How to learn Spanish on the cheap?

[Bryophyte]

Until you take a class, check out Pimsleur or Rosetta Stone cds from the library. That's free and actually pretty helpful. My daughter goes to Spanish Immersion school, and they use Rosetta Stone to help them keep up their language skills over summer vacation.

 

[Mill]

If you want to be fluent...

Going to take a considerable amount of time. At least several years of study at the college level, and a significant time abroad in a Spanish-speaking country.

Fluency is an overused word. It is very difficult to become fluent in a language if you are not exposed to it on a daily basis.

 

[WaTaGuMp]

I say let all the hispanics learn english instead and put the money back into our economy paying to learn it. Or make the universal language pig latin so the majority of the world can be on a level playing field.

 

[Scarpozzi]

I agree with Mill....it takes speaking with the spaniards to really learn the lingo.

Classes give you the tools, but they're bogus compared to being thrown into the culture.

 

[ConstipatedVigilante]

Go to a Spanish speaking country. I went to the Dominican Republic for a week and leaned a fair bit. I'm on my 5th year of Spanish in school and it was still difficult. Learning in a classroom is much different from going abroad. The accents, for one thing, are very difficult to get past.

 

[Bryophyte]

Originally posted by: Mill
If you want to be fluent...

Going to take a considerable amount of time. At least several years of study at the college level, and a significant time abroad in a Spanish-speaking country.

Fluency is an overused word. It is very difficult to become fluent in a language if you are not exposed to it on a daily basis.

I'm guessing he's aware of this since this is he had to learn English as a second language and has managed to become fluent.

 

[MegaVovaN]

Originally posted by: Bryophyte

Originally posted by: Mill
If you want to be fluent...

Going to take a considerable amount of time. At least several years of study at the college level, and a significant time abroad in a Spanish-speaking country.

Fluency is an overused word. It is very difficult to become fluent in a language if you are not exposed to it on a daily basis.

I'm guessing he's aware of this since this is he had to learn English as a second language and has managed to become fluent.

Yep. When I was a kid in Belarussian school I was getting C (grade 3 on 5 scale where 5 is max, 1 and 2 is fail) in English and didn't like it.

Few years in the U.S., along with ESL classes (went to high school and one year of middle school here) did the job. :thumbsup:

 

[Mill]

Originally posted by: Bryophyte

Originally posted by: Mill
If you want to be fluent...

Going to take a considerable amount of time. At least several years of study at the college level, and a significant time abroad in a Spanish-speaking country.

Fluency is an overused word. It is very difficult to become fluent in a language if you are not exposed to it on a daily basis.

I'm guessing he's aware of this since this is he had to learn English as a second language and has managed to become fluent.

Again, he stated he wanted to be fluent. Very difficult to become fluent in Spanish unless you experience significant time in Spanish only environments. I'm a skilled language learner, too, but I realize even with considerable time abroad and a bachelor's in Spanish I won't be fluent.

I have professors with a masters or doctorate that do not consider themselves fluent. My original point stands that fluency is an overused word. Fluency -- to me -- is having almost 90% or greater of your native language ability in a foreign language. Not many people can do that as an adult. Kids? Yes. They learn languages rapidly, with little to no accent, and can be ambidextrous in both. Trying to do it as an adult is much harder, and means you are fairly unlikely to become fluent.

Just speaking the truth. People equate being fluent with being able to converse or making few grammatical mistakes. It is not. I can converse about politics and advanced topics in Spanish, but I am by no means fluent, and I probably never will be even though I use Spanish everyday at home AND at school AND I have lived abroad and will be doing so again in a few months.

I just believe better precision needs to be given to the term "fluent."

 

[ShotgunSteven]

Check your library. I don't know about the one in Houston, but at the Dallas/Ft. Worth library you can check out Rosetta Stone software.