Adding to Spanish Vocabulary
 

I'm sure that there have been a billion threads with this problem, but what is a fun and efficient way to build upon Spanish vocabulary? I enjoy reading, but reading and looking up every other word in a dictionary is tiring and no fun. Should I just drill phrases and common-use words or should I continue to read and look things up? What are good sources to learn common-use phrases and words?

The good thing about Spanish is that it shares a huge amount of vocabulary of English, so you already know *thousands* of words! That is a huge advantage over non-Romance languages. These words tend to be formal, academic, scientific, and technical words. You just have to find the right books and content to read. You'll be on a hundred levels at once. This doesn't happen with most non-Romance languages. With say, Japanese, you start with books for Kindergarteners and then slowly move your way up. Spanish is different. I bet you can already read the Spanish Wikipedia. I can understand quite a bit of it without a dictionary. I can read an entire book on Biology or Chemistry. Almost all the words are the same as in English! Novels are harder to read. I picked up a copy of Harry Potter in Spanish, and could understand almost nothing. If you can't understand something, pick something harder! That sounds weird, but when it comes to Spanish, it's true. Harry Potter is (sort of) a children's book. I then picked up a Mystery (for older people), and because the words were harder (which means the words are the same as English jaja), it was very easy to read. Just go to your local Barnes and Noble or other large bookstores that has a section dedicated to books in Spanish, and pick out several books on a variety of subjects and see how well you can read them. Another thing that will help is actually English etymology and vocabulary classes. The more words that you know in English, the more you know in the Romance languages automatically. Almost all the advanced, pedantic words in English are derived from Latin, and thus will be the same as in Spanish.

So to sum it up, if you want easier content, pick books in Spanish that would be hardest in English to read (besides poetry and old fashioned literature--you won't be able to read those yet at all.) Pick computer books, Science books, math books, how-to books etc. These will counterintuitively be the easiest to read--they will read just like English. All you have to do is read it about 1.5-twice as slowly as you read English, concentrating on each word, thinking of the meaning. If you get the verb tenses and subjunctive wrong at first, that is fine. You'll get it soon enough. The hardest to read will be children's books, besides those at the very rudimentary levels. Books for tweens will also be very difficult to read. Mysteries and such will be much easier to read (but not as easy as technical books), and you should be able to get the gist of them without needing a dictionary. Read them sometimes with a dictionary to learn more vocabulary, and sometimes without. Try several ones until you find one that seems easy to read.

As caballero said, you already know lots of words that share the same root and still mean the same.

As to your question, it depends on what you are reading...

Read a novel, but also transcribe it from Spanish to a notebook in Spanish. That will instill word by word in your mind through your eyes and wrists, and if you do watch movies without subtitles or closed captions through your ears too! And continue to look up in the dictionary, there will come a time in which you are going to ache to just look up in the Spanish definition dictionary instead of a bilingual one.


You know how to read, write and speak English, there isn't any reason why not doing it in Spanish too. :)

I commonly read a lot of all the day in English as well I make my work report completely in English, and I'm bored myself, because I like the language a lot, then I try to learn everything my brain can gets during a short determinate time, then when I've some question about a word, I looking up the word in the online dictionary and later I write it in my personal list.

That has worked for me during a long time.

There is nothing you can do that cannot help you, except doing nothing. :)

here is a link to a blog of mine and see if it helps you.

http://puedohablaringles.blogspot.co...s-mi-blog.html


I hope it will help you and others.

Wow.

Look it his. I will check it out.

Yes it has helped me at least a little during all this time.:)

Interesting. :thumbsup:

But you have been translating from Spanish to English, instead of English to Spanish which is what I prescribe in your case, and I can tell. :)


@irmamar:

Thanks.

In this moment I haven't translated anything from Spanish to English in fact literally I have make me the habited in think only in English.

Thank you.

Ok, te lo explico en castellano. no tienes que "pensar" en inglés. Eso es lo que que te está demorando.

Traduce una novela del inglés al castellano, porque yo sé positivamente que no lo has estado haciendo.

Haz lo que te digo y muchas de las correcciones que te han hecho van a empezar a tener sentido en tu cabeza. :)