Anyone want to help me learn Spanish?
 

Hi, I'm on a mission to learn as much Spanish as Humanly possible by July 6, when im going to Spain for awhile to really learn the language, and bum around. I have never spoken a word of it before today, and I dont know anybody who speaks it, but I do have the internet, and couple of Spanish language flicks on DVD, and a lot of free time. I figure a good fun way of learning, a little bit of it anyway, would be to learn songs and translate them, my problem is whilst i can glean some grammatical rules and get all the words from online dictionaries I'm pretty sure it'll just sound silly, so I was going to try and have a go and post the results here and if anyone was willing to correct them I'd be ultra mega grateful.

First up i'm trying Handshake Drugs by Wilco, cause ive just heard it, its simple chords and a really nice song, and the words seem fairly straight forward. I'll post my efforts fairly soon, as Im struggling at the mo. Irealise its a bit random but this seems a fairly busy forum so I thought it worth a shot.

que odna guero?

i used to teach spanish while in gradschool.
my best advice is to find a private instructor or language school and get some intensive training.
if you can't afford it, at least get yourself something at the bookstore-- some kind of course. preferrably made in spain as their accent & pronounciation is different.
you can't learn a language from the internet unless you're my genius second-cousin who learned 12 languages from cassette tapes, including (!) chinese. but he slept on the floor and ate 12 eggs a day. raw ones.
anyway what the fuck is up with wilco? uh? learning spanish from gringos is never a good idea. but whatever...

wait wait I know that

what something white boy?

erm?

that's mexican slang. won't do shit for you in spain-- or get you beaten up, maybe :D

Well I'm only trying one, and if a genius is 12 x smarter than the average human the odds look good, and Im smart enough to cook an egg before I eat it.

You're probably right though

if anything, you could try to get spanish tv over cable or the internet. at least it would get your ear accustomed, which is the slowest part. i mean you can figure out a verbe tense in a matter of minutes, and then practice, but the phonetics are what's harder to acquire.

and when i say spanish tv i don't mean chicano tv, mexican tv, or any of that. i mean TV from spain, like TVE or whatever. you could also rent movies by almodovar, bigas luna, etc etc. train your ear at least, that will give you a good headstart.

what else. oh yes. some language cd/tapes can't hurt. learn how to ask for the whereabouts of the crapper and what not.

Un hombre des nudos me ha robado los zapatos

thats the extent of my spanish so far, but mis manitos sienten el culito is backing it up.

anyone know how to say

I was chewing gum for something to do?

thats a hard one to translate as it's rather idiomatic. quit trying to translate or you'll never learn. i swear. i'm an expert. this in spite of the fact that typing accents in my laptop is a rather baroque procedure so i simply neglect it.

Ok , i'll put it on the backburner, I thought it'd be fun but if its of no use and time is limited.

I guess my abition to pick up a copy of Borges' Labyrinths in the original Spanish and be reading it within a month is a little unrealistic too.

Can you recommend any decent book/tape courses then?

no, sorry. i taught in a classroom. i'd browse borders or amazon. if you want to post some links here to your preferred ones i'd give them a look.

you might try something like the berlitz schools too. but they are expensive.

nah, you're going to spain, you'll learn fast. post me some links here then i'll take a look.

Ok thanks

Lol @ Beck lyrics.

Husker85

i think it means "what's up whiteboy?"
i know for sure that guero means whiteboy

Guero = Blondie

gu:ero means blond
from then on the meaning gets extended & altered in context
--
pinches gabachos

weeee won da woorlde cuup

id wait about 3 and a half weeks before saying that!

ja ja paulybee

no creo que espan~a gane-- espero que brasil-- pero ellos hablan portuguEs

Going by tonights performance we've got about as much chance of winning the world cup as I do of picking up Spanish through mistranslated songs. But thats for another thread

i speak spanish (it's my "native" language)
if there's anything you want to know, just ask

como se dice "condorito" en ingles?

no se si en otros paises hay cóndores... "little condor" ?

If you don't have a lot of time, you won't learn the language. I've taken 2 years of Japanese and hardly know enough to find the bathroom (though I can blame that on foolishly relying on my good short-term memory to blow through tests). Going to Spain will help you immensly in and of itself, though. So don't worry about it. I'd recommend a grammar book (Barron's has really good compact ones), a dictionary, and at least a beginner's course on it before going. Familiarize yourself with some phrases and basic vocabulary so you can survive, and try to familiarize yourself with sentence structure (i.e. where verbs and subjects go, and if you're really good maybe even a little conjugation). That'll prepare you about as much as I think you can in a month.

If you do have a good amount of time, one more recommendation but more for the long term if you're really interested. I was over at my friends house a few days ago, and when his roomate came home (he and his roomate both being native Japanese) I was lost in a whirlwind of a language I thought I knew a bit of. So I picked up this Learn In Your Car Japanese thing. Comes with 3 hours of general language aquisition and 9 hours of vocabulary/grammar practice, and they do have a Spanish one. It's pretty nice from what I can see, and reviews averaged out to about 4.5/5. So if you have $40-50 and a lot of time, you could look into that. I don't know how helpful it might be prior to your trip, though.

Ultimately, there's no subsitute for being in the country. Which you're priveleged to get a chance to do. Next to that, you'll need to take classes. I'm sure !@#$%! would be happy to invite you to his house for a full free course.

ja ja claro, hay condores en california.

me referia a este:





ha ha yah right! like i'm going to let internet psychos into my home :D

^^ borracho

no seas mamila. este buey esta bien pedo;)...

no se si pueda haber una traducción para nuestro gran Condorito (viva Chile !!)...es un nombre (aunque existen traducciones para algunos nombres del español al ingles) :D

buy a spanish phrasebook! its so much more practical than a dictionary.

im going to be in spain from july 20-aug 17

i've heard that a concoction of coke mixed with red wine is quite tasty...
it may also help you dance better

that's calimocho-- i used to drink it out of a fire extinguisher

but anyway where are the books linked? i'll likely be gone over the weekend so hurry.

when i traveled to Spain with my class as a young teenager, our teacher advised us to get a certain guide which was actually partly like a phrasebook... we all bought it and discovered that there were like 2 or 3 pages entirely dedicated to insults (stuff like "me cago en diez sobre tu madre / tus muertos"...)... this is nearly the only thing we all learned during the trip...

by the way, i like the expression "me cago en la leche"... at work i have a norwegian in front of me (with a spanish girlfriend) who used to complain all the time about the work, muttering "me cago en la leche" when you would ask how he was today... he's not saying it anymore, sadly, since our spanish colleague left...

Hi, this is a delayed cheers for the advice symbols dude, looking forward to that dinner. After looking at it over the weekend Ive realised learning a language isn't as simple as it looks (theres a lot of words and they dont go in the right order) so I've invested in a book/cd course (Teach Yourself: Spanish) put off my trip for a couple of weeks and I'll enrol on a course when I get there for a few weeks.

I wish you knew what that book with the insults is, i love insults, I rewatched amores perros and the only thing I gleaned from it was puto madre, which is useful