Spanish Only

Learning a Language Is Like Running a Marathon

Ramses — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:25:53 +0000

Many want to learn Spanish and they want to learn it now. No wait, they want to speak Spanish and they want to speak it NOW. They don’t want to go through the trouble of learning another language but want to speak it as soon as possible.

And many language learning products on the market tell you (or at least want you to believe) you can learn Spanish within 20 days, or within 200 hours. Bee es! There’s no such thing as learning Spanish within 200 hours. Every idiot can cram enough Spanish for his upcoming holiday in Cancún, and that’s fine. But don’t expect to have a decent level after 200 hours, especially not if you’re going for the input-based approach, because that’ll let you rock harder in the end but will take more time upfront.

I like to compare learning another language to running a marathon. You don’t wake up one day and thing: “Dude, I’m totally going to run the marathon of Los Angeles today”. No, running a marathon or any significant distance requires practice and a healthy lifestyle. If you can’t or don’t want to do that you’re either going to fail or run yourself to death.

If you dive into this language learning thing without a plan you’re probably going to fail. Step one in order to succeed is setting a realistic goal and a realistic timeframe. Expect to be able to produce some Spanish that makes sense after 6 months (with enough input), but don’t expect to be even near fluency. For that you need more time, more input and more dedication. It’s simple as that.

Also, don’t expect to instantly win this ‘marathon’. It takes years of practice to end high in the rankings. In the sense of language learning it also takes years of input and practice to really become fluent. You can become more or less fluent within 2 years, yes, but true ownage only starts after that. It’s not like that you say one day: “Now I’m fluent”. It’s a gradual process and you need your time to get to that phase.

Don’t get discouraged if you’re not progressing as fast you would like. The ultimate goal is to learn Spanish, not how fast you learn it. If you want to learn it within 2 years then that’s fine and absolutely possible with the right approach. However, if you can’t spend enough time on Spanish to become fluent within 2 years but you need 3 or 4 years instead, then that’s fine as well. Just don’t burn yourself out.

In the end the most important thing is having fun. It’s not that you’re only going to have fun as soon as you’re fluent in Spanish, no. The most ideal situation would be that you’re having fun from day one. That way you’ll be able to continue to incredible journey without burning out. Pick native materials that you like and don’t waste time on some lame learning product. If you’re having fun and just relaxing while learning this cool language you’re only doing good things. Next to that, you might end up fluent without a pain!

The most important thing is reaching the finish line, no matter how long it took you to reach it.

Further reading:

Imitate, Imitate, Imitate

Ramses — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 10:56:12 +0000

After reading the blog for a while, how do you think you should learn Spanish? By reading a lot? Listening a lot? Watching TV as much as you can? Speaking? Wrong, wrong, wrong… WRONG! Sure, you should read, listen, watch TV and eventually speak, but that won’t make you fluent. You know what does?

Imitating! Think about it; you listen Spanish for hours and hours, watch TV all day long, every day. But in the end, can you speak? Well, sure you can a bit, but you won’t sound native if you keep trying to come up with your own sentences. Coming up with your own sentences sucks! Trying to come up with your ‘unique intonation’ sucks even harder!

The key is to imitate native speakers. Often this goes automatically because you get a huge amount of input in the form of radio, television and listening to conversations, but often it won’t go that way. And why are you messing it up? Because you want to be unique. But hey, it’s possible that you’re unique and special, but you’re not in Spanish. No, in Spanish you’re simply going to imitate you friends, television and phrases from songs. Why?

Because that’s pretty much the best, if not the only, way to really sound like a native. Take me for example; I sound like a native mainly because I use expressions and words natives use. People call me albaceteño or hellinero (I lived in Hellín for a while) even though I’m not even Spanish! It’s simply because I use certain slang that’s unique to that region which in turn is because I always imitate people. I know it sounds lame, but it works and natives don’t mind you imitate their way of speaking.

Next to that you should copy the intonation of you Spanish friends. Again, it sounds lame but they’re natives and you are not. So who sounds better? You or them? Don’t be a smart-ass and copy their accent.

Kids don’t come up with their own sentences and accent, they imitate their peers, who imitate their parents. If your kid has many friends that swear, he or she will swear within no time as well. If your kid plays with British kids, and I mean a lot, he or she will be able to speak with a British accent as well. We’re no kids, but often we don’t lose our ability to imitate someone. It’s there, like… forever.

So listening and simply repeating the stuff you’ve heard is essential. People don’t mind if you take over their way of speaking; they don’t even notice. Another thing I did and almost forgot (until reading this comment of Noah) is carrying is small notepad. And mine was really small; big enough to fill with hundreds of words and expressions and small enough to bring with me everywhere I went. And I’m not talking about getting obsessed with writing down everything – that becomes old really soon – but rather words you don’t hear a lot (like payo, which I didn’t know until hanging out with some gitanos).

The best thing of imitating is that it’s effortless. You don’t have to worry about grammar, certain words, your accent; if you simply take over an entire sentence or a big part of a sentence and try to produce it with the same intonation (which is weird to do, but also great fun at the same time) you’re imitating pretty much effortless. And the more you imitate, the more it’ll become your own way of speaking and you won’t have to imitate anymore.

If you want to know more about imitating in language learning and why you should imitate, you have to read this article by Khatzumoto. He talks about Japanese, but the imitating stuff is there to be applied to any language out there.

Further reading:

Adding Audio to Anki Made Easy

Ramses — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 20:18:00 +0000

Last week I told you guys how to get tons of real French and Spanish sentences with audio, and how to add them to Anki easily. But now it just got even easier and above all faster to add sentences to Anki, or should I say the audio?

Everything in the post still applies, but you don’t have to manually download the audio files in order to get them to Anki. All I did (by accident) was pasting the direct link of a sound file to the question field in Anki, and it simply downloaded the file and put it on the card. I couldn’t believe it worked, but it does. You don’t need an internet connection after adding the file because it’s stored locally.

The beauty of this is that is saves you some clicks for every card, reducing the time to add a single card to 5 seconds or so, which is incredible.

So that’s my top-tip for today. What’s your trick for Anki that’ll save us time and trouble? The comments are open!

Further reading:

How Much Spanish Is There in Your Life?

Ramses — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 20:33:10 +0000

People are good at looking for excuses. If I add up all the time I’ve been looking for excuses to not do something I’d be a rich guy, and fluent in French already. But that’s not the case, and many people are in exactly the same situation. Luckily, it’s not too late to change.

Ask yourself; how much Spanish is there in my life? Am I really doing all I can to get exposed to Spanish, am I really putting effort into learning this cool language? Be honest, don’t try to trick yourself and don’t look for excuses. Yes, be hard for yourself, you’ll thank yourself later you did.

I’ve written about this topic several times, but now I want to focus on the question if you’re really doing everything you can to get Spanish into your life. What are you currently doing to get more Spanish in your life? I’ve been thinking about this subject quite a bit lately as a classmate of mine asked me how she can get better at Spanish. So I made a list with her to sum up all the things she currently does in Dutch and all the things she does in Spanish.

I saw her problem right away; she’s doing way too much in Dutch. Sure, she’s in a relationship with someone that doesn’t speak Spanish, but that’s no reason to do other things in Dutch. She’s also a fan of reading, but two years after starting majoring Spanish she’s still only reading books in Dutch. It’s no surprise that her Spanish isn’t good and that all she knows is grammar (because that’s simply all the studying she does).

Many think they won’t enjoy something in Spanish because they don’t understand most of the book or movie. But you’ll always be stuck at that level if you don’t just dive into native materials. Holding off the boat won’t help you; in the end you’ll be discouraged because you’re putting in time for formal study but don’t see results (which is logical, because you really need to immerse yourself to get good results fast).

So what did I tell her to do? Of course to do more in Spanish and keep Dutch stuff to a minimum. Sure, there’s always work, or college and/or a significant other. But don’t spend your me-time in Dutch/English whatever language. Do everything you can in Spanish. Heck, I even sing in Spanish while I shower. I only have Spanish music on my iPod, just so that I can’t lure myself into listening English stuff. I don’t have Dutch books anymore (apart from the ones I use/used for college that weren’t available in Spanish). And above all; I abandoned cable TV, which is not only a huge time-saver but will also force you to look for other things on the Internet, and thus you’re more likely to look for Spanish materials than English stuff.

These aren’t extreme measures to get more Spanish in your life, they’re rather small things. But small things add up fast. If you’d just fill you mp3 player with Spanish music, your listening time stacks up quickly. If you give away your books that aren’t writting in Spanish and start with books in Spanish at your level, you have to read Spanish. Even if you change your operating system to Spanish, you’re already getting more exposure.

So ask yourself: am I doing everything I can to get more Spanish into my life? Be honest, be hard for yourself. Without more exposure you’ll only feel frustrated because you’re still not at the level you want to be. Even worse; you’re not even moving in the right direction.

¡Cambia AHORA!

Further reading:

Using FrenchPod (and SpanishPod) to Get Sentences With Audio

Ramses — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:52:52 +0000

A while ago I received an e-mail from a reader with the question if one should add audio to every sentence. He complained (with reason) that it isn’t easy to get good audio for sentences (you’re often forced to use lame text-to-speech software) and that it’s just a lot of work to add it all to your Anki deck. Now that I’m learning French I’ve become a huge fan of FrenchPod (the same company also produces SpanishPod,which uses exactly the same system). The website is popular because they provide funny podcasts which are short enough to listen to in your spare time and they offers tons of extra materials to paying members.

Personally, I never listen to any of the podcasts, nor do I read the transcripts, do the exercises or use the wordlists. No, the only reason I’m throwing in $29 per month is their Expansion page. The page works really simple; you have a French (or Spanish, if you use SpanishPod) sentence, the English translation beneath, a direct translation of each word if you hover over them with your mouse and audio recorded by a native speaker! Here’s an example:

So first you see the keyword or expression, and the rest speaks for itself. Here’s an example of the extra info you can get for each word:

Now you may think something like; “and how do I download the audio?“. Although Praxis Languages has made an excellent system, there’s no download button to get the audio file for each sentence, and that’s a pity. But by accident I found a way to get all sentences in a textfile, with a direct link to the audio file. I’m not sure how happy FrenchPod/SpanishPod is going to be with this post, but you pay for the audio so I’d like to think you also have the right to download it to your harddrive. So here it goes.

First you need to select all sentences, including the header (in this case mourir de) and copy-paste it into Notepad:

Now you press Ctrl + C and then in Notepad Ctrl + V, which results in (click on image to see it in full size):

Now you can simply copy-paste the url (without the initial ► and final 0) into your browser, and it’ll ask you to download the file. Save it, and you can import it into Anki right away. (You can paste the URL directly into Anki; it’ll download the file and put it on the card) This way I add all sentences of an expansion page (~15 sentences per page) to Anki within 5-10 minutes, which is pretty fast.

Further reading:

Spanish Word of the Day: pedazo

Ramses — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 07:30:56 +0000

Jesús, a Spanish friend of mine, is quite foul-mouthed and likes to call people pedazo de gay every now and then, just because they’re not 100 percent machista. Of course that very expression is an insult, but that’s the way he talks to people.

But not the insult is interesting about that expression, but just one word; pedazo. If you translate it to English you’ll get “piece”, so what Jesús actually says is that you’re “a piece of gay”. Well, there could be worse insults. That teaches us that pedazo de can be used as “piece of”, like in un pedazo de pan (a piece of bread). Funny enough that last expression means “sweetie” or “to be a real sweety” when combined with the verb ser (¡Eres un pedazo de pan! – “You’re a real sweety!”).

There are some more colloquial ways of expressing yourself with the word pedazo, look:

Sentences

¡Vaya pedazo de moto se ha comprado!
What a fantastic motorbike he’s bought!

La pobre mujer estaba hecha pedazos.
The poor woman was worn out.

¡Pedazo de idiota!
You idiot!

Further reading:

Mandarin, French and SRSing

Ramses — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 15:19:29 +0000

My Mandarin adventure I wrote about some weeks ago ended before it really came off the ground (read everything about it in this and this post). I’ve learned some good things while struggling with this completely unknown (to me at least!) language, and now I remember how frustrating it was learning a language from scratch. But hey, at least I got another lesson from it; that I’m better off learning French!

Yup, French. Not Mandarin, not German, but French/francés/Français! Now, I know what you’re going to say: “Hey dude, there’s nothing special about French after you’ve learned Spanish“. You know what? I. Don’t. CARE! I like the country, I like the culture, I love the food and some of my friends are native speakers of French. So I’ll choose French as my minor and will indeed have an easier time learning it (there’s a huge amount of words that are similar to their Spanish equivalents). And to be honest; for the first time in weeks I’m feeling really good.

With Mandarin I was in a state in which I simply thought “huh?” all the time. I didn’t understand a damn thing, I didn’t like the television shows (I mean, do all dramas need to contain love and difficult relationships? I freakin’ hate romantic movies and shows!) and I couldn’t focus entirely on the language. That doesn’t matter, I know when I’ll have time to dedicate more time to it, but that time is not now. French, on the other hand, is a language I can pick up faster, has media I actually like and I can do it as a minor (and thus spending rediculous amounts of time on it, without consequences).

Another advantage is that I can apply the same approach to French as I applied to Spanish. Of course I’ve learned a lot in the meanwhile, but the general idea is the same. Therefore I’ll also update this blog with stuff about French (only if you want, of course; please vote in the poll below). One of the first things I’ll discuss is better SRSing (will be discussed in the next post) which can be applied to Spanish as well.

Stay tuned!

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Further reading:

Cool Resource: Spanish Live Television

Ramses — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 12:44:47 +0000

Just a quick update. A while ago I stumbled upon this really cool site called Fomny, where you can watch several live streams of (web) television channels. How cool is that?

The link I provided leads to the Spain page, but if you look at the top you can select ‘Argentina’ or ‘South America’ and search for more channels you might like. This sure kicks butt as it’s both free and really easy to use.

I’m personally addicted to La cocina del humor channel (click the Homer Simpson head to tune in) which brings you American cartoons dubbed in castellano (Spanish from Spain) 24/7. Really, I’m in heaven!

Have fun!

Further reading:

Watching Television is Bad. Do it More!
Andalucía Televisión

Spanish Word of the Day: topar

Ramses — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 07:29:26 +0000

Today a super short Word of the Day post, but one with a good word: topar. Some weeks (or was it months already?, I don’t know) I was reading my V de Vendetta graphic novel in Spanish, and saw this word topar. From context I could more or less guess what it should mean, but I wasn’t sure.

"...no habrías topado con..."

Topar officially means ‘to butt’, which is a bit weird if you look at the context in the image above. But often the meaning ‘to bump into somebody’ is given, which is actually the meaning of toparse. At the same time the word is a synonym for the word tropezarse, which you might already know.

Sentences

Nos topamos en el metro.
We bumped into each other in the metro.

Me he topado con la puerta.
I walked against the door.

Me topé con el casero en el ascensor.
I ran into the landlord in the elevator.

Further reading:

Watching Television is Bad. Do it More!

Ramses — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 20:48:10 +0000

Hi, my name is Ramses and I’m an addict. Hi Ramses! Addicted? To what? Well, watching television (the horror!). I mean, I watch television… a lot. I do it while I’m commuting, brushing my teeth, dressing myself, still half asleep… like… always. And until some years ago I was convinced it was a waste of time.

Still, I was watching television… a lot. All kind of stupid talk shows, movies (I still have a box of DVDs in English, which is just HUGE), series, reality shows, EVERYTHING. My mother always asked me why I was watching all this stuff, and if I didn’t get bored (she isn’t asking this anymore because the knows watching more television will make her son better at Spanish (and Mandarin!), love you mom!). Well, I didn’t, I just mindlessly watched television for thousands of hours. Now, if only I did that in Spanish. Hm…

Yes, people tell you that watching television is bad, that it’s a waste of time, that you shouldn’t do it. But at the same time they’re doing exactly the same. How do I know that? Well, if you see the numbers there’s no other possibility than that everyone’s watching television like crazy. The avarage American watched around 142 hours of television a month in 2008. No doubt that this number is way higher this year. But 142 / 30 = 4.7 hours PER DAY! That a huge f*ck*ng amount of trash going to your brain. I it only were in Spanish. Hm…

You see, you probably want to learn Spanish and do watch some things in Spanish. But did you do away all television watching in English (and/or your native language)? In English watching ~5 hours of television is just sick, in Spanish it means you’ll end up fluent! Heck, I’d even say: DO. IT. MORE!

Yes, make that 4.7 a nice round 5, or 6 or even an 8! It’s up to you, but do it in Spanish. It’s simply the right thing to do.

Further reading: