Learning Spanish (English)?

This is translated from Spanish to English. So, when you see the words Spanish and English think of them in reverse. If I say Spanish it means English for you, and you read English it means Spanish for you. OK, let’s begin.

Hello to everyone and welcome. I apologize for any error in grammar and of redaction, because I do not know Spanish grammar or English grammar, either. I remember very little of what it was taught to me when in school. In any event…

I decided to call it Learning English? Because little time after arriving to the US, I realized that one does not need to learn English, instead one needs to translate what one knows in Spanish, since one knows how to read, write and express oneself in Spanish, then one does not need to learn all that in English again, just to translate from English to Spanish.

How did I arrive to this conclusion?

A week after having arrived to Los Angeles, Ca I enrolled myself in an ESL class. I was there for two weeks and I got out, because the teacher wanted me to hold hands with the other adults and sing the alphabet and some other things that didn’t suit with me very well and made feel like I was a child.

Disappointed, I didn’t know what I was going to do in order to learn English. Some weeks after my arrival to the US I started to work in a deli cutting hams and making sandwiches and from the start I realized I didn’t understand the clients because they spoke too fast and mainly because I didn’t know English. I was compelled to translate a phrase from Spanish to English literally “Please speak slowly because I am learning English”, I looked up each word in a bilingual dictionary, first in Spanish in order to know how to write it in English and then look up the word in English in order to know how it was pronounced.

The clients understood me and started to speak slower and this gave way to questions on their side “Where are you from? When did you arrive in the US?  etc. Very soon I had to assemble a couple of more questions like “Excuse me, can you repeat?” And later another one “I still don’t understand you, can you explain in another way?”

That’s how I realized that one does not have to learn English, rather apply what you know in Spanish to translate to English.

Obviously, the direct translation from Spanish to English is not perfect but it is useful to make yourself understand in the beginning. I also realized, that the majority of people, and that goes for me too, when asked if they can read and write English, say the cannot do it or say that just a little because they don’t know English. The truth is that anybody that knows how to read and write Spanish can read and write English, he or she won’t be able to understand what’s being read or written until those words are looked up in a dictionary, in other words to translate the words.

Simple.

Then, armed with that knowledge, I decided to translate a novel from English to Spanish. In this way, a year after my arrival to the US, I was reading, writing, speaking and understanding English. Not perfectly, but I felt comfortable communicating with the people. I think I finished translating the majority of my Spanish vocabulary to English in about two years. I learned new words in Spanish by having to look up for words in English that I didn’t understand in English or its meaning in Spansih etc, but in took me a year in order to not have major problems with English.

I am not a teacher but I teach my own method to “acquire” English. I say “acquire” and not “learn” because, just I related before, one does not need to learn English, instead one needs to translate what one knows in Spanish to English, and that’s totally different. It is obvious that one never stops learning, not the same thing for the case I expose.

All this made me think 30 years ago that one does not need to learn grammar either. For one, like in my own case, I knew or remembered very little of my own grammar, which it wasn’t an impediment for me to express myself in Spanish at my level. I say my level, because I finished my high school. That was my education, beside the one given at home. Just with that English can be accomplished.

Every person I know when starting to learn another language try to translate from the native language to the foreign language, as I said that is OK in the beginning to make yourself understood, somehow. But if you continue to do that there is no way for you to know if the resulting phrase makes sense or not, because you don’t know the other language! This the problem with online translators, by the way, so please do not use them to learn.

Instead, translate from the other language to yours, using a bilingual dictionary, and you will instantly know if it makes sense or not, because you do speak your language, don’t you? :)

Also, watching your favorite movies in the foreign language’s track without subtitles will exercise your listening skills to the point that soon you’ll start to recognize words you have heard before and/or look up in the dictionary while translating.

Once you start to discern the different accents the other language has or foreign accents then you are ready to start softening your own accent. Pick up any article and read out loud a paragraph while recording you. Then listen to your own voice and accent. Repeat the paragraph and recording until satisfied more or less, then continue with another paragraph. I guarantee you that you will improve your fluency in the language and soften your accent at the same time. Remember, it is horrible to listen your own recorded voice, and you'll find your accent unbearable, but you will succeed if you persevere doing this exercise.

So, till next time, and I hope it is of help.

Hernán.