Learning Spanish

Upforthematch wrote: »

Are you learning South American or European Spanish?

+1 for lightspeed if its European you're learning

There's no such thing.
The Spanish you learn in Argentina for example is much closer to Northern Spain than it is to Mexico.

Better to just learn 'Castilian Spanish' and adapt from there as necessary.

Not true that its a waste of time learning one form over the other.

Every region has its own peculiarities when it vomss to accents, pronunciation, slang, etc. But They can all understand each other.

Even within countries there are differences between one place and another..

Argentinians use the word vos instead of tu, which has implications for verbs forms. Its distinctive but certainly not incomprehensible to people from other countries.

Upforthematch wrote: »

I didn't say it was?

The point is tailor your resources to the type of Spanish you want to learn.

There's only one Type of Spanish tough. If you learn the basics you can adapt to slang/dialects,

Upforthematch wrote: »

Im not getting into an argument about semantics or dialects here.

I suppose everyone learns differently but if you are serious about learning a language, the sounds are critical and the resources used vary. It is important to consider this.

Getting the correct resources at the start is important. A blanket "just learn castelian spanish" could be bad advice if the op has certain goals in mind.

They haven’t expressed any specific goals though other than learning Spanish.

I understand where you are coming from but say for example someone wanted to move to Cork and had no english, the best advice would still be to learn basic English.

Nuances can be learned later.

rapul wrote: »

Just get better at Irish your ****ing Irish!

Maybe you should worry about mastering English first.

rapul wrote: »

Just get better at Irish your ****ing Irish!

You get better at English while you’re at it.

I’m learning Spanish myself the last couple of years. Duolingo is good, if formulaic, but I’d fully recommend going to actual classes if you’re serious about it. Can’t beat interacting with others and asking questions. Online stuff misses nuance.

A little thing I did to build vocabulary was wrote Spanish words on post-its and stick them around the house until the word was burned into my brain. Sounds weird but it works!

Best of luck.

Upforthematch wrote: »

Are you learning South American or European Spanish?

+1 for lightspeed if its European you're learning

I learnt latin American specifically an argentinian accent but vocab for both latin and European....when i lived in spain for a year as a kid ....

I was learning from my neighbors one of whom was Argentinian and the other was from Catalonia but spoke castilian!

My parents used to use me to order in restaurants. This was very stressful for me. My brother and dad love butter. I kept saying mantequilla (which is right in spain), but the accent I was trying to do meant it should have been manteca.

I would also mix the accents up....I would say athul /blue...manthana/apple actually no i would say manthana half way between a Z and a TH...probably athul too ...

...but also say grasias and sapato the argentinian way with ssss ..or i would grathias/thapato one min and then revert to the s sound.

I must have sounded very odd. Gracias por los zapatos could come out..Grathias por los sapatos!



I think the Spanish thought i was cute though because they kept giving me free stuff!

My Dad wants to learn now.

I loved the lessons though!

Maybe I will take it up again. I think i have forgotten everything now.




Mostly during lessons my teacher would let us dance around her house to latin american music. She and her Argentinian husband and kids were our neighbors. She gave me my first kitten when her cat hat a litter!

I started from scratch on Duolingo and now I'm at the point where I can pretty much read newspaper articles. Can't speak a word of it though as zero conversation practice.

Ipso wrote: »

Move to Barcelona or Bilbao for a while.

While clearly tongue in cheek, you could absolutely move to Barcelona or Bilbao to learn Spanish. It is widely spoken as the daily language in Bilbao which is certainly not the most "Basque" of cities in the Basque country.

mistersifter wrote: »

Argentinians use the word vos instead of tu, which has implications for verbs forms. Its distinctive but certainly not incomprehensible to people from other countries.

While they can use vos, the conjugated forms of the verbs do not change.

Upforthematch wrote: »

If the Op wants to go to Mexico though it's wasting their time learning Castilian.

This is nonsense. The Spanish they speak in Mexico is the Spanish they speak in Spain. There are of course differences in vocabulary (along with some minor grammatical differences) due to the separate evolution of the language and geographic influence of other proximate languages. It would be like saying someone wanting to learn English couldn't go to London if they planned to live in the US.

Castellano is the base/language for all "Spanish" spoken throughout the world. Master it and you'll be fine conversing with any Spanish speaker the world over.

Oh and to answer the OPs question, the best way would be to do a course somewhere along with some study of vocab and basic grammar to get you to a point where you can have a very basic conversation with someone. Then find yourself a Spaniard learning English to do an "intercambio" with. There's a mountain of them in Dublin!

I've been to Bilbao ...its lovely! Its one of the faster speaking parts of spain tho. There is a lot of Arab architecture.

And yes they do speak spanish. Its all you will ever need.

There is also Euskara. It sounds NOTHING like its written. ...but it sounds like someone speaking a crazy language with a spanish accent. Its written crazy lots of x's ..but none of them sound like that. Its totally unlike any language i have ever heard.

But you won't hear it in Bilbao. People are reluctant to speak it. Im told small towns way outside of Bilbao still speak a little.


Here is a song. In Euskara.



When i first read the lyrics i was like OMG i can understand Euskara! Then i realized i was reading the spanish translation underneath

It just says we are Euskal We are Euskal we have to push on.. rise etc

I never heard it in Bilbao. I only heard it when i got back on records etc songs and youtube.

Weather is nice in summer ...winter just rains ..think france lashing rain

Moving from AH

Because of the independence question in the Basque Country and Catalunya, the "fear factor" of trying to learn Spanish there is often overplayed. Spanish is clearly the day to day language for the vast majority of Basques. Where it gets difficult for learners is that signage, labels in supermarkets etc will be primarily in Basque.

In Catalunya it's a bit different. Catalan is the daily language in the city amongst the natives (Latinos, intents from the rest of Spain, second generation Arab and Pakistanis make up a significant element of the population and will speak Spanish first) but EVERYBODY also speaks Spanish and has no problem speaking it to you. The idea that Catalans begrudge using it is a complete myth. Again however (even moreso) road signs, signs on public transport, announcements etc will always be primarily in Catalan

EagererBeaver wrote: »

Because of the independence question in the Basque Country and Catalunya, the "fear factor" of trying to learn Spanish there is often overplayed. Spanish is clearly the day to day language for the vast majority of Basques. Where it gets difficult for learners is that signage, labels in supermarkets etc will be primarily in Basque.

Its looks like czech or something!

They always have spanish too tho. Either on the same sign ..or sometimes on spanish signage the other side of the street or something.

EagererBeaver wrote: »

Of course, but it makes it that little bit harder and more confusing, albeit perhaps a bit richer and more rewarding.

For example, I've been living in Barcelona the last five years and umpteen words from Catalan (which I don't speak but have merely absorbed to a limited degree) have crept into my vocab when speaking Spanish. It's ok here but when I visit my brothers and their families in Madrid and talk about pastanagas instead of zanahorias it can cause confusion.

I actually meant Basque/Euskara. :P


Catalan is just like spanish. If you can speak spanish you can understand most of what a catalan says like 90%. They say french speakers can understand a lot too.

Whereas Basque ..its nuts to me. Impenetrable.