Anybody learn a language on their own?

[smkiya]

So one of my New Year's resolutions is to learn to speak Spanish fluently. I know this task will take more than a year, but wanted to know if any other DISers have taken on the language learning task. I do not want to take classes, I'd like to do independent learning. What is your experience with this? (any language) How long did it take you? I plan on spending a great deal of time on this, practicing everyday. I have been getting a LOT of Spanish speaking only patients, and I'd like to be able to communicate better, but that is only a small reason of why I'd like to learn. I think speaking more than one language is beneficial in sooo many ways!

 

[moon]

I don't have an answer, but wanted to wish you good luck!

I know that immersion is the best way, and you having contact with many Spanish-speaking people will help tremendously.

I also recommend watching as much Spanish speaking shows as you can. Univision and Telemundo can be great teachers

 

[smkiya]

I don't have an answer, but wanted to wish you good luck!

I know that immersion is the best way, and you having contact with many Spanish-speaking people will help tremendously.

I also recommend watching as much Spanish speaking shows as you can. Univision and Telemundo can be great teachers

Good tip, thanks.

 

[Simba's Mom]

I don't have an answer, but wanted to wish you good luck!

I know that immersion is the best way, and you having contact with many Spanish-speaking people will help tremendously.

I also recommend watching as much Spanish speaking shows as you can. Univision and Telemundo can be great teachers

Yes,contact with Spanish speakers does help a lot! DS moved to Laredo,and went from being monolingual (English) to comfortably bilingual. It took him about 3 years. Recently he spent 2 weeks on a business trip throughout Central America and spoke Spanish almost all the time. Four years ago,he couldn't do that, but in Laredo he has lots of opportunity to practice.

 

[debster812]

Unless you are savant like in your acquisition of language, you will likely not become 'fluent'. Highly proficient? Yes. And as another poster said, immersion is really the quickest way to fluency. I had a decent base of knowledge of Spanish from school, and went to Brazil for 4 months. I was in school 8 hours a day, and within about 3 weeks, I was understanding nearly 100% of what was said to me, and could make myself understood in Portuguese. By the end of the 4 months, I was highly proficient in Portuguese.

Telemundo, Univision, etc can be a great help.

Good Luck OP

 

[smkiya]

Unless you are savant like in your acquisition of language, you will likely not become 'fluent'. Highly proficient? Yes. And as another poster said, immersion is really the quickest way to fluency. I had a decent base of knowledge of Spanish from school, and went to Brazil for 4 months. I was in school 8 hours a day, and within about 3 weeks, I was understanding nearly 100% of what was said to me, and could make myself understood in Portuguese. By the end of the 4 months, I was highly proficient in Portuguese.

Telemundo, Univision, etc can be a great help.

Good Luck OP

Wow!

 

[kendall]

Agree -immersion is best and most efficient!

If you are going to stay here, perhaps an online community learning environment such as livemocha can help.

Good luck!

 

[freepixie]

Rosetta Stone is a very good program, but if you can't afford that, I'm sure you can even find second-hand textbooks online.

I agree immersion is the best option!

This past March I started teaching with Migrant Head Start - the children in our program are the children of migrant farm workers from Mexico. There is at least one Spanish-speaking staff member in each classroom and the children are learning to speak Spanish and English at the same time. I picked up a LOT not only in the classroom but also in the staff room

A good dictionary helps out a lot too

 

[FireDancer]

I taught myself PHP.

 

[worm761]

If you don't want to take a course I would suggest you try looking at www.livemocha.com They have many languages to choose from and best of all is free.

 

[freepixie]

And once you have a little Spanish under your belt, I'd suggest going on the area of the Dis "Dis en espanol" and talk over there! The dis'ers over there are AWESOME!! I've practiced some of my espanol in there

 

[ford family]

I found the Michel Thomas cds were excellent for teaching the building blocks of Spanish, especially the grammar and verb structure. If you put them on your ipod you can make any downtime into a constructive learning period.

ford family

 

[smkiya]

I found the Michel Thomas cds were excellent for teaching the building blocks of Spanish, especially the grammar and verb structure. If you put them on your ipod you can make any downtime into a constructive learning period.

ford family

I don't have an Ipod, because I didn't think I'd have a use for it as I don't listen to music all the time. I have the complete Pimsleur set, but find it hard to practice in my car. This would work anywhere! Maybe I could also download podcasts to it too! Thank you!

 

[ashleybea]

I took Italian classes in high school for two years. Afterwards I wanted to learn more of the language. So i went out bought books and rosetta stone and taught myself more.
I agree with previous posters, Immersion is the best way to learn. I went to Italy my Junior year of High School, and learned so much.
I highly recommend Rosetta Stone. It helped alot with pronunciation.
Good Luck!

 

[Sleepy]

As someone who took Spanish in high school and thought it was possible to self teach a different language, I will definitely repeat some of what has been said.

Get Rosetta Stone for the pronunciation. Get a translation book.....the traditional one for nouns, prepositions, etc and another specifically for verb conjugation. Watch a tv channel in that language. Specifically watch programs which are in English, but have Spanish subtitles. Pay close attention to commercials, because they will help you the most. They have few written words on the screen that will allow you to pinpoint unknown words for you to look them up in your books. Then, find a friend online who actually has that language as their first language and English as the second. They will be the most invaluable tool for truly learning the language.

Dialect will probably be your worst enemy. I know in Italy, the people in Naples and Milan have difficulty communicating. Each region is different.

 

[NY Disney fan]

Univision and Telemundo can be great teachers

Get yourself hooked on one of those ultra-dramatic soap operas (novelas) and you will be understanding spanish quickly. Its one-sided immersion but at least you will get a feel for it. You can even put the caption on. For 2 hours every Saturday I have to listen to Chinese and I swear to you, sometimes I even understand what they are saying...and I know nothing about the Chinese language.

 

[Vixen]

Get yourself hooked on one of those ultra-dramatic soap operas (novelas) and you will be understanding spanish quickly. Its one-sided immersion but at least you will get a feel for it. You can even put the caption on. For 2 hours every Saturday I have to listen to Chinese and I swear to you, sometimes I even understand what they are saying...and I know nothing about the Chinese language.

you gotta love those novelas hahahah lol !

 

[freepixie]

Get yourself hooked on one of those ultra-dramatic soap operas (novelas) and you will be understanding spanish quickly. Its one-sided immersion but at least you will get a feel for it. You can even put the caption on. For 2 hours every Saturday I have to listen to Chinese and I swear to you, sometimes I even understand what they are saying...and I know nothing about the Chinese language.

This fall I was teaching myself Chinese language so I could take a course this winter that would be the next level (Mandarin 102). I had contacted the professor and he was kind enough to tell me the chapters I would need to know from the text, the characters I would need to write, and he emailed me a few supplemental materials all taught in Mandarin 101.

I really worked hard at it every night!! On the first day of class I was incredibly nervous, but I happen to be doing better than the students who took the first course!

Everybody thinks Chinese is a difficult language, but I beg to differ, I find it incredibly easy and straightforward.

 

[NY Disney fan]

Everybody thinks Chinese is a difficult language, but I beg to differ, I find it incredibly easy and straightforward.

That is very good to know. My daughter goes to an English-speaking Chinese school on Saturday. All the signs in the school lobby are in Chinese though. I'd like to know what they say. Plus Chinese sounds cool when spoken.

 

[moon]

Get yourself hooked on one of those ultra-dramatic soap operas (novelas) and you will be understanding spanish quickly. Its one-sided immersion but at least you will get a feel for it. You can even put the caption on.

A lot of those novelas have CC now. Having the CC on will make understanding easier, plus you can learn how to spell while reading the words.

One good think about Spanish is that even though is spoken in so much of the world, there is only one standard for proper Spanish, and only one spelling for every word, no matter where you are. On the novelas, the rich and upper class families speak properly, while the poor, and sometimes teens use slang.

HTH