More on learning Spanish on your own.

To me, it is always fun to help people. That’s why I am always smiling and laughing. People think that I am laughing at them, but that’s not it. I am laughing because I remember making pretty much the same mistakes that I am now witnessing. Some people think that I am belittling them or that I think they are not intelligent. Not so. If I thought so, I would not even try to help people. What happens is that all of us, who are or were, learning a language, have or had certain pre-conceived ideas about what method to be used and how to learn. This is fine, but not very conducive to learning in the best possible way, although we might think so.

I have already expounded my method in my previous blog and I would like to add that you can always rely on those instructions to guide you with the learning of the Spanish language, or any language in which the alphabet is the same or almost the same as the English alphabet. In case the alphabet is not the same, I would need to know first, how children are taught to write in their native language and the order of the alphabet or whatever is used in order to have a dictionary printed. If there is a dictionary of that language then there must be a hierarchy to follow, then I could translate a novel from that language to my native or second, third etc. language.

I know that within a year I will be reading, writing, understanding and speaking that language. How good? It will depend on diligence, enthusiasm and effort put into it.

Then of course, I will need maybe a couple of more years to become really fluent and have translated all I know in English to that language, but at the one year mark I shouldn’t have much problem with the language.

It is funny to hear other people to devise ways of memorizing new words they are learning in Spanish. I say it is funny not because I think people are not intelligent and that amuses me, but because I thought and did exactly the same or at least I started to do the same, but thanks heavens I stopped. People start by constructing phrases in which they pluck the new word or words, in order to practice or stick labels all over the house to read and remind them of the newly learned word(s). Flashcards, you name it, I had started making a list of synonyms and antonyms.  (Later I will come back to this topic)

You see, my premise is that if you know how to read, write and express yourself in your language, you should be able to do the same thing in another language. It is also my premise that you don’t need grammar to learn any language, and this last item is where a lot of people freak out on me, simply because they “believe” as a whole lot of other people do, they need to learn the foreign language’s grammar, else how is it that you are going to speak it and be able to communicate well in that language? I know it is difficult not to try to incorporate grammar, not only because of the reasons/beliefs given above, but for those inclined to like languages, the art of communicating, it is like a drug. But believe me, one forget those fleeting moments of enlightenment one has with whatever concept in grammar is explained to us and as soon as we turn around we’ll commit the same error that took us to an explanation of the same grammar rule, and so on relying that sooner or later it will “stick” to us.

My usual answer is: Did you know grammar when you first started to go to school? What about at 9 years old? The answer of course is not, and I can bet both of my arms that any student of English for example, would give his or her life to speak and understand English at the level of the nine years old kid! I know I would!

Going back to the memorizing “techniques” people do… Let’s say, you, as an English native, that wants to learn Spanish, most likely know already that you will have to repeat a lot of the Spanish words, so you are thinking just like the rest of the people, making flashcards or sticking notes all over your home…. Let me ask you this, when you learn a new word in English, do you do the same thing? Flashcards, sticking note at home up to the ying yang, singing the new words, etc.? I don’t think so. So, why do you do it with Spanish?

Having said that, let me explain what I know happens with our native language. We, as kids are corrected, usually, by mom and other elders when we talk, so little by little we begin to learn how to speak “more properly” and this goes on until we start school and beyond until we start getting grammar classes. For most people, we will get all the grammar we will need, pass the grade and once we get out of school, grammar is “forgotten.” End of the story. Now, we learn a new word in our native language, and we just put it in our “knowledge bag”. We don’t need to do anything else and most likely that word will stick to us for some time to come. Maybe if we don’t use it, we will kind of forget it, but usually it takes a little coercion of the mind for the word to be recalled. Right? That’s it!

I call that to be “functional” in our native language. Well, you will get “functional” in Spanish within a year, or in less time, of practicing my method, depends on you. Not of your intelligence but rather your diligence in doing what I prescribe. You don’t need to know why the method works, because if you cannot see it now that I have explained more or less what it takes here in the blog, then you have a decision to make. The there are two choices for you: continue doing what you have been doing and trying to implement a grammar component of a language which you don’t even know, which will make your own mind trip you, thus delaying you in your road to fluency etc. or just rely in what I am telling you and start my method. For those who can envisage my method you don’t have to choose anything, just plow ahead, and your efforts will be crowned with the acquisition of a new language.

You can reach me at chileno74 at hotmail dot com

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.