Trying to learn how to understand Spanish

[jramsay]

Well I am trying to be able to hear spoken spanish and understand what is being said? In addition, to understand how to respond in Spanish. One of my biggest problems is that I might know what individual words would mean, but then when put together with something else it means something totally different. For example, I am listening to a song Igual Que Ayer and there is this phrase: "Extraño Tanto". When I look up the phrase I believe it means I will miss you very much. Then when I look up the words individually Extraño means weird/odd, then Tanto means so/so much. I just don't get the connection between the meaning of the phrase verses the individual word meanings. Another thing is being able to listening to someone talking in spanish and actually hear and understand what they are saying. I might catch one or two words there, but I don't understand what they are trying to see. Lastly, is trying to respond to them, where I have a bad habit of thinking about it in english then trying to say it in Spanish. There are several times I would think about something and then say it, but the whole meaning gets skewed in translation. An example of this is when I was trying to find out if a young lady was single. I asked if she was a Senora or Senorita, which when I told my friend he laughed and told me never say that again to a woman. After he explained to me why, I never knew that is how it would be taken. So need some help