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| OrlMoth Groupie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6299 days ago 77 posts - 83 votes  2 sounds | Message 17 of 25 25 May 2009 at 11:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I find the lack of native Spanish speakers here quite disturbing...
You remind me of a friend with a similar level of Spanish (he had done 2 years of High School Spanish when I started tutoring him).He got fluent pretty soon afterward. First, you seem to be concentrating on Spainiard Spanish, which is a bit different than my native Mexican accent. No problem there, it's all acceptable. You sound like you're thinking too much in English and translating in your head before saying it. To improve that, try reading with your best Spanish accent out loud, as fast as you can from simple Spanish texts. That way, you get used to thinking in Spanish and can talk quicker. You also need some work on your sentence structure and verb conjugation. "Otra vez" is again in Spanish, by the way. A final tip: To make your Spanish sound more authentic, try to bastardize the names of places and people, pronouncing them the same way Native speakers would. I will be glad to help you out with your Spanish, add me on skype (If you don't mind learning the Mexican accent, that is). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| miguelsantiago Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5615 days ago 36 posts - 36 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese | Message 18 of 25 26 May 2009 at 1:11am | IP Logged | |||||
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Kudos my man kudos my man.
I would say if you want "fluency"(I don't mean knowing all the words in the Spanish language, in this case I mean smoothness of speech) I would say check out FSI Spanish. http://fsi-language-courses.com/default.aspx You can download the programs for free. FSI is hard to start from scratch but you have a foundation. FSI drills things into your mind to where you can't help but follow form and pattern when you speak. There are drawbacks. It can be deathly boring. It can be deathly hard. It can be deathly Mexican accent. Haha I'm joking. It is Mexican accent and you are going for Spanish accent. So that may be undesirable to you. Let me say though that FSI is a phonetics course in the beginning. It teaches you the mechanics of the sounds in Spanish. And it's very effective. If you want a real life testimonial of it, awhile back I made a forum asking what my Spanish was like. http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=15151&PN=1 Not many replys I don't think anybody likes me haha. But anyway I've been learning for a little over a year. And I started very much like you. Again Kudos 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| guilon Pentaglot Senior Member Spain Joined 6127 days ago 226 posts - 229 votes Speaks: Spanish*, PortugueseC2, FrenchC2, Italian, English | Message 19 of 25 26 May 2009 at 3:25am | IP Logged | |||||
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Some remarks from another native:
-As you must know, the Spanish vocalic system is composed of five and only five sounds, never getting elongated or shortened, or opened or closed, or diphthongized, depending on the position in the word; that, for Germanic languages speakers, is harder than they think it is. Your vowels are not perfect but you do a good work, you seem to have understood how it works. -Your Rs are plainly wrong, work harder on the two Spanish R sounds, also try to make your J sound harsher, not just like an English H. On the other hand, your Ds Ts and Bs are not bad at all for an English speaker. -By the way, the H is ALWAYS mute in Spanish, some dialects in Spain make it audible (like a Spanish J) but it is deemed to be rather vulgar. I just heard the "lamento boliviano" song, you actually can hear that sound in "HACE" but I think it is more of an inflexion of his voice than a uttered H. -Learn all the names of countries and nationalities in both genders right away, otherwise you probably never will. I agree with OrlMoth, you should corrupt names, Birmingham would sound Beer Mean Ham (with Spanish R and J of course) -If you learn Mexican Spanish (which I think FSI uses) and you intend to interact with Spaniards you may end up being laughed at, not because there is anything wrong with that specific dialect but imagine a Spaniard talking like a Scot to an American, wouldn't that be a bit funny? I know a French guy who speaks good Spanish with Mexican accent and vocabulary, that sure is a charming circumstance but we can't help cracking up every time he opens his mouth. -My personal advice for fluency would be reading like there is no tomorrow, and high Literature as soon as possible, without looking up words most of the time, just read. -All in all, from what I see, I think you are a very promising learner. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| welles Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5634 days ago 3 posts - 3 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Turkish, German | Message 20 of 25 26 May 2009 at 1:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
Just a couple small corrections. The first is that accent in gracias is on the first syllable and is not written. Second, in the sentence above you would say "gracias por escuchar" or also maybe "gracias por escucharme" The por vs. para and ser vs. estar differences are where conversing with native speakers will really help (not saying you don't sprachefin, just pointing out that this helped me a lot more than textbook explainations). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ashiro Groupie United Kingdom learnxlanguage.com/ Joined 5737 days ago 89 posts - 101 votes Studies: Spanish | Message 21 of 25 27 May 2009 at 12:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thank you everyone for the feedback. It's very much appreciated! I shall get to work on my pronunciation. I think I'm getting the hang of a single Spanish "R" but the double rolled "R" is proving difficult. Feels like my tongue is too fat and heavy to flick as fast as it should.
My English accent is understandably difficult to catch. I was born in Buxton, brought up in New Mills (Derbyshire) to a family from Stockport (Nr. Manchester), lived in Wales for 18 months, then in Lincolnshire for 2 years, then 3 years in Stoke and now 3 years in Bromsgrove (Nr. Birmingham). So it's likely a bit mangled! Not sure how to "think in Spanish". I try reading Spanish but get hung up on translating too much of it. I think I need to boost my vocabulary first to make it truely effective. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| OrlMoth Groupie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6299 days ago 77 posts - 83 votes 2 sounds | Message 22 of 25 28 May 2009 at 8:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
Try reading without translations of any kind, it worked for me in my English learning. I read whole collections of novels meant for young adults and threw away the Spanish-English dictionary. Those novels are normally full of every day speech, unlike newspapers or others that are written in more formal Spanish (and you can't be fluent in your target language unless you know how to discuss brain eating dinosaur aliens). If you must, use a Spanish dictionary, so that you avoid learning new words through translation. Use the dictionary only if you CAN'T make ABSOLUTELY ANY sense of the paragraph. Aim to catch the essence of the text, and not every single word. Remember that in English books, you don't get every single word all the time, yet you have an idea what it means through context. If you can make an image in your head of what is happening, you are thinking in Spanish. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| sprachefin Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5681 days ago 300 posts - 317 votes Speaks: German*, English, Spanish Studies: French, Turkish, Mandarin, Bulgarian, Persian, Dutch | Message 24 of 25 14 June 2009 at 8:12am | IP Logged | |||||
Thank you for the correction welles. I am indeed very rusty, so I am taking everything I can get. I never learned the difference between por and para (however I am one of those people that knows how to form every verb form known to Spanish speakers so it is a weird situation). I think a textbook explanation would be better for me. I am a visual learner, and I think that showing me differences on a chart and such would help. Edited by sprachefin on 14 June 2009 at 8:12am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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