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How long would it take to learn Spanish fluently?

Zebo

Zebo

Elite Member
I used to speak fluent french and German when I was less than 10. Some reason I forgot about 90% over the 30 so odd years after that...use or lose it and all. I know phases and can get around in them as well as Spanish being from southwest usa but I'm no where near confident. So how long to really master Spanish? How would you go about it? Community college? tutoring? Self help?

Edit reason i ask is we are going on 4 month cruise of central and south america and I dont want to be the idiot american. Thx.
 
Have you heard of the program Rosetta Stone? I guess the feds use it.

You know who learns foreign languages quick? Mormons! Shit! They learn that crap and go door to door in other freaking countries! My admiration goes out to those folks by god.
 
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Yeah those Mormons are quite adept. But I'm not about to become one for a vacation lol. I checked out Rosetta only 99 bucks for 3 months... cant lose really.
 
Rosetta does have a good track record. You might do a few weeks of that then see if you can find someone to chat with while you continue your lessons. And don't be surprised if, during your cruise, you can understand 3x-10x more than you can speak. Listening is easy, because you don't need to understand it all to get the right idea. Speaking requires a bit more mastery, and can be pretty intimidating.
 
just get hourself a mexican girlfriend and you'll be singing spanish like a bird in about 2 months max

As an icebreaker go tell her how you think their deep cultural tradition is really true...a girl who attains age 15 is now ready to (commence intense sex and...) become a mother. They celebrate that tradition as "Quinceria."

Hide your realization that it's utterly barbaric, criminal, horrific, brain-dead stupid, yet one more dollop into the piule of foul ugly horrible cess that is the mexican culture...here they are in their millions...gimme gimme gimme and abuelo and abuela and tio and tia and ......one admitted equals say maybe 30 humans brought across and enrolled for the dole. If you don't live in California then, hey, YOU JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND..


 
LOL ringtail you have a very active imagination that's for sure, your take on Quinceaneras is especially hilarious.
 
Rosetta Stone is pretty good, although I've used it sporadically to start around 5 different languages, I find it's still hard because they never actually give you a translation. So they might say whatever the phrase is in that language next to some picture, say it's a woman wearing a hat, and the phrase might be like, "The woman is wearing a hat" but you might think it says, "The woman has a hat" or something along those lines.

I find it helpful to see a translation as well when I am learning another language, even if it can't translate 100%. Most of the pictures in Rosetta are pretty obvious, but there are times in German where I had no idea why something was Der instead of Die. No explanation.
 
I've gone from 0 Spanish in February to semi-fluent today. But I do speak and message on Whatsapp for about an hour or two a day.

I still have a ton of problems with understanding Spanish speakers when they talk, but I can speak my mind (and translate English to Spanish) pretty well.

I just don't get the practice from listening to actual Spanish for long periods of time.
 
Learning a language requires massive commitment.
Most people barely even speak their mother tongue.
The most important thing is to start with someone who is a clear native speaker and who can make sure that your basic pronunciation is right. Once you got the sounds down, you can start working on vocabulary and grammar. If you want to go anywhere by September, put in around 10-15 hours a week. After the first month, restrict your TV and Internet to Spanish language content.

Also, I assume you don't speak any other roman language? In that case the grammar will probably mess you up, even though in Spanish it's been relatively simplified compared to other Roman languages. Good luck.
 
Zebo said:
I used to speak fluent french and German when I was less than 10. Some reason I forgot about 90% over the 30 so odd years after that...use or lose it and all. I know phases and can get around in them as well as Spanish being from southwest usa but I'm no where near confident. So how long to really master Spanish? How would you go about it? Community college? tutoring? Self help?

Edit reason i ask is we are going on 4 month cruise of central and south america and I dont want to be the idiot american. Thx.
Click to expand...

move to a Spanish speaking country. you'll be fluent in 2 weeks

try buenes aries
 
A 4 month cruise?

Nobody in south America is going to believe you are a native speaker after a few months with a PC language program. You MIGHT be able to follow along with careful speakers like TV news.

Everybody shipboard will speak English, and SA is a mix of Spanish and Portuguese.
 
The wife took a two week class with her coworkers called Spanish Emerson where they were to learn Spanish in two weeks. Nothing but Spanish was allowed to be spoken by students and classes were pretty much all day long because after class you weren't allowed to leave the place and all activities there included instructors hanging around, kinda like boot camp.

Afterward, she said she wasn't bad at understanding if people spoke slow enough and she could make herself understood if people were patient enough to listen to someone that sounded like a 3 year old, but outside of that it fell short.
 
if you already have a good gasp on vocubulary, one way i keep my spanish from getting too rusty is by practicing in my head, pretty much whatever i say in english, i'll think of how to say it in spanish in my head (not out loud)

but just like after you have a conversation with someone in english, and you got a minute, run through the whole conversation again in your head and translate it all to spanish.....helps make everything fluid when you actually have to speak it, gets your verb ending/usages right..
 
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