How to Learn Spanish: My Top Tips

Summary

Highlights

• Spanish opens doors to other Romance languages and cultures. 🌎
• Don't stress too much about perfect pronunciation initially. 🎤
• Use rich resources like movies and mini-stories to aid learning. 🎥
• Setting comprehension goals helps you engage with real-world content better. 📖
• LingQ's mini-stories offer a structured yet flexible approach to building language familiarity. 🏗️

Key Takeaways

• Spanish is a gateway language to other Romance languages like French, Italian, and Portuguese. 🌍
• Focus on comprehension, not perfect pronunciation or grammar from the start. 👂
• Use films, music, and literature to immerse yourself in the language. 📚
• Utilize resources like LingQ's mini-stories to build vocabulary. 🗣️
• Achieve understanding, and speaking fluency will follow naturally. 🔄

Overview

How to Learn Spanish: My Top Tips Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 hiya Steve Kaufman here last day in Spain I hope the wind doesn't kick up too much here and disrupt the sound like it did the last time it is my last day in Spain so I want to talk about learning Spanish perhaps giving you some of my views on things to consider when you think of learning Spanish first of all it's a great language to learn because there are so many speakers I don't know what the number is half million or more and it opens up the whole world of Romance languages French Italian Portuguese Catalan we're in
• 00:30 - 01:00 Catalonia here romanian so you know some people say well you should learn Latin or you should learn interlingua as an introduction or a sort of a neutrals Latin or Romance language but Spain does the job Spanish right so it's a big lot of native speakers it opens the door to Romance languages and there are so many resources available there are telenovelas from Mexico from Spain
• 01:00 - 01:30 in other words Netflix movies there are movies there are books there's literature there's so much stuff to get into songs music you know we're all familiar with songs from Latin America from Spain so it's a great language to get into because there's a lot of material that can be used for learning so when we look at learning Spanish some people get a little intimidated because they say I can't roll my arse like this bad dude are they sir aware that in Spanish there
• 01:30 - 02:00 are two words for to be said and it's Tata Sayre which is a more permanent state of being and a star which is a more transitory for temporary state of being all very well and good when you explain it very difficult to remember to do when you're speaking because of course we don't do that at least we don't do it in English so anything that another language has that we don't have in our language regardless of the explanations you get is going to very be very difficult to get to develop
• 02:00 - 02:30 the habit to do people are aware that you know you don't need to always use the pronouns because the verbs change so you know boy you know that I go because boy is aij oh boy you don't say Jo boy so there are a few things like that what else would there be is that a star I mean oh yes and the subjunctive that people worry about you know because again in English we've more or less lost
• 02:30 - 03:00 this identity none of that matters none of that matters because oh well yeah none of that matters because of several reasons first of all I would say if you you want to learn Spanish your goal should be to understand movies to understand the telenovelas and do them from Mexico from Argentina from Colombia from Spain it doesn't matter the differences are not that great despite what people say get usually have it as your goal to be able to understand these
• 03:00 - 03:30 that should be a strategy so it's a six-month or a one-year strategy you want to get to where you understand those and you understand songs and you can even read a book so those should be the goals not I want to be able to pronounce the Spanish a literate are that'll come don't worry about it up front I want to nail down saternus done don't worry about it it won't prevent you from understanding if you build up sufficient familiarity with the language vocabulary to where you can understand the movies and telenovelas on Netflix
• 03:30 - 04:00 you'll be on your way so that should be the goal now how do you get there well I would recommend a course as you know I would because of my experience with our many stories at link which I have used now for five languages I would attack the many stories and link and we have only 20 in European Spanish we have 60 and Latin American Spanish we are getting the other 40 in Latin American Spanish I would do both versions so that and I would end up
• 04:00 - 04:30 listening to them 20 30 40 times not all at once but as you progress through them and you go back and review them again and just do the many stories and make it a point to say within three months you're gonna get through all 60 mini stories once that's done you now have sufficient vocabulary to start attempting you know stuff that you can find on YouTube movies or Netflix you can use the hour
• 04:30 - 05:00 you know browser extension to bring material in from YouTube and Netflix and to study and I've mentioned this before you would go into a Netflix movie and set the subtitles to Spanish and then import that into link whereas if you are watching on TV you may leave the subtitles in English so that you have a better chance of understanding the movies but the goal is to get to where you can enjoy and understand the movies Netflix telenovelas the whole thing because if you achieve that level of
• 05:00 - 05:30 understanding in the language the speaking will come and to try to sort of nail down you know I would like a beer I'd like to make a reservation for a table this evening at the restaurant it's very hard to do because you might memorize those then you go to say those things and then they answer something that you weren't anticipating and now you're lost so you go back to English so the idea that you can just come up with some kind of set phrases a few set phrases that are
• 05:30 - 06:00 gonna do it for you I mean that's that's an approach but since it's Steve's tips to learning Spanish I don't recommend that I recommend that you set as your goal to understand Spanish movies and you have a strategy to get there and even to read a book or to listen to an audiobook all of these things you can bring in to link so you elevate your level of familiarity and your vocabulary at which and there you don't have to worry about certain estar you don't have to worry about trilling your R's because you're just
• 06:00 - 06:30 absorbing the language but you are getting the brain used to those sounds you're getting the brain used to those structures so that at some point when you decide now I want to try to use it you will be dealing from a position of strength and you know when it comes to the subjunctive you know if you come across it and you're not sure what the form is I mean now there's so many good dictionaries like that link we have conjugating dictionaries whether it be context Reverso or there's another conjugating dictionary so anytime you
• 06:30 - 07:00 come across a verb you just look it up and you see what it is you don't try to remember it but at least you're you're made aware that there are all these ranges there's different endings that you're in the come across gradually accumulating this experience so it's become a stress free way of building up your overall level of competence in Spanish for all the good reasons that I said at the beginning so while I've been here I've been interviewed in Spanish press by radio by television and I'm gonna leave some links in the
• 07:00 - 07:30 description box to some of these interviews that I've had and again my approach to Spanish has always been to focus on comprehension and of course whenever we get the opportunity to speak we speak now you don't worry about setting estar and we don't worry about rolling our arse we just speak and just let it come out the way it comes out because in time it will only get better so those are and you know I'm leaving Spain with great regret we are gonna have Catalan in link we're working right
• 07:30 - 08:00 now on enriching the material will have a Catalan and I think at some point I'm gonna learn Catalan and it is six seven million people who speak Catalan so it's not an insignificant language and it's just another one of the Romance languages that learning Spanish is gonna make it easier for you to learn along with Italian and Portuguese and Romanian and French so I thank you for listening and good luck with your Spanish bye for now
• 08:00 - 08:30 [Music]