do you have kids, what is your job, etc. And it they were waiting on you well you already knew the answer to the last one. And then it’s just awkward silence unless they speak better English than my Spanish.
It depends a lot on how you study. A lot of people have unrealistic expectations and think if they study Duolingo 10 minutes a day, that they’ll be fluent in 6 months, but it doesn’t work that way.
You really have to immerse yourself in the language, throw yourself in the pool at the deep end, so to speak. Take classes 4-5x week (online or in person), watch a series in Netflix (w/English subs initially, but switch to Spanish subs ASAP), passively listen to Spanish radio during the day, try to read an article/book daily, etc. I’ve found it’s more helpful to do things I already love in English, but in Spanish instead. That way I don’t feel like it’s a chore and I’m more likely to stick with it.
A big motivation for me is travel, and being able to connect w/people in their own language. So before I moved to France and then Mexico, I gave myself 6 months and basically said “Ok, you have 6 months, so you’d better at least get your language to an intermediate level, otherwise you’ll be screwed when you land”. So I really buckled down and got to a decent level, then after another year in those countries, I’d say I got to a more or less fluent level where I could sit down with a native and have a convo for an hour.
But for those 6 months before arriving, I probably worked 2-3 hours per day: taking a 30-minute class almost daily on italki, binging series, a bit of grammar study, and reading. Then when I arrive, I wanted to meet up with locals and keep drilling my target language. A lot of expats will just seek out other people from their home country, and just get in a comfortable bubble where they’re still speaking English, but then they find after 5 or 10 years, they’re still awful in their target language b/c they don’t apply themselves at all.
Not gonna lie, it took me 12-18months* of full on immersion to get to a level that I could fully understand what was being said 95% of the time. 6 months maybe to be able to speak at probably a childs level.
Maybe consider volunteering/working with a family/oragnisation next time you’re down here where there are zero english speakers? In 3-6 months of immersion it’s amazing what you can pick up.
*I’m pretty dumb, no doubt you would learn faster.
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Bumping this for @Tilted and to ask spanish speakers: how did you all learn to trill your Rs? I’m getting back into spanish lightly with some duolingo and I don’t remember pronunciations being this hard when I was a kid
Edit: also adding @catfacemeowmers as I’m not familiar with Language Transfer but it looks interesting
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I’m very much a novice at Spanish. I’m with you, I find that as soon as I start focusing on the R’s it’s like I have peanut butter in my mouth. It all goes to hell.
I keep thinking someday I’m going to sit down and watch YouTubes and finally learn how to roll those Rs.