How children learn
 

Children learn to speak a language almost entirely from hearing idiomatic phrases. By rote memory; association. They are not handicapped like me trying to translate everything literally. Agua es agua. not Agua is water es agua. Entiende?

... and then there are numbers. Woah! Is there some trick to learning how to hear those? All the math really has to be transposed in my little brain. We take for granted how simple it is to hear a seven digit phone number rattled off in English and we can remember it. But in Spanish? No way. I can't even begin to hear that many numbers in rapid fire. I'm at.. oh, THAT was a phone number... yo piense.

But I have finally learned how to hear Dos mil siete. (2007) :cool:

This is why I particularly like this idiomatic phrase generator. I try to memorize the old fashioned way, by repetition, as many of these as I can cram into my pinhead.

http://www.studyspanish.com/idiom.shtml

I am hoping that eventually I can kick the habit of trying to convert everything into English so my brain can process it. As these phrases become more automatic, I hear them more on the street, in conversation, on tv and radio.. etc.

The best thing, if you can manage it, would be to have someone who knows Spanish read them for you so that you learn to hear them. I've found that you can't say what you can't hear. Sometimes you can't even say what you can hear.

cuidate,
Juan

Yeah man right on, I wish i was younger again and I wouldn't have to go through the throes of this spanish learning.

You definitely have to get to the place where you're thinking in Spanish, it will come, but in the meantime, be patient and keep on studying.

I have yet to reach that point of thinking and dreaming in Spanish even though I hear that it is possible.