Unos pensamientos en aprender los idiomas

[Tomisimo]

Este es un lugar donde yo puedo hacer x.
Busco un lugar donde yo pueda hacer x.

In the first one, you've already found the place, so you use the indicative. In the second example, you haven't yet found the place, so you use the subjunctive.

[irmamar]

Hello gatitoverde

Maybe it's useful to know that subjunctive is not used in simple sentences, but in compound sentences. Look at the examples Tomísimo gave, the first are two independent sentences, the second is a compound sentence, where the one which uses the subjunctive is a clause which depends on the first one. Look at the things which are required:

(The following sentences can be said alone and they have their own meaning, they are not depending one from the other)

Éste es un lugar (this sentence has its own meaning, it doesn't depend on anything)
(donde) yo puedo hacer x (another independent sentence, with its own meaning)

(The following ones are interdependent, one needs the other to get the meaning)

Busco un lugar... (don't you think that something is missing here?, this is the principal clause)
(donde) yo pueda hacer x (another sentence without meaning by itself, it depends on the first one and here subjunctive is used)

It's a bit difficult for me to explain these things in English, I hope you'll understand.

Sorry, now I've realized that this thread was old. I must beg your pardon.

[CrOtALiTo]

Iramamar, I think that this thread is very as old that I don't think so that gatitoverde can see your examples, but your explain was very useful.

[EmpanadaRica]

¡Hola a todos!

I wholeheartedly agree and can attest to most of what is written here (even if I have only been learning Spanish for some 2 months). In fact I know someone else who has used a similar approach to learning Dutch (with using a similar 'manual' ) and with very impressive results withing 6 months!

Obviously a lot depends on how much time you have, but I must say I agree with all that gatitoverde wrote here.

I have a few suggestions for sites (as internet is indeed a great tool for this!!!) that might help students of Spanish achieve/ realize or facilitate some of the steps written here. I know they have been very helpful to me and perhaps they will be helpful for others also.


1. Audiomaterial/ podcasts:

- http://www.audiria.com
Many free podcasts on 5 different levels (absolute beginner to advanced) in different forms such as conversations, bits of paper/news, radio and tv, including full free transcripts and doanloadable mp3's.

- http://www.spanishnewsbites.com
Many free podcasts on 3 different levels (beginner, intermediate and advanced) including free transcripts, some bits of video as well. These are taken from what has been on the news in Spain (topical).

- http://www.learnoutloud.com/Podcast-...guages/Spanish
Many free podcasts often with free transcripts as well, ranging from beginner' s level to advanced.

Video & TV:

1. http://www.lingus.tv
Free Spanish video's inclusing full transcripts in Spanish and English
on three levels (beginner, intermediate and advianced).

2. http://my.spanishdict.com/learn/browse/1
http://my.spanishdict.com/learn/browse/2
http://my.spanishdict.com/learn/browse/3

Many free educational video' s (beginner/ beginner to intermediate level) with explanations in English. This site also includes flashcards and other exercises.

3. BBC Learning Zone: http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/spanish/
Regular updates with video' s and podcasts for beginners and intermediate to advanced students.

This interactive videocourse called 'Mi vida loca' offers over 20 free lessons for beginners and is quite good Iand fun think.


4. http://www.rollingrs.com/
Offers many free educational video's (others can be purchased, so not all is free).

5. http://www.rtve.es/alacarta/
Free online video' s from TVE (Spanish tv network).

6. http://www.cervantestv.es/
Free video' s and documentaries.

7. http://www.tusseries.com
Many Spanish versions of American tv series can be downloaded here. You need to register though and you need to have emule. (Subtitles can be easily found online on many sites, e.g. here. You just need to put that file in the same directory as the avi/ video file and give it the same name).

8. http://www.celebratelanguages.com/spanish.html
Free video' s (beginner' s level) and a lot of information on learning Spanish and some good resources.

9. http://multilingualbooks.com/online-tv-spanish.html
Spanish tv (most times live, and local), from many different countries.

10. This site also offers many free Spanish video's , some educational (not all!!).

Music, Radio and Lyics:

1. http://multilingualbooks.com/online-radio-spanish.html
Spanish radio, many stations via livestream

2. http://www.espana.fm/
Spanish radio, many stations via livestream

3. http://www.spanicity.com/musica/index.php
Many Spanish songs with sontext in Spanish and English translations.



Verbs/ grammar/vocabulary:
1. http://www.verbix.com/languages/spanish.shtml
Very good conjugator of verbs, also for many other languages.

2. http://www.helloworld.com.es/English.../spanishvm.htm
Free software to train verbs and conjugations.

3. http://www.ver-taal.com/telediario.htm
Site containing many different kinds of exercises, also some good listening exercises.

4. http://www.wartoft.nu/software/selingua/
Free software to learn about 2000 words in Spanish (you can probably add some yourself as well, haven' t done that myself yet), gives several different exercises, such as velocity, the odd one out, active recognition and filling out, cosswords.


Books (ebooks, audiobooks, literature, reading in general):

1. http://www.eldigoras.com/
A lot of information online about literature in Spanish.

2. http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/
Biblioteca Virtual Miguel Cervantes (containing many free ebooks/ documents).

3. http://www.albalearning.com
Many free audiobooks in Spanish to listen to online, also downloadable.

4. http://www.leerescuchando.net/audiobks.php
Many free audiobooks in Spanish, downloadable after registration (free).

5. Librivox
This site is run by volunteers. About 30 Spanish audiobooks can be downloaded free of charge (most are in English).

6. http://www.greylib.net/?category=spanish
Free ebooks and audiobooks, downloadable after registering.

7. http://www.wordchamp.com/lingua2/Reader.do
Very handy ' reader' (can also be used for Spanish to English!).
You can read texts of e.g. 'El Mundo' , 'El País' or in fact load any url of any Spanish text/ website. Just hover over the word and it will give you possible translations including the pronuncation in Spanish and English.


Pronunciation:
The following sites are also good resources for students of English or other languages:

1. http://www.forvo.com/languages/es/
Large database with many Spanish words pronounced. You can download it into mp3's. You can also request pronunciations (in that case you need to register).

2. http://swac-collections.org/?lang=spa
Similarly, a large database of pronunciations of Spanish words, downloadable.

3. http://www.internetpolyglot.com/lessons-es-en
47 free lessons (topic based) of vocabulary including pronunciations. Also exercises included with every lesson.

Language exchange/community/tandems/penpals:
The first 2 also contain exercises.

1. http://www.babbel.com

2. http://www.livemocha.com

3. http://www.linguanet-europa.org/plus/welcome.htm

3. http://www.interpals.com


Hope you will find these sites as helpful as I found them!

¡ Buena suerte!

[EmpanadaRica]

¡Hola a todos!, hello everyone!

Well this site is also for Spanish people learning English.

So maybe I have some useful links as well for native Spanish speakers learning English.

Audio/Podcasts:

1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/learning/subjects/english.shtml
Many podcasts and radioprograms, regularly updated. Also educational.

2. http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/
Many free podcasts, targetting grammar specifically. Suitable especially for intermediate to advanced students who want to patch up some of the finer points of English grammar.
The podcasts can be downloaded free of charge including the full transcript.

3. http://www.learnoutloud.com/Podcast-...guages/English
Many free podcasts many times including transcripts.


Free ebooks or audiobooks:

1. http://librivox.org/
Many free audiobooks in English can be downloaded here. The site is run by volunteers.

2. http://www.free-ebooks.net/
Another site with many free ebooks that you can download once you have registered. (I have not used this one yet so I don' t know how many they have. )


3. http://www.e-book.com.au/freebooks.htm
Links to digital libraries.

4. http://www.getfreeebooks.com/
Free ebooks on many subjects.

5. http://manybooks.net/
Over 24.000 free ebooks...

6. http://freeclassicaudiobooks.com/
Many free classical audiobooks.Downloadable.

7. http://www.audiobooksforfree.com/screen_main.asp
Many free audiobooks. Downloadable.

8. http://www.greylib.net/?category=english
Many free audiobooks and ebooks, literature in English.


Tools/software:

1. http://www.wartoft.nu/software/selingua/
Selingua is also suitable for people learning English (large vocabulary database).

2. http://www.wordchamp.com/lingua2/Reader.do
Very handy ' reader'
You can read texts of e.g. 'The Times', or in fact load any url of any Spanish text/ website. Just hover over the word and it will give you possible translations including the pronuncation in Spanish and English.

3. http://www.verbix.com/languages/english.shtml
Online tool for conjugations of verbs.


Online Radio and TV:

1. http://multilingualbooks.com/online-tv-english-us.html
Many TV stations (US).

2. http://multilingualbooks.com/online-...ish-other.html
Many English TV stations (non-US)

3. http://beelinetv.com/free_english_tv/

4. http://www.blinkx.com
Large collection of links to sites (such as Megavideo) containing lots of English/ American series. You can download them & add your own subtitles which you can find online e.g. here .
Free English TV channels.

5. http://www.england.fm
Many English radiostations

6. http://www.america.fm
Many American radiostations.



Pronunciation:

1. http://www.forvo.com/languages/en/
Large database with many English words pronounced. You can download it into mp3's. You can also request pronunciations (in that case you need to register).

2. http://swac-collections.org/?lang=eng
Large database of pronunciation of English words.

3. http://www.internetpolyglot.com/lessons-en-es
45 free lessons in vocabulary, including pronunciation and exercises.


Language exchange/community/tandems/penpals:
The first 2 also contain exercises.

1. http://www.babbel.com

2. http://www.livemocha.com

3. http://www.linguanet-europa.org/plus/welcome.htm

3. http://www.interpals.com


¡Buena suerte! Good luck!

[irmamar]

¡Qué barbaridad de enlaces! ¡Cuánto trabajo has tenido! Thanks

[EmpanadaRica]

Escrito originalmente por irmamar

¡Qué barbaridad de enlaces! ¡Cuánto trabajo has tenido! Thanks

¡Pues, de nada!

Sí, tienes razón..But I hope it will be worth it for everyone here, in terms of benefitting from these sites the same way I have.

Ps: Me encanta muchisimo esta expresión : 'qué barbaridad!'

[Eerie]

I agree with you OP, especially on your last advice.
Whenever I've tried memorizing ANYTHING, and put an effort on memorizing it, it usually works on reverse. But when I understand something and move on it's most likely I'm gonna remember it.

Also, can you recommend a few bands to listen?
I'm interested in Rock/Metal/Jazz/Funk/Fusion but also in Latin/Salsa/Flamenco etc.
edit:Seems like OP hasn't been online in 2 years :-(

[CrOtALiTo]

Escrito originalmente por Eerie

I agree with you OP, especially on your last advice.
Whenever I've tried memorizing ANYTHING, and put an effort on memorizing it, it usually works on reverse. But when I understand something and move on it's most likely I'm gonna remember it.

Also, can you recommend a few bands to listen?
I'm interested in Rock/Metal/Jazz/Funk/Fusion but also in Latin/Salsa/Flamenco etc.
edit:Seems like OP hasn't been online in 2 years :-(

Casually that can be understanding for everyone, really when you can't memorize all the wrote before, it's for the method used in the writing, so I can see a long text and it tend to be hard to memorize for the long phrase.

Now when I'm mentalist myself in learn something else, I try to find the word and write it in some kind personal list, I have said that before and I have took note of all the leant the same day, and when I need to remember the same word, I'm going to my personal notebook, when I have wrote all my translations before, so I can remind the phrase again, you can't find against your own brain because sometimes that tend to be a lot of information, inclusive in my work when I'm learning some new for me, something unknown for me, I mean, I'm computer engineer and my work is very technical, and the books about informatics and server likely coming up wrote in English, then as I don't know technical English, I can't read very well all the book and sometimes I have doubts about my information gotten in the books.

Then I believe the amount isn't important, the important here in the this moment is the quality with you are learning the language.

You don't need to write a long text for lean new words or practice more your skills not I don't think so, I think that you can achieve more with your reading and your practice speaking with someone who speak the language that you are leaning.

Sincerely yours.

[Caballero]

I mean, I'm computer engineer and my work is something unknown for me, I mean, I'm computer engineer and my work is very technical, and the books about informatics and server likely coming up wrote in English, then as I don't know technical English, I can't read very well all the book and sometimes I have doubts about my information gotten n the books.

Really?? You find technical English difficult to read? That's very interesting. It's the opposite for English speakers. Technical Spanish is a cinch to read. In fact people that don't speak Spanish at all, if forced, could translate written technical Spanish into English. Almost every word besides the the, and, or, of, etc. look almost identical to English. This is because English receive a huge amount of loanwords from Norman French (derived from Latin) after the Norman conquest, and borrowed many words after that directly from Latin and Greek. In fact I could read technical Romanian, Wallon, Catalan, or any other Romance language if it's talking about computers, science, etc., without having studied them previously. The words in any Romance language in technical registers are the same as the words in English for discussing the same topic. Not to mention the fact that most languages then even borrow words from English--no need to translate words like Microsoft, Windows 7, Linux, etc. Check this out:

Una computadora o un computador, (del latín computare -calcular-), también denominada ordenador (del francés ordinateur, y éste del latín ordinator), es una máquina electrónica que recibe y procesa datos para convertirlos en información útil. Una computadora es una colección de circuitos integrados y otros componentes relacionados que puede ejecutar con exactitud, rapidez y de acuerdo a lo indicado por un usuario o automáticamente por otro programa, una gran variedad de secuencias o rutinas de instrucciones que son ordenadas, organizadas y sistematizadas en función a una amplia gama de aplicaciones prácticas y precisamente determinadas, proceso al cual se le ha denominado con el nombre de programación y al que lo realiza se le llama programador.

From the beginning of the Wikipedia article "Computador": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computador

It seems like about 50% of the words are the same as in English, just spelled differently. The rest of the words are what you would learn in the first two weeks of a Spanish class: "Uno, o, un, también, y, éste, del, es, que, y, para, en, de, otros, con, a, lo, por, al, cual, se, le, a, el, nombre, llama" Those are all very easy words. The only ones that you would't learn in the first two weeks are "ordinador, amplia, gama". You'd have to look these up... Unless you could guess by context, or if you knew High School French, you'd see that "ordinador" looks just like "ordinateur" (as well as being able to figure out what "le, se, de, y", etc. mean.

Even if you didn't take Spanish or any other Romance language at all, and just spoke English, you would be able to get the gist of the article, esp. if you circled all the words that were the same as in English and filled in the missing of's the's, and's, etc.

Also the shear number of cognates* means that translating the text in your head to English without writing it down would be very easy, whatever ones level of Spanish. Unlike reading a text in Croatian, where even if you knew every word, almost none of them look the same as English, and you'd go cross-eyed trying to translate it in your head, unless you were quite advanced in the language.

The shear number of cognates* in English and technical Spanish means that while reading, you can go for long periods of time without having to look up every word--which would seriously disrupt the flow of reading, and would no longer be called "reading" but rather an exercise in making flash cards/vocabulary list, which while valuable would so seriously disrupt the flow of your conscious understanding of the text, that you would end up understanding nothing that you had read.

So basically I'm surprised that you find reading technical English so difficult, as English speakers find technical Spanish so easy to comprehend. The only exception would be if it is so technical that it was beyond ones comprehension, like certain types of quantum physics books, for instance. But the fault would not be the fact that they were written in Spanish, because one would be unable to understand them even if they were written in English!

In fact, technical Spanish is even easier than even content written for young children, when you are first learning Spanish. I'm finally getting better at reading books, understanding cartoons and such for young children in Spanish, as my basic vocabulary is increasing. But before, whereas technical Spanish was all English to me, whereas children's books were all Greek to me.

Poetry in Spanish is still very difficult, but is getting slightly better. Before, Spanish poetry was as intelligible as this:

Sjeti se da svetkujeÅ¡ dan subotni. Å est dana radi i obavljaj sav svoj posao. A sedmoga je dana subota, počinak posvećen Jahvi, Bogu tvojemu. Tada nikakva posla nemoj raditi: ni ti, ni sin tvoj, ni kći tvoja, ni sluga tvoj, ni sluÅ¡kinja tvoja, ni živina tvoja, niti doÅ¡ljak koji se nađe unutar tvojih vrata. Ta i Jahve je Å¡est dana stvarao nebo, zemlju i more i sve Å¡to je u njima, a sedmoga je dana počinuo. Stoga je Jahve blagoslovio i posvetio dan subotni. Å¡to je u njima, a sedmoga je dana počinuo. Stoga je Jahve blagoslovio i posvetio dan subotni. subotni

That was from http://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deset_B...jih_zapovijedi

Which is in Croatian! I think that part comes from the Bible, but I can't be certain. That's about how intelligible Spanish poetry was to me initially. There isn't a single word I can understand. I'd have to look up every single word in that text. That's not *reading*, that's preparing flash cards, and getting ones hands tired flipping through the dictionary, or reading the footnotes for each word! I've gotten (very) slightly better, so far, so now I can pick out a few words in Spanish poetry, so it's starting to look less like Croatian to me.

Notice what a difference that is compared to technical Spanish! In that article about Computers in Spanish, there were only 3 words in about 80 that I wouldn't be able to understand after a few weeks of taking Spanish (2 words if I knew even the most rudimentary French.)

Sent from my Smartphone. Oy, my hands hurt now My internet connection at home is down today.