¡Hola!

[LJM]

Good morning everyone,

I began my Journey to learn Spanish around a month ago and I stumbled upon this forum just the other day. I lurked and read a bit to begin with but I figured I should join and become part of the community!

I have one question that I would like answered and it's quite a broad question. What is the best way or order to go about learning the language? I understand everyone is different but are there some things that must be learned first and foremost? I find myself going back and forth between learning some of the rules for verbs, nouns, how to structure sentences etc. and things like vocabulary. Is there an order people would recommend sticking to in order to get the best grasp of the language?

Thanks for any help you can give,

LJM

[wrholt]

Welcome to the forums! ¡Bienvenido a los foros!

What you are doing already is the best approach; any language is a complex system of interrelated components; learning everything about one class of parts (such as verbs) independently of how the parts fit into the system doesn't get you very far. It's much more effective learn the simplest, most basic parts of the system and master them, then add on little bits of this and that and master them.

The first steps are learning how to make a simple, present tense positive declarative statement ("X does Y [to/for Z]"), a simple, present tense negative declarative statement ("X doesn't do [Y to/for Z]", and the corresponding yes/no questions ("does X do Y [to/for Z]?" and "doesn't X do Y [to/for Z]?"), then start adding in other phrases to describe where, when, how, how much, why and so on. While doing that you'll also start learning the basics of person/number agreement between subject and verb and of gender/number agreement between nouns and adjectives, and start learning how to use prepositions and use prepositional phrases, and you should also start to learn how to pronounce individual sounds and sequences of sounds accurately enough to be understandable. That will give you a foundation that you can expand as you learn how to use other verb forms, make dependent clauses and so on.

Learning Spanish (or any other language) won't happen instantly; for most people and most languages one should expect to invest at least several hundred hours of effort; the exact amount of time and practice depends on what degree of fluency one wishes to attain.

[LJM]

Thanks very much for the advice wrholt!