For those not familiar, FSI is held in very high regard in the language-learning and linguistics communities, they pioneered many different areas of language learning and a lot of the most successful techniques and courses in use are mostly if not entirely derived from FSI material and techniques.  What is FSI and what does it do? FSI is the branch of the U.S. State Department which is responsible for teaching foreign languages to all State Department personnel and many personnel from other government agencies and the military.  It is the training arm of the Foreign Service and as such runs other courses and classes such as management, diplomacy, culture, etc. but its largest department by far is its School of Language Studies, for which it is also best known.

The reason FSI is held in such high regard is quite simply the standards that they are held to due to the people that they are responsible for teaching: FSI trains our diplomats, military interpreters and intelligence analysts, CIA officers, and some federal law enforcement personnel, and they have a very strict schedule within which they must operate and accomplish some fairly difficult feats.  For example, from the text:

Our programs are not given a lengthy period in which to prepare learners to do their work. For example, students in the Russian program are expected to progress in ten months of intensive training from no functional ability in the language to the ability to read almost any professionally relevant text and discuss in detail with a Russian speaker any and all implications of that text for Russian-American relations. Ten months of intensive language study may seem like a long time, but, in fact, it is very short when the scope of the goal is considered. There is no time to waste with nonproductive activities.

Additionally:

The accountability goes far beyond test scores and end-of-training student evaluations. It goes to whether graduates of our programs can use the language to carry out the important and complex work for which they are responsible. If their language limitations cause them not to be able to do that work, the FSI program heads will hear about it in no uncertain terms. Language educators at FSI get direct evaluative feedback from our clients and stakeholders. When a dissatisfied cable comes to us from post, it receives our immediate attention.

Whatever it is that they’re doing, it has to work, there is no way that it couldn’t–if it didn’t work, and work well, then most of our diplomats (among many other people FSI is responsible for training) wouldn’t be proficient in the language of the country that they’re stationed in, and to say that this would cause problems would be putting it mildly.  I’m not saying they’re the absolute best, I’m saying that you can be guaranteed that what they do does work and that they do know what they’re talking about–as far as the credibility of a source goes when it comes to language learning, it doesn’t get much better than this.  That’s my point.  I guess all I’m trying to do here is convince you that yes, it really is worth taking 30 minutes out of your day to read this report if you’re at all interested in language-learning.

The Top 10 Most Valuable Things Learned by FSI Over the Past 50 Years

This is just a very short summary if you simply don’t have time or want to get an idea of what it’s about before bothering with it, the actual report is below, 17 pages long, each of the following lessons are expanded on in that report with several paragraphs each, and it is absolutely worth reading in full so I highly recommend you do that.  Here’s a very quick summary of their Top 10 Lessons, skip this if you’d just like to go straight to the report:

Lesson 1. Mature adults can learn a foreign language well enough through intensive language study to do things in the language (almost) as well as native speakers.

Lesson 2. “Language-learning aptitude” varies among individuals and affects their classroom learning success (but at least some aspects of aptitude can be learned).

Lesson 3. There is no “one right way” to teach (or learn) languages, nor is there a single “right” syllabus.

Lesson 4. Time on task and the intensity of the learning experience appear crucial.

Lesson 5. Learners’ existing knowledge about language affects their learning.

Lesson 6. A learner’s prior experience with learning (languages or other skills) also affects classroom learning.

Lesson 7. The importance of “automaticity” in building learner skill and confidence in speaking and reading a language is more important than has been recognized by the SLA [Second Language Acquisition] field over the last two decades.

Lesson 8. Learners may not learn a linguistic form until they are “ready,” but FSI’s experience indicates that teachers and a well designed course can help learners become ready earlier.

Lesson 9. A supportive, collaborative, responsive learning environment, with a rich variety of authentic and teacher-made resources, is very important in fostering effective learning.

Lesson 10. Conversation, which on the surface appears to be one of the most basic forms of communication, is actually one of the hardest to master.

The Report

I’ve embedded it below so that you should be able to read it right here on the page if you like, or you can just download the PDF file and read it on your computer, here’s a direct link to the file if you’d like to download it, and here’s the embedded version (click the magnifying glass to make it larger or click the arrow in the upper right hand corner to open it in a new tab or window with Google Docs):

The secrets of how to use free online resources to teach yourself Spanish, from home, in just a few months - Also: Here are the internet's Top 33 free online Spanish-learning resources

The difference

They can both mean “why”, as in when translated into English they will both tend to be translated into that specific word, however…a good translator won’t do that, because “para qué” doesn’t really exactly mean “why”, or just “why”, at least.  What it more accurately translates to is “for what?”, that is you’re asking what the purpose of doing something is, you’re asking what the objective is, what the person intends to accomplish by doing it, in other words you’re asking for what purpose they’re doing it, hence the translation for it really being “for what?”, or perhaps “what for?”.  See how that does sort of fall under the definition of “why”, but a better, more precise way of putting it would be “for what”?  It’s sort of like translating “de qué parte?”, which means “from what part”, as “where”–yes, you could, it’s not incorrect, but there’s a more accurate translation.

“Por qué”, on the other hand, is typically used when you simply want to know what someone’s motivation is or what the cause is of something happening.  Maybe they didn’t have an objective, maybe they just did it because they were angry or happy or sad or whatever, or maybe there was an objective, in which case you can still use “por qué” though perhaps “para qué” may have been a better choice if you wanted to make it clear that you wanted to know what their objective was, not just their motivation for doing it (sometimes those are the same thing, sometimes not).

I like translating things literally because it helps you understand where the actual meaning came from.  Here, it really helps: “para” means “for” in the sense of “in order to”, whereas “por” is more frequently used to mean “by” or “because of”, and of course “qué” means “what”, so let’s take that and look at these two phrases and see if this makes sense.  “Por qué” literally means “because of what”, as in “what caused this to occur?”, whereas “para qué” literally means “in order to what?”, as in “you’re doing this in order to…what?”.  Does this make sense now?  Hopefully this also helps you to remember when to use “por” and when to use “para”, as well, since I know a lot of people have trouble with that.

Cheers,

Andrew

The secrets of how to use free online resources to teach yourself Spanish, from home, in just a few months - Also: Here are the internet's Top 33 free online Spanish-learning resources

At eLanguageSchool.net we are teaching people how to learn Spanish with
Comics. You can read the comic in Spanish, then click the speech
bubbles to reveal the English translation. So far we have gotten very
positive feedback that it is a useful tool to practice reading
Spanish.

The entire project is a Creative Commons project, and we are looking
for volunteers to help translate and make the comics interactive. Here
are the steps involved to make what you see.

Step 1: Someone translates the comics from English, into Spanish (and
other languages). The translators simply write the translation on a
text document with one line per speech bubble, and a line between
pages.

Step 2: Someone opens up the comic book pages in an image editor, and
cuts out the speech bubbles and whites out the text. That way they are
just blank speech bubbles.

Step 3: Someone takes the translation, and fits them into the speech
bubbles, again in a text editor.

Step 4: Someone takes the translated speech bubbles, and overlays them
with the the original comic book page. This involves finding the exact
horizontal and vertical position to perfectly overlap the speech
bubbles.

You can see the finished result on the website. So far, we have
translated the first chapter of the comic into Spanish and French. If you would
like to volunteer in any of those steps, please email me, James, at
JDDunn9 – at – gmail.com.

The secrets of how to use free online resources to teach yourself Spanish, from home, in just a few months - Also: Here are the internet's Top 33 free online Spanish-learning resources

Which one you should even consider purchasing, if you’re going to go this route (and yes, frankly, if you’re a complete beginner who’s never taught themselves a second language before, I do recommend you do this), is very dependent upon what your needs are: are you trying to get conversationally fluent with the primary objective being to be able to talk to native speakers using normal, day-to-day speech? Or are you a student who needs to ace your upcoming AP Spanish exam and therefore you need to learn a LOT of grammar and vocabulary but you don’t need to be able to speak?  Those are two very different sets of needs, and I primarily cater here to the person who wants to learn how to speak Spanish for the primary purpose of being able to talk with native Spanish speakers, usually in a Spanish-speaking country.

Are Any of Them Really Any Good?

I’ve tried a bunch of different ones and can honestly recommend very few of them, in fact I have exactly one that I recommend for the specific purpose of learning how to speak Spanish as quickly as possible (working on written Spanish will require additional material, all of which is free, by the way)–this particular course does not have a great deal of emphasis on learning grammar or learning how to write proper, formal Spanish–be aware of this, it’s designed to get you speaking Spanish, using normal, modern, everyday language, as fast as possible (in as little as a couple weeks, actually).

This post is just sort of a quick answer to this question, and I’m going to be doing a much more in-depth review of these products and a very few others that I like–believe me when I tell you that I’m not only going to be extremely selective about which ones I promote (it will be, all total, maybe 4 or 5 that I genuinely have found to be useful and think offer a great deal of value to my readers and Spanish learners in general).

Ok, so what do you recommend and why?

Alright, here we go: if you’re looking to learn Spanish, as in eventually get to conversational fluency or better, you’re a beginner (not an experienced polyglot who’s learned 3 other languages before or something and therefore has their own little system), you’ve got at least a few months to work on it (and it will take at least that long to get fluent), then I highly recommend a little-known program called Synergy Spanish (click here to check out their site). It’s $67 for the digital version that you can download, and it is a FULL course by itself, it’s roughly equivalent in the amount of material it covers to Pimsleur Spanish Levels 1-3 and each level of Pimsleur is $250 so that’s $750 total for Pimsleur and frankly I think Synergy Spanish actually does a better job of teaching the material, and a way better job of choosing which material to teach, than Pimsleur does–keep in mind, I’ve used Pimsleur Spanish I-IV, Pimsleur Japanese, and Pimsleur French, I’m quite familiar with the system.

When I first started teaching myself Spanish, I started with Pimsleur, did levels I-IV. I have since tried about half a dozen other courses, including Synergy Spanish, and I’ll tell you something: I learned far more from Synergy Spanish than I did from all 4 levels of Pimsleur.

I highly recommend that, if you’re going to try it, you just get the all-digital version that you can download, which is another reason I like it: you can get an all-digital version that you can download (they also offer it on CDs if your connection can’t handle the file size). That way you don’t have to wait for something to get shipped to you.

How Does It Work?

The whole approach is based around simply using 138 of the most commonly used words (an approach that research heavily supports) in a manner that will allow you to generally express yourself, that will teach you phrases and words that would be immediately useful to someone visiting a country (e.g. stuff concerning food, bathrooms, hotels, public traffic signs, greetings, basic conversation, needing medical help, basic numbers and counting, etc.), and which will allow you to start speaking using common day-to-day Spanish as soon as possible.

Each lesson is 10-15 minutes, you can blow through 3 or 4 lessons a day easily, if not more, and there are 68 lessons, a TON of extra bonus material that covers all sorts of cool stuff, plus he offers free e-mail support along with it if you run into any trouble, which is a nice bonus.

What does this do?

It kick-starts the learning process for beginners and provides them with an already pre-planned and set-up system to follow for the first couple of months that will result in a ton of Spanish getting stuffed into their heads (this program covers a LOT of Spanish very quickly but very well, that is it does a superb job of teaching the material) so that they may progress from there into practicing with native speakers via language exchanges and learning additional Spanish from movies, TV shows, music, etc.  It does not just magically get you to fluency, it kick-starts the process and gives you enough Spanish and a good enough understand of the language and its grammar and syntax such that you can then just iron out the kinks, add enough words to your vocabulary, via talking with native speakers and watching Spanish-language movies and such that you can then get yourself to fluency on your own within a few months of completing the program, which leads me to my next important point…

There is NO ‘system’ or ‘program’ out there, in existence, ANYWHERE, that will hold your hand from beginning to end and take you from zero to completely fluent

It does not exist and anything that claims to be able to do that (cough Rosetta Stone cough) is completely full of shit.  What some, a very few good programs, can do is take you from zero competency to maybe level 5 or 6 out of 10 and that is good enough for you to take it from there on your own: from that point all you have to do is just listen to some Spanish music (you’ll already know almost all of the grammar and most of the vocabulary, each new song will teach you some new vocab and new idioms and expressions), watch some Spanish-language movies (you’ll understand a lot of what they’re saying which will make it SO much easier to learn the rest that you don’t understand than if you didn’t understand any of it at all to begin with), and, most importantly, talk to native speakers (have I mentioned how important this is yet? Oh, also, it’s easy and free: they’re called language exchange sites, my favorite one right now is The Mixxer).

The way a language-exchange site works is that it brings together people who are native speakers of one language and looking to learn another and then pairs together people are trying to learn each other’s native language: e.g. you are a native English speaker who is learning Spanish, there are tons and tons of native Spanish speakers who are learning English, a language exchange site would help you find each other that way you can schedule a Skype phone call (free for both parties) where you would spend, say, 20 minutes in each language, that is you both would speak for 20 minutes in Spanish and the Spanish speaker would help and correct you, and then you’d speak for 20 minutes in English and you’d help and correct them, see how that works? Lovely, isn’t it?  I’ve used these sites for over a year now, believe me: you will not have any trouble finding Spanish speakers to talk to, English is the most popular second language in the world, everyone wants to learn it, lucky for you!

The best language exchange sites I’ve tried that I recommend are The Mixxer (like I said above, this is my favorite, and one of the biggest), The Polyglot Club, iTalki, and xLingo.

What a good Spanish program like Synergy Spanish does is it gets you to a level where you can communicate reasonably well with a Spanish speaker, you’re not fluent, you’re still slow and kinda herky-jerky, stop-and-start, you still have trouble thinking of exactly the right word, but you can communicate, you’ve got a really good base to go off of, you’re not just sitting there in front of the computer screen staring at the person on the other end with nothing but “uhh..hola?” and then expecting them to teach you the entire Spanish language (won’t work! they neither can nor would they want to do that!), you can talk to them and you’ll make mistakes here or there and need help here and there thinking of the right word but you’ll be starting with a good grasp of the Spanish language, they won’t have to teach you Spanish, they’ll just have to help you a little here or there, you see what I mean?  Basically, you learn Spanish on your own from a program like this one and then you go and practice to improve your (already existing) Spanish with native speakers.

It won’t make you fluent, no learning program or system out there will, but it’ll give you a big boost in that direction and it’ll teach you the fundamental groundwork that you’ll need so that you can actually practice speaking with native speakers which is what will take you the rest of the way to fluency (very quickly once you start doing it).  I highly recommend you go on over to their site (here) and check out what they’ve got to say, read the testimonials, etc. and decide if you want to give it a shot–remember, you can try it out for up to 60 days and get a full refund at any point in there if you don’t like it.

Conclusion

I genuinely, honestly hope that this is helpful to you and that you get far more than your money’s worth if you decide to buy one of these products, that’s a part of the reason I’m recommending them: I think they’re cheap considering what you get and what they do.  If you don’t think so, absolutely get your money back, I would.

People really, honestly want to know about this stuff, I know that there are some who much prefer to learn on their own using random material that they scrounge up on the internet and from Amazon, they’re usually polyglots who have learned several languages before and have gotten really good at learning languages in general and have sort of developed their own personal method of teaching themselves a new language, and they’re very good at it.  That’s fine, but a lot of people, most of the ones that come to my site I think, are people who have never learned a language before and have no clue as to how to go about it and would really, really benefit from and appreciate a system that someone who knows what they’re doing has already gone and set up for them, something that will at least get them going in the right direction and give them a solid foundation in the language to work off of, and that’s what a good language-learning program will do, and that’s why I do have a very select few that I’ll recommend depending on what it is that you want to accomplish.

That’s what I think and it’s reflected in the fact that me and a lot of other language bloggers get repeatedly asked about this stuff, mainly from newbies who have never learned a language before and are starting from scratch.  I want to help those people, I want to answer the question they’re asking to the best of my ability, and I want to recommend something useful that will best meet their needs, so that’s what I’ve done here today.  I really hope you’ve found it to be valuable information for you, please let me know what you think (comments, contact form, etc.).

The secrets of how to use free online resources to teach yourself Spanish, from home, in just a few months - Also: Here are the internet's Top 33 free online Spanish-learning resources

I just wanted to let you know that Spanish Playground just put up a blog post that I love because it combines using music and lyrics like I do with my Shakira posts with the children’s learning material aspect and uses a common Spanish children’s song called ¡Arriba Juan! to teach you some Spanish.  Very cool, definitely recommend you check it out.

Also, I know I haven’t been active much this summer, I’ve had some business I needed to take care of, I will be doing a LOT with this blog in the coming months, more posts, more frequent posts, and a redesign, and I might be taking on a couple of writers to help out with generating awesome content for you guys, we’ll see.  Stay tuned

The secrets of how to use free online resources to teach yourself Spanish, from home, in just a few months - Also: Here are the internet's Top 33 free online Spanish-learning resources

Not only can you go down to your local public library and borrow a few (depending on how big it is, this may not be possible or their selection may be very limited) but you can also find tons and tons of them online, many for free (yes, I’m about to show you where!).

The International Children’s Digital Library

Just go to the Spanish section of The International Children’s Digital Library, and you’ll find that there are currently 168 books in the Spanish section, all of which you can read right there on their website for free (just click on the book you want, and then click on the link on the left where it says “Read This Book”)!  Awesome, right? And, for those of you learning other languages, please note the drop-down menu on the above-linked-to-page where you can choose from dozens of other languages as well!

Amazon

Amazon has got a fairly wide selection of children’s books in other languages, including Spanish.  In fact, they’ve got an entire foreign-language section within their Children’s Books section, with the Spanish one (here) being, by far, the largest with 476 books currently listed.

If you’ve been putting off reading Spanish because you think you’re just not advanced enough yet and you’ve tried reading maybe some Spanish blog posts or newspaper stories and could barely understand anything, well guess what? You’re fresh out of excuses now, aren’t you?

I can’t emphasize enough what a fantastic method this is, you really ought to try it, it’s fun, you learn tons of the language, and you’re learning all the right stuff that you need to learn as a beginner: the basic, common things that even children are expected to know.  Isn’t that the sort of stuff that you’d want to learn first and foremost anyway?

Please, please, please: if you have any other similar resources or sites you know of where we can read or download children’s books in foreign languages, post them in the comments and I’ll edit them into this post and give you credit, we’re all about helping each other learn here.  And let me know what you think, as always.

Cheers,

Andrew

Edit: Turkish

Aaron from Everyday Language Learner came up with a link to a fantastic site in Turkish where you can actually “watch” a children’s book, so to speak: it shows you the pages while a native speaker reads to you, very cool.  Thanks, Aaron.

The secrets of how to use free online resources to teach yourself Spanish, from home, in just a few months - Also: Here are the internet's Top 33 free online Spanish-learning resources

I’ve compiled a list of the most common such responses and comebacks in Spanish with an explanation for each below, this is one of the few circumstances where I’d actually recommend you just memorize the whole list as you’re guaranteed to use these with great frequency whenever you’re talking with native speakers.

Es Un Decir

This is a handy expression you may find yourself frequently using when you’re misunderstood, particularly if you feel like you might have said something potentially offensive or weird.  It means something like “it’s just a saying” or “it’s a way of speaking”.  Example:

“Quiero hacer amor con tu madre, ¿está bien?” = “I want to make love to your mother, ok?”

“¡¿Qué?!” = “What?!”

“Ehhh….Sólo es un decier que tenemos en gringolandia, quiere decir que tu madre es muy agradable.” = “Ehhh…It’s just a saying we have in America, it means your mother is very nice.”

¿No Qué No?

This is kind of a snappy comeback you’d use when someone told you something that you disagreed with and later you found out that you were right, it’s sort of like saying “I told you so” and literally means something like “Really? ‘No’, huh?”.  Example:

“Eso no es possible.” = “That’s not possible.”

You show that it’s possible.

“¿No qué no, eh? ” = “Really, is that so? ”

Conste

“Constar” means “to be clear, certain, or evident” and that’s a pretty good explanation of how this particular expression works, though it’s not used in quite the same way we would use one of those words.  “Conste” means that something is obvious or evident, and is usually used with the same meaning as our expressions “for the record” (“que conste” means “let the record show”) and when used as a response to something it means “you promised and I’ll hold you to it” in the sense of “it’s on the record, I won’t forget about it”, e.g.

“Te llamo mañana.” = “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Conste.” = “You promised, I’ll hold you to it.”

¿Y Qué?

This literally means “and what?” so you can probably guess how it’s typically used: it’s how they would say “so what?” in Spanish.  Mind you, as in English with our expression “so what?” it can potentially have a rude connotation to it and is considered a bit brusque.  Example:

“¡Tu grande vaca morada se cagó en mi césped!” = “Your giant purple cow shat on my lawn!”

“¿Y qué? Es fertilizante, así…de nada” = “So what? It’s fertilizer, so…you’re welcome.”

¿Y?

Used the same way that we would use “And??” in English, meaning something like “so what?”, as in “and…what??”.  Example:

“¡Pero la mierda sólo es en una grande pila! ¡Mira!” = “But the shit is just in one big pile! Look!”

“¿Y? Sólo untala por.” = “And? Just spread it around.”

Da Igual / Da Lo Mismo

These two phrases mean the same thing and essentially amount to “it doesn’t matter” or “what’s the difference?”.  “Da igual” means literally “it’s equal” and “da lo mismo” means literally “it’s the same thing” but they’re both used whenever one wants to say that something doesn’t matter or that it doesn’t make a difference. Example:

“¿Quieres el carro rojo o el blanco?” = “Do you want the red car or the white one?”

“Da igual.” = “Doesn’t matter.”

O Sea

This means something like “you know” or “in other words”.  You’ll notice the use of the subjunctive here (if you don’t understand that completely already, be sure to see my article called The Subjunctive Explained) so “sea” means something like “could be” or “would be” and “o”, or course, means “or”, so with “o sea” you get something literally like “or that could/would be” which we would say a bit easier with the expression “in other words”.  Got it? Example:

“Pues, la respuesta pueda ser “sí”, pueda ser “no”, o sea…no sé.” = “Well, the answer could be yes, it could be no, that is to say…I don’t really know.”

Claro/Claro que Sí

It literally means “clear” but is 100 times more commonly used to mean “sure” or “of course” or “naturally”.  “Claro que sí” essentially means the same thing and translates to something like “Of course yes” as in “of course the answer is yes”. People will frequently use this particular expression in one-sided conversations, especially on the phone, to show that they’re still listening with the occasional “claro”. Examples:

“¿Vienes?” “Claro.” = “Are you coming?” “Of course.”

[On the phone]

Them: “Blahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblah…blah blah!”

You: “Claro.”

Them: “Así, blah blah!! blahblahblahblahblah.”

You: “Claro.”

Them: “¿Sabes?” (“You know?”)

You: “Claro.”

Them: “Blah blah es blah! ¿No pienses?” (“Don’t you think?”)

You: “Claro.”

Get it?

Para Nada

It literally means “For nothing” but is the way that you would say “No way”, so it’s just another way of saying “no”, really.  Example:

“¿Vas a comer tu vaca grande morada?” = “Are you going to eat your giant purple cow?”

“¡Para nada!” = “No way!”

En Absoluto

This one can sometimes be cause for confusion for some beginners because it’s actually a negative but doesn’t look like it because it doesn’t have the word “no” in it.  It does not mean “absolutely” which is what it looks like, it actually means “absolutely not” (no, I don’t know why they did this, but they did). Example:

“Así, ¿no vas a comprar ese carro?” = “So, you’re not going to buy that car.”

“En absoluto, es demasiado caro.” = “Absolutely not, it’s too expensive.”

¡Imagínese!

The best equivalent of this would be “imagine that!” and would be used in similar circumstances, it’s a bit formal and would be used in situations where saying something like “holy shit!” would be inappropriate.

Something interesting about this one is that it’s reflexive (notice the “se” on the end) with the verb itself (“imaginar“) being in the formal singular 3rd person imperative form (“imagíne”).  If you were speaking to someone that you would use the tú form with, then you’d say “imagínate” instead.

Example:

Grandma: “¡Tienen teléfonos ahora que pueden tomar fotos!”

You: “¡Imagínese!” = “Imagine that!”

En Tus Sueños

Literally and actually means “In your dreams”, yet one more way of saying “no”. Example:

“¿Quieres quitarte la ropa y bailar como Shakira para mí?” = “Do you want to take your clothes off and dance like Shakira for me?”

“En tus sueños.” = “In your dreams.”

Estás Loco

Means what it looks like: “you’re crazy”, used in precisely the same way that we would.  Also used where we would say “you must be kidding!”.  Example:

“Debes usar un carro en lugar de tu vaca morada.” = “You should use a car instead of your purple cow.”

“¡Estás loco!” = “You’re crazy!”

¿Verdad?

“Verdad” literally means “truth” but is frequently used to mean something like “Really?” or “Is that so?”.  Examples:

“Manejo una vaca grande morada.” = “I am driving a large purple cow.”

“¿Verdad?” = “Really?”

“Sí, verdad.” = “Yes, really.”

Ni Loco

“Ni” literally means “nor” (unless uttered by The Knights Who Say ‘Ni’, in which case that’s an entirely different context) so you can see how in this case “ni loco” means “not even if I were crazy”, so one more way of saying “no” emphatically.  Example:

“¿Alguna vez consideraría comer Taco Bell?” = “Would you ever consider eating Taco Bell?”

“¡Ni loco!” = “Not even if I were crazy!”

Ya Basta

As you probably already know, “ya” means “already”.  And since “Basta” means “enough”, you can easily see how the expression “ya basta” would mean “enough already”.  Example:

“¡Papa!  ¿Ya llegamos? ¿Ya llegamos? ¿Ya llegamos? ¿Ya llegamos? ¿Ya llegamos? ¿Ya llegamos?” = “Dad! Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?”

“¡Ya basta!!!!” = “Enough already!!!!”

¿En Serio?

“Serio” means “serious” –> “en serio” means “seriously?”.  Simple.  Use it where we would use “seriously?” or “really?”.  Example:

“Vine al trabajo por vaca morada.” = “I came to work on a purple cow.”

“¿En serio?” = “Seriously?”

“No.” = “No.”

¡Qué Barbaridad!

“Barbaridad” means “barbarity”, that is “something barbaric”, a cruelty, some terrible event.  So “qué barbaridad” means something like “what a barbarity!” and would be used when we would say “how terrible!” or “oh my god” in response to a bad event that has just taken place, such as a natural disaster. Example:

“¡Japón acaba de sufrir un terremoto terrible!” = “Japan has just suffered a terrible earthquake!”

“¡Qué barbaridad!”

¿Cómo no?

This just means “Why not?” and is used in exactly the same way we would use that expression, it’s just another way of saying “yes”. It can also be used to mean “Why not?” in the literal sense of a question asking someone why they’re not doing something. Examples:

“¿Quieres venir?” = “Do you want to come?”

“¿Cómo no?” = “Sure, why not.”

“No quiero venir.” = “I don’t want to come.”

“¿Cómo no?” = “Why not?”

Es El Colmo

“Colmo” means “height” as in “the height of stupidity”, meaning to the very greatest degree.  The expression “es el colmo” or “eso es el colmo” means “that’s the last straw” or “that’s it [in the sense of it being the last thing you're going to take, the final insult, etc.]“. Example:

“Tu vaca morada ha comido todos mis azaleas…eso es el colmo, ahora voy a comer tu vaca.” = “Your purple cow has eaten all my azaleas…that’s the last straw, now I’m going to eat your cow.”

“¡Mooooo!” = “Nooooo!”

No Puede Ser

Very simple, “poder” means “can or to be able to” and “ser” means “to be”, so with “no puede ser” we end up with “it cannot be” or “that can’t be”. Example:

“He comido tu vaca morada. Jajaja.” = “I’ve eaten your purple cow. Hahaha.”

“¡No puede ser!” = “It cannot be!”

No Me Diga

It literally means “don’t tell me” and is frequently used in that sense to mean something like “don’t tell me that” but it’s usually not meant that you literally don’t want them to tell you something, but as an expression of exasperation in the same way that we would use the expression “don’t tell me that”.  The tú form for use with people you’re familiar with would be “no me digas”.  Example:

“Necesito una vaca morada nueva.” = “I need a new purple cow.”

“Lo siento, pero estamos agotados.” = “I’m sorry, but we’re all out of stock.”

“No me diga…” = “Don’t tell me that…”

Está Bien

This is how you say “ok” without saying “ok”, which is, by the way, a very common expression in the Spanish language and is probably the English expression that has the widest cross-language penetration in the world (meaning that it’s commonly used in more languages than any other English expression).  It’s also what you would use to say “that’s good” (that’s the literal translation of the expression, by the way: “está” = “is” and “bien” = “good”) or “alright” or “fine with me” etc.  You get the idea. Examples:

“Ya me voy.” = “I’m leaving now.”

“Está bien, hasta luego.”= “Alright, see you later.”

“Ya me voy, ¿está bien?” = “I’m leaving now, ok?”

“Está bien.” = “Ok.”

De Acuerdo

Just another way to say “ok”, essentially.  “Acuerdo” means “agreement” and “de acuerdo” literally translates to something like “in agreement”, as in “I’m in agreement” or “I concur”, though it doesn’t quite have the same formality as those expressions and usually just means “ok”.  It’s typically used in situations where some sort of accord or compromise is come to, as in agreeing to meet at a certain place at a certain time or how much to pay for something, etc.  Examples:

“¿Te ve a las once, entonces?” = “I’ll see you at eleven, then?”

“De acuerdo.” = “Ok.”

“Cuesta veintiocho pesos.” = “It costs twenty-eight pesos.”

“De acuerdo.” = “Deal.”

Déjese De Cuentos

Means something like “cut the crap” or “shall we dispense with the bull?”.  “Dejar” means “to leave” and is being used in the imperative here as a command, so you’re being told to leave something, and “cuento” means “story” but is also used to mean a lie like we might use “tale” in “a tall tale”, and you see it used like this in the expression “contar cuentos” which means “to tell tales” (“to lie”).  You see it used the same way here with “déjese de cuentos” where you’re being told to dispense with the tall tales.  Example:

“Puedo venderte ese carro por sólo cien mil pesos.”= “I can sell you this car for only a hundred thousand pesos.”

“Déjese el cuento, ¿cuanto puede bajar?” = “Cut the crap, how much can you come down?”

¿Cómo?

This means something like “What? How’s that?” and is used to express mild surprise at something you just heard.  “cómo” literally translates to “how” so this isn’t just a statement of surprise but it’s also a question that should elicit a response, so you’re not only expressing your disbelief but you’re also asking how it is that this thing came to be.  Example:

Dr. Evil: “Me absteno de lanzar los misiles nucleares por…¡un trillón de dólares!!”

El Presidente: “¡¿Cómo?!”

Seguro

“Seguro” literally means “safe” or “secure” but in this context it means “sure” and is used the same way we would use “sure” as a response meaning “yes”.  Example:

El Presidente: “¿Aceptas un cheque?”

Dr. Evil: “Seguro.”

No Me Importa

Literally means “it’s not important to me” and it’s the most common way of simply saying “I don’t care” in Spanish, it’s an expression that you’ll definitely hear a lot regardless of the regional dialect in question. Example:

“¿Quiere hielo en su trago, señor?” = “Do you want ice in your drink, sir?”

“Seguro, no me importa.” = “Sure, I don’t care.”

¡Qué Esperanzas!

This literally means “what hope!” and is another way of saying “no”, “no way!”, or “not a chance!” in an emphatic way. Example:

“Papa, ¿va a comprarme un carro para mi cumpleaños?” = “Dad, are you going to buy me a car?”

“¡Qué esperanzas!” = “Not a chance!”

Ni Modo

This is one more way of saying “oh well” or “oh well, what can you do?”, but keep in mind that it’s not a particularly sympathetic expression, so if the bad thing that happened, happened to someone else, you may not want to use this.  Example:

“¡Tu vaca gorda morada comió mi pobre gato!” = “Your fat purple cow ate my poor cat!”

“Ni modo…” = “Oh well…”

“No me gustas tú.” = “I don’t like you.”

No Es Para Tanto

“Tanto” means “much” or “so much” or “that much”, so the literal meaning we get here is something like “it’s not for that much” and the way it’s really used to express the feeling of “let’s not get carried away here” or “ok, that’s a bit much”.  Example:

“Mi vecino me está molestando mucho ahora.” = “My neighbor is really irritating me lately.”

“Puedo atropellarlo con mi vaca morada.” = “I can run over him with my purple cow.”

“No es para tanto.” = “Maybe that’s a bit much.”

The End

That’s it!  If you’ve got any more expressions  you think ought to be on here, tell me in the comments and I’ll be glad to add them to the list and give you credit.

Sources/Credit:

Many thanks to the folks over at Foro de Español, the Wordreference Forums, Sylvia my Ecuadorian Spanish tutor, Joseph Keenan’s Breaking Out of Beginner’s Spanish, and Dover Publications’ Easy Spanish Phrase Book for not only giving me tons of ideas for this list but also helping me making sure that the full meaning and context of the expressions above are properly expressed to avoid any potential confusion or misuse by the reader.  Thanks again!

The secrets of how to use free online resources to teach yourself Spanish, from home, in just a few months - Also: Here are the internet's Top 33 free online Spanish-learning resources

Aidan addresses the ever-popular topic among language-nerds of The Easiest Language and his perspective is, honestly, the closest to mine that I’ve read yet.  Motivation does matter, but pretending that there’s no difference between languages in terms of difficulty is simply naively denying what reality actually is.  Difficulty depends, more than anything, on what your native language is and what languages you already know–Icelandic is generally considered one of the hardest languages in the world, but being a Nordic language it almost certainly would be far easier for a native speaker of Norwegian or Swedish than it would be for anyone else.

Simon over at Omniglot tells us the story of Humboldt’s Parrot, a parrot that belonged to a recently slaughtered Amazonian tribe, the Maypure, and whose language would have been completely lost had it not been for the fact that their parrots learned a large portion of their language and those parrots were subsequently acquired by one Alexander von Humboldt who then did his best to transcribe the Maypure language based on what the parrots said.  Very cool

Vincent does a great job of showing us how easy and fun it can be to learn a language and find native speakers of it, especially in a large city, by describing the Spanish and Mandarin-speaking communities in Philadelphia.

Steve addresses a very common problem (among many) with language teaching as it’s normally done in schools in the United States, specifically that the teachers tend to be far too controlling of how their students learn, the material they’re allowed to learn from and are exposed to, etc.  I’ve honestly never had a positive experience with any language class I’ve taken, so I’m not surprised to hear that this sort of attitude is common.

And Randy makes it on the list two weeks in a row by nailing a personal pet peeve of mine, namely the myth that children have some sort of strangely magical ability to acquire languages that gives them an immense advantage over adults but really only gives adults a bullshit excuse to use for being lazy and not learning a language properly.

Now, I’m actually going to send you to a blog post from several years ago because it’s one that I think every language-learner should read and I’ve referred people to it so many times I’ve lost count.  It’s by Tim Ferriss and is about how he learned Japanese in 3 months in Japan simply by indulging his passion in Judo.  It’s a fantastic read that I cannot recommend highly enough.  Any blogger out there that writes something about how to learn a language by involving it in something that you already like or are passionate about like a hobby should read this first and be sure to refer to it in their post (I’ve read about a dozen such posts, by the way, seems as though everyone comes up with that one and, worse, thinks they’re the first one to ever think of it).

That’s it, I hope you found something interesting here and if you’ve got any additional suggestions please please please put them in the comments, anything at all interesting you’ve come across recently you’d like to share that you think someone might find useful is more than welcome!

The secrets of how to use free online resources to teach yourself Spanish, from home, in just a few months - Also: Here are the internet's Top 33 free online Spanish-learning resources

Benny teaches us about St. Paddy’s day and the Irish language – St. Patrick’s claim to fame in Ireland was bringing Christianity to the Irish when so many others had tried and failed.  Know why he succeeded? Because he spoke to them in their own language when every other preacher before him talked at them in Latin.  Pretty cool, huh?

Jennie teaches us how to curse in French, and explains the French confusion with certain words being bleeped out on American and British television, which I particularly liked because I, like the French, find that sort of behavior to be shamefully stupid, I hate that we’re still so prudish and backwards even in this day and age.

Pete explains the subtleties of learning a language, how implicit learning works, and why you can really only learn by doing.  This is something Benny has talked about repeatedly and is why he emphasizes speaking so much: you can’t learn how to speak a language by any means other than speaking it.  What makes this post special is that Pete actually goes into detail explaining precisely why this is the case and how it works.

Aaron talks about putting in the time necessary to learn a language and how Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule in his book Outliers applies just as much to truly mastering a language as everything else.  I’ve talked before about how important motivation is, and the reason it’s so important is because it’s necessary to succeed in a language because of the amount of time and hard work you have to put in: my favorite way of phrasing it is to say “You have to be consistently persistent.”, and that applies to succeeding in anything, not just learning a language.  By the way, if haven’t read Gladwell’s book, I highly recommend you do so (Amazon link), it’s excellent.

Randy learned Polish in 8 days…well, not really, but what he did do is demonstrate just how much you can learn in such a short period of time and how fantastically effective and important it is to just dive right in and go!  Eight days of plowing through a book on basic Polish got him to the point where he was chatting (not well, but he was speaking and they could understand him!) with native speakers.  Also, he talks about how understand the basic grammar to some degree was helpful, and I’m actually not surprised, I’m not quite on the side of some my fellow language nerds who insist that learning formal grammar to any degree is useless, though I would definitely say that you shouldn’t be emphasizing it, you should be emphasizing actually speaking with people.

And Cracked (yeah, I know, but they’re generally funny and not too horribly inaccurate) tells us about the 5 stupidest ways that movies deal with foreign languages.  The bit about Sean Connery in The Hunt for Red October is dead on, it sounded like a Scotsman making a very poor attempt to imitate a Russian accent, which is because that’s precisely what it was.

And a new study has come out showing that speaking a second language can delay the onset of dementia and Alzheimer’s by 5 years.  If you don’t use it, you lose it, I’m not surprised to hear about this.

That’s all I could come up with for now, this was kind of an impromptu thing that I thought was a good idea and would provide some value to my readers, so if you like it let me know, and if you’ve got anything else you think should’ve been included or is just interesting, don’t be afraid to post it in the comments.

The secrets of how to use free online resources to teach yourself Spanish, from home, in just a few months - Also: Here are the internet's Top 33 free online Spanish-learning resources

Oh dear, you’ve fallen off the language learning wagon.

You were tired, so you took a day off. The next day you were swamped and didn’t get around to it. The day after that you forgot your cue cards at home. Next thing you know, it’s been a month and you’ve made zero progress on your language studies. How embarrassing.

You want to get back into it, you want to learn more, but now you have feelings of a) guilt for having slacked off for so long, and b) despair at the thought of having to relearn what you may have forgotten.

Well, my fellow depressed language learners, here’s how to climb back on that wagon with gusto, seize those reins, and steer yourself back on course!

(Note: I fully endorse giving yourself a full day off for a personal retreat. Go ahead, call in sick or tell your boss you’re at an all-day off-site meeting. Escape to your favourite cafe or shady tree. You deserve it.)

Step 1: Release

Absolve yourself of the guilt, release yourself from past obligations. If you continue to kick yourself for what you haven’t done, you’ll constantly be mired in the past. You can’t change the past, but you do have full power over what you choose to do right now. That’s what counts.

It’s hard to forgive yourself sometimes, especially when you think back to all that precious time you wasted playing World of Warcraft when you could have memorized the Devanagari script and be reading Hindi fluently by now. No matter, what’s done is done. Once you’ve fully forgiven yourself, then you are ready for step 2 (and perhaps another lattÈ).

Step 2: Remember

Why did you start out on this language learning quest anyway? Remember what your motivations are and place them front and centre in your brain. Like Andrew previously wrote, motivation is the most important factor in learning a new language.

It is often easy to lose sight of why we began, especially when we get bogged down in the details of case endings and verb conjugations. Remind yourself of the reason why you are trying to learn French, Spanish, Greek, Klingon, et cetera. It could be for the love of travel, the love of food, the love of the intellectual challenge, or the love of your significant other. Whatever your motivation, bring it back to the forefront of your mind.

Write down your motivation in large block letters, tack it to the wall in front of you, then order another fudge brownie and continue to step 3.

Step 3: Refocus

What is your goal? What does “success” mean to you? It’s incredible how far off course we can get when we don’t know where we are going. If, after some soul searching, you realize you only want to be able to order food in a restaurant, then why are you reviewing vocabulary for negotiating business deals?

Some quick questions to ask yourself to gauge your definition of success:

• Where and with whom do you imagine using the language?
• What level of grammatical perfection do you need? Are you writing a doctoral dissertation, or are you chatting in the bar with friends?
• What is the minimum you can get away with right now?

Focusing on your goal will tell you what you need to learn and, more importantly, what you can ignore for the moment. Your goal may very well change and increase as you approach it, which is the sign of intentional learning. But for the moment try to describe as accurately as possible what your goal is right now. Putting a timeline on it is also a good idea, but don’t stress yourself out. Write it all down, then go to step 4.

Step 4: Review

You probably remember more than you think. It may take a bit of gentle stretching to eke it out of your brain, but don’t despair: You’re not starting over from scratch.

Go through the table of contents in a grammar or phrase book, see what you know. Try translating whole conversations in your head, especially as they relate to your goal (see step 3). Gather the entire corpus of your knowledge together to remind yourself of how far you’ve come. This will not only act as a general review, it will also encourage you to see how much you already know, and hopefully reignite new interest in the act of learning the language.

Step 5: Recalibrate

Often we splash about without any real plan of what to do next. We jump on anything interesting that comes along, whether or not it helps us move towards our goal. When it turns out to be unrelated or irrelevant, we will soon forget all about it and will have then wasted our time.

Take the results from step 3 and step 4. Imagine you are looking at a big map. Where are you now? And where do you want to be? The gap in between will give you an indication of what to do next. Write down what you are missing, and this becomes your learning plan for the next little while. It’s as simple as that. Time for more coffee.

Step 6: Repeat

At the end of this personal retreat, you will have your goal and motivating force clearly articulated, you will have a summary of your past accomplishments, and you will have a game plan for what to do next. But now that you’ve forgiven your past transgressions, how do you avoid falling off that wagon again?

The answer is to conduct frequent reviews. I recommend “New Moon resolutions” (as opposed to New Year’s resolutions): the shorter time frame and higher frequency means you will have more opportunities to refresh and recalibrate your actions. Every 28 days, go through this exercise again to reinvigorate yourself, whether you feel you need it or not. The iterative process will ensure you are on track and on target. Calling in sick every month is entirely optional.

Best of luck,
J.

A Final Appeal to Language Enthusiasts

If you value language learning, and if you believe teaching languages to children is incredibly important, then please help me by voting for my project on Pepsi’s Refresh Everything grant competition. Visit my page, register with the site, and then vote as often as they will allow you! Tell all your friends, too. You can also read more about the project on my blog.

Quick edit from Andrew:

The secrets of how to use free online resources to teach yourself Spanish, from home, in just a few months - Also: Here are the internet's Top 33 free online Spanish-learning resources