I'm going to become a nurse and I believe that learning Spanish will really help in communicating with many people and since I've already mastered conversational Cantonese, I'd love to learn a completely different language. Another reason that I'd like to learn the language is the fact that I use to work in many restaurants and will probably continue to do so for a little while longer and many of the kitchen staff in all the restaurants I've worked at were Hispanic.
Have your kitchen staff speak to you only in spanish. Once you learn conjugations and basic sentence structure (very easy), it just comes down to memorizing vocabulary/translations. Might wanna tackle Tagalog next.
Thanks, Goofy. I have been asking them to talk to be in Spanish, but when it's rush time, I can't handle the misunderstanding. I'm hoping to at least hold a decently long conversation in Spanish by the end of the year.
How about for people who don't have this opportunity? I live in a very rural area and there aren't people around here who speak spanish. I'm working in medicine as well though (paramedic, want to go to med school), and hoping to move to a city in the next year or two where even basics of spanish will be MUCH more important. How to go about getting started? Also J> Legendarios.
This is a big issue for me as well. Spanish is the most common non-English spoken language in the United States and I'm sure that it's extremely prevalent in other countries as well.
As lame as this may sound you could always go to a local community college and go buy a used text book to help you out for a reasonable price.
I'm currently a nursing student and have been studying Spanish since elementary school. I find that immersing myself in the language helps me retain the information better. Listening to Spanish radio, reading Spanish books, and working with Lang-8 helps me continue to keep it fresh in my mind. As far as learning Spanish, I'd start simple with some websites like "studyspanish.com" "fluencia" and maybe a few used textbooks from Amazon.
It really helps if you already know another romanic language ( I knew French before I could speak Spanish). I'm better at germanic languages tho ( English, German, Dutch, going to learn swedish soon) so it actually depends on which kind of languages you like the most imo. Just start reading, watching tv, ... You can learn the basics from your books but if it's just for using in real life the only thing you need is time and experience.
Couldn't have said it better myself. The best way is just to jump right into it as much as you can, but know you limitations. This is something that I'm sure you know. Like you said, you've asked your co-workers to speak to you in Spanish only, but if the place is packed and need to work fast it would be best if you wait for a more appropriate time. Something that could make it easier for you, while at work. Take the menu you have and translate it to Spanish, along with kitchen supplies. for example Spoiler el fregadero sink la estufa stove la nevera refrigerator el horno oven el horno microondas microwave el gabinete cabinet el escurridor dish drainer la vaporera steamer el abrelatas can opener la sartén frying pan el destapador bottle opener el colador colander la olla saucepan la tapa lid el brillo, el estropajo scouring pad la licuadora blender el caldero pot la cacerola casserole dish la latería canister From: http://www.studyspanish.com/vocab/kitchen.htm You can also watch Movies / TV shows that are either Dubbed in Spanish W/ English subtitles, so you can keep up. (just don't keep reading the subtitles) There are also book/short stories/poems/plays you can read in Spanish and also have a English version. If you're having trouble with a word, please don't Google the translation. You can get a free APP on your phone called "Diccionario real academia Española" or maybe DREA or go to their website http://www.rae.es/ type in the word you want in there What you have to know is that, every single Spanish speaking country has their own dialect. You will see different words for the same meaning. Also some words that are in one country but not in another. I'll tell you a little story about myself c: Spoiler I came to Canada when I was 8 year old. I did not know much/any English besides a couple words. 2 Months later I was placed in school, and I remember sitting in the middle of my classroom thinking to myself.. What are these people saying, I thought it was impossible to learn. My teacher called my parents asking what was wrong with me, and why I wasn't socializing with other kids in the classroom.... Couple months later, the teacher called again. She then told them that I was talking too much and that I wasn't focusing a lot in the school work :\ Take my story how ever you want c: Obviously it won't be over night, the good thing is.. (maybe a little biased) but Spanish is one of the easiest language to learn. I'm 100% positive there are a lot of Spanish speaking players on the server/forum. Befriend some and ask them to speak to you in Spanish only. I'm sure someone will help you along the way. Best of luck! I'd be happy to help. IGN: iiTragedy / iiMugen
This is something that I can most definitely do. I might pick up one once the spring semester starts. Would you recommend Rosetta Stone for Spanish? I was thinking because both English and Spanish have nearly the same pronouciation that it would be a bit easier to learn. Very motivational post. Thanks, Manny. Watching TV shows in Cantonese was definitively a huge step in mastering conversation Cantonese for me so doing the same in Spanish is something I'm going to try. I've considered listening to Spanish audio books, but that might be too much to handle all at once.
@Christopher Chance Absolutely. I know you're plan is to move to the US one day and in my opinion, learning Spanish is the most smartest thing you can do right now that you can do while overseas, especially in Los Angeles. The further down you go in California, the more use of Spanish you'll get seeing as you're getting closer to the Mexico/US border.
@Plenty, I have no experience with Rosetta Stone... most of my learning has been through the education system in NJ and my university. Most of the resources I use to learn other languages (currently I'm learning Japanese, lojban, and Dutch) are free. There's also language-exchanges.org which does sort of an online-penpal/skype language exchange with people who's native language is the language you're learning and their learning your native language.
Small update on that. I found a Learning Spanish playlist on Spotify and being the cheap-o I am, I bought the $0.99 for three months of premium on Spotify and I'm slowly going through each of the audio tracks of learning Spanish. It started off as just saying the English word for some random noun, verb, etc. then it eventually moves on to sentence structure and whatnot. Since I'm a delivery driver and basketball season is over on the radio, I thought this would be a great opportunity to catch up on learning Spanish by listening to the tracks via Bluetooth on my phone. Hope this really helps out! Really looking forward to learning how to use Spanish effectively!
