Tips and Tricks for Learning Spanish
Hi there Steve Kaufmann here again.
And today as I have been doing I'm gonna follow up my Spanish video with a video where I talk about learning Spanish. Um so... I mean as I've said so many times, the big thing in language learning is motivation. You know and I keep on repeating it because you know it's not about talent, it's not about classes or teachers or methods. It's primarily about motivation, the amount of time you spend on the task and noticing. Noticing what's going on in the language. And I think that's where the good language learners have become better at noticing. Becoming, they've become more aware, more alert to what happens in the language. So Spanish... I think Spanish is one of the most attractive languages to learn and I'll explain why.
I mean we can all be motivated to learn a specific language like Mongolian or Finnish or I don't know... you know... Georgian because we have a friend or we have a particular interest or we have some other specific thing that's very specific to our own interest, or maybe Korean for Korean drama. Or Japanese for anime so all of these things, or for business and so, all kinds of reasons. But Spanish has a number of real big advantages in terms of a language to learn.
First of all, a lot of people speak Spanish. You've got all of Latin America, except Brazil basically, Haiti and Spain. And there, all these countries are quite different. Uh and even in terms of regional differences uh… so there's a lot of kind of culture there. When I think of Spain which I know much better than Latin America. To me Spain or Spanish is about color, is about music. Uh... you know it's a place where people have fun uh... you know I still remember sitting in in uh Marbella in southern Spain in the middle of the street. They had closed down the street and the restaurant had their tables out there. It's 11:00 o'clock at night, we're sitting down under the skies, the star you know... lit sky. Uh we can smell a jasmine around us. We're having dinner at 11:00 o'clock at night. You don't do that at home. It's like time yet stands still. And we were eating this wonderful meal and nothing matters. And I think the Spanish have an ability to live in the moment and enjoy the moment and so those are the kinds of things you enjoy there.
And color... I can still remember being there in the 60s going to a bullfight. Now, granted, there are animal lovers who don't think that's a great thing to do, but the music and the colors and the sun, powerful sun and... or or hitchhiking into into Valencia and seeing the orange uh of the... the orange, the green and orange of the orange fields. Or then this was in the spring and I'm going on to Cordoba and Sevilla and smelling... by the bit two different trips it's like 40 years ago, smelling the blossoms and stuff like that. I mean those are the kind of powerful colors and the music, of course, not only flamenco, but all of the music and so... you know Spain is powerful that way. And recently, I visited Mexico and um with my wife.
We were in... um San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato and Mexico City and, again, powerful colors, friendly people, music. So... and I was briefly in Chile but I don't remember very much. Um that's like 1980. Uh but I am sure that Peru is different than Argentina, it's different than Central America, it's different and even uh... you know, other cultures like the Mayan or the Aztec cultures now come to us through Spanish. So there's a whole world there. Ok so that makes Spanish attractive, I think should motivate people to want to learn it. There also... Those are also very popular tourist destinations. Um So... and Spanish, is a... I think is an easy language to learn and it's kind of like the door to the whole former Latin, in other words romance language world.
If you learn Spanish you can learn Portuguese; 200 million people in Brazil. You can learn Italian, which is a phenomenal language and has so much history behind it, and the Spanish kind of leads you into this world. French has its difficulties: pronunciation-wise, whatever, but the vocabulary is there. So I think there's tremendous motivation, there should be, for a lot of people to learn Spanish.
Not just because if you're an American there's more and more Hispanic people and you might one day wanna… need Spanish to find a job or something. I think these are minor issues. I mean, to me… and I should add that … uh it's been shown that… because language learning is a long road. Someone said on one of my youtube videos that, you know, that short… that initial period where you don't know the language and all of a sudden you can speak the language.
That you can go at that based on what they call extrinsic motivation like “I want a better job”, but once you realize that it's actually a very long haul to get to genuine fluency, that's where you need that intrinsic motivation. Like you like the language, you like people, there has to be that personal, you know... desire, commitment to the language, and I think Spain… Spanish uh is an easy language to get committed to. So I've talked a lot about that sort of commitment thing now let's move on to the language. Spanish is an easy language to learn for a number of reasons.
First of all, like all romance languages, for English speakers there's a lot of common vocabulary, lots. Spanish has the advantage that the um spelling is extremely consistent, unlike French, for example. The vowels are pure, uh you know there's no diphthongs. Uh the use of accents: I always find accents a little bit annoying because I have to change my keypad in order to accommodate them, but the system is quite consistent as to when we use accents in Spanish and when we don't. Look at the rule, you'll forget it the first few times, but eventually it will stick. Uh you know... masculine and feminine: Most words, almost all words that end in "o" are masculine.
Almost all words end in "a" and "e" are feminine, with a few exceptions. So uh to that extent it's easier to tell the gender of verbs and nouns. What else is there?
I mean verbs, like all romance languages, you have to come to terms with it. There is a very good website called Verbix: v-e-r-b-i-x .com and there you can find conjugation tables for I don't know how many languages, including Spanish. Refer to it from time to time. Difficult to, kind of, I find, to try and concentrate on memorizing those tables. You just have to look at it from time to time and start noticing as you're doing your listening and reading. What else is there?
I mean there's this “ser” and “estar”. They have two words for “is”. Like something that you are permanently is “ser,” something that you are, like happy, is “estar”. A difficult concept at first. You'll continue to make mistakes, and it doesn't prevent you from understanding. It doesn't prevent people from understanding you. It's something that you kind of work away at. It's like, there also, the Spanish for "for": "por" and "para". Again, it's something… you'll read the explanation and you won't understand it, then slowly it sorts of sinks in. Uh they have funny little things like they put their uh exclamation marks and question marks uh an upside down one at the front of the sentence and another one at the back.
It's the only language that I'm aware of that does that. I don't know why they do it. Uh everybody else manages fine without that. We know when there's a question or you know, whatever, an exclamation. I'm sure Spanish people who read other languages don't miss them. But at any rate, that's a little idiosyncrasy of the Spanish language. Um things are fairly consistent, so it's a very rewarding language in that regard because you can actually move fairly quickly in the language.
Oh what else? The uh people have trouble with… in terms of pronunciation with the rolled “r” and I think it's just one of those things, it's like the “uh” in French, you just gotta work at it and work at it until you get it. Um I found for example, you know the begin… the first “r” in Spain is a double “r” (rot) and I find is useful to almost act if you gonna say “n” or “d” so you get your tongue right up to the top of you mouth and then you say “rota”, “rota”, whatever “Ricardo”, “Ricardo”. Strong “r” and of course “Pedro” if is a double “r” you gotta hit to them… That might be a bit of a difficulty. The other thing is the uh is the vowels if you are en English speaker try to hear how those vowels are spoken is “a”, you know “gato”, is not “gato”, “gato”. It's "i" it's uh you know... "interior". whatever uh... the vowels. I think it's worth making an effort to get those down. Uh what else is there?
I don't remember I was gonna make some notes. Uh well there are some... for example when you like something it's "me gusta" so there are some expressions that are sometimes uh reflexive. Oh yes and the subjunctive, again, like all romance languages subjunctive is there. Uh gradually you get more and more of them right, uh, I'm not gonna explain why we use the subjunctive, it's you know... is that sense of uncertainty or wanting or something that we aren't sure it's gonna happen, we use the subjunctive, you just have to get used to it. But Spanish is a wonderful journey.
Uh I think people who... if you're not sure what language to study, study Spanish. So I'm already over 10 minutes I'm gonna shut down right here, thank you for listening and I hope this encourages you to learn Spanish. Bye for now.
