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Courses for Latin American Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| COF Senior Member United States Joined 5829 days ago 262 posts - 354 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 42 20 June 2012 at 1:11am | IP Logged | ||
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With the exception of all audio courses like Pimsleur, it seems that the only comprehensive courses available for Spanish primarily teach Castillian Spanish.
I know Latin American is not a uniform dialect, but I was wondering if anyone can tell me what comprehensive courses are available that focus primarily on Latin American dialects, perhaps Argentinian or Mexican? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4634 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 2 of 42 20 June 2012 at 1:40am | IP Logged | ||
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Teach Yourself, Rosetta Stone, and maybe Colloquial.
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| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5373 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 3 of 42 20 June 2012 at 1:41am | IP Logged | ||
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FSI is Latin American and it is probably the most comprehensive thing out there.
Living Language's courses are also essentially Latin American Spanish and, if someone used Ultimate Beginner - Intermediate and Advanced, I would say they are pretty comprehensive. I have not seen them, but, from what I read on this forum, the old Linguaphone would fit this bill as would the current second stage course. I would be interested in hearing others. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5781 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 4 of 42 20 June 2012 at 2:40am | IP Logged | ||
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I second what James29 says, except to add a few things.
I believe Linguaphone used to have *both* a Castillian Spanish (I've used it, it's OK but not great) *and* a Latin American Spanish (which I've never actually seen) course. The copy of the second-stage Linguaphone course I have is definitely biased towards the Spanish of Spain, I don't know if there's a Latin American Spanish version. "Colloquial Spanish of Latin America 2" is pretty good, but I never tried their first-stage course. I still also use Living Language's "Ultimate Spanish Advanced" and really like it: it leans, as James 29 says, more towards Latin American Spanish than Spanish of Spain. Edited by Random review on 20 June 2012 at 3:28am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5260 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 5 of 42 20 June 2012 at 2:43am | IP Logged | ||
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FSI and DLI are available for free download with tons of audio and drills. "Learning Spanish Like Crazy" and Colloquial are also Latin American focused. You may not appreciate that Colloquial is a British company and the English is, appropriately, not American. There are plenty of courses out there that are not Assimil that teach a general Latin American focused Spanish.
It's no surprise that Assimil focuses on a Castillian variety of Spanish. They are a French company. Europeans are more likely to encounter Iberian Spanish than Latin American. Just as North Americans are more likely to encounter Latin American varieties. It's still all Spanish. Word to the wise, to anyone learning Spanish, if you focus solely on Latin American Spanish to the exclusion of anything from Spain, you run the risk of not being able to easily grasp the Iberian variety. As a consequence you will miss out on a lot of excellent films, literature, RTVE, the Cervantes Institute resources and a wonderful, beautiful country with great people and culture. All you have to do is just make a bit of an effort to familiarize yourself with it. Same advice in reverse goes for those who are focused exclusively on the Iberian variety. You'll even run into Latin American immigrants in Spain- quite a few actually. DLI Spanish- Free FSI Spanish- Free Destinos: An Introduction to Spanish Video Series books and cds are available for a charge at many sources, so are the dvds. The videos are free in North America and mostly Latin American focused. Only the first few hours episodes take place in Spain and still, the main protagonist is Mexican. The course exposes the learner to Argentine, Mexican and Puerto Rican Spanish as well. Spanish learners are rather fortunate in that there are many, many absolutely free resources available for learning the language. If you want to pay, there are a lot of businesses out there just waiting to sell you a plethora of courses and resources. You can also hire a Guatemalan skype tutor for as little as $10 an hour. Imagine doing a home focused course and supplementing that with once a week instruction from a native who will point out all your errors and suffer your beginner's Spanish for that hour and try to help you. With the right focus, that will do wonders for your Spanish. You can also do a language exchange for free. As an aside, my opinion on courses are well known here. People tend to focus too much on them. They are an important tool but they are not the most important weapon available in your arsenal. In order to make a language yours, in my opinion, you have to step outside your course(s) and engage the language natively. Listen to podcasts from countries that interest you. Read native books. Watch native films. Listen and read. Participate in native internet forums. Follow interesting people who tweet in Spanish on Twitter. Most importantly of all, talk to natives. It has never been easier to learn Spanish, or any other language for that matter. These are the good old days. Make it happen! Edited by iguanamon on 20 June 2012 at 3:29am 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5781 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 6 of 42 20 June 2012 at 2:57am | IP Logged | ||
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@Iguanamon: Oh yes, that DLI course is *so* underrated IMO, but one thing- if the OP
wants to do the grammar drills (s)he'll need a native speaker to help him/her (as only the dialogue interrogation drills are on the tapes). I also agree with what you said about how you miss out on so much if you focus on one side of the Atlantic (I was going to say something similar, but you put it better). Edited by Random review on 20 June 2012 at 2:58am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| lancemfoster Newbie United States about.me/lancemfosteRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4538 days ago 7 posts - 12 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Latin, Yoruba, Hawaiian, Irish, Malay, Ojibwe, Old English | Message 7 of 42 20 June 2012 at 4:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have just started studying Spanish again this past week. I'm a dabbler, as you can tell by the range of languages I study off and on again, depending on what is occurring in my life. I don't have any plans to travel, am too broke these days to travel or buy the expensive sets, and I don't plan on becoming fluent in any of them. I just enjoy learning about languages very much,and it helps me keep my brain sharper as I slide into old age (I am 52).
My own main interest in Spanish is the kind spoke in Mexico and along the borderlands. I spent a lot of my summers in Southern California as a kid and as a youth, in a neighborhood that was transforming from Anglo to Mexican, so that trained my ear some, along with going to the local Mercado Estrella to pick up groceries where they didn't speak English and they counted out my change in Espanol. I developed a liking for ranchera music on the radio in the neighborhood, as it was so upbeat and had less of the tourist associations for me than mariachi. The vocabulary and emotions in music help too. I think too many people overlook the utility of singing songs to learn languages. And it was great to have all those Pelicula on tv there too. I also lived in New Mexico a couple of times in my life, and the norteno dialect there has all kinds of very old words and expressions from the 1600s in an isolated region. "Dichos: Proverbs and Sayings from the Spanish" by Charles Aranda, who was born and raised in New Mexico, is wonderful: "A buen entendedor, pocas palabras bastan." "River of Traps" is a great background historical-culture book for that area. And when I worked in the National Parks in the southwest, the landscape itself taught me Spanish terms. One useful book is Bill Hoy's "Spanish Terms of the Sonora Desert Borderlands," which covers all kinds of words, social as well as geographic features. For my return to Spanish, as my real interest is in attaining a basic grammar, I am starting with old materials I already own, along with some additions from the library. While driving, I listen to the 6-cassette beginning set from Pimsleur. It seems pretty much Latin American, although I find their use of "Castiliano" rather than "Espanol" in the conversations hard to get used to. I have an old cassette set called "Spanish for Gringos" that is fun and and encouraging, and seems mostly focused on Mexican Spanish. Though this site's forum, I found the FSI website, and after reading through these forums, think that Basic rather than Programmatic will suit my needs more. And I already have a couple of Spanish dictionaries. I also checked out a couple of books yesterday from the library to see how they work, Petrow's "Spanish De-Mystified" and Saloom's "Conversational Spanish." I have a few comic books in Spanish, and a graphic novel to work through, "Jimmy Corrigan: El Chico Mas Listo del Mundo." I have a Mexican buddy I went to grad school with that I reconnected with through Facebook, and I am sure he will help me with mistakes. @iguanamon: I agree with you that courses have their place, but it is only one place among many other components that are needed. For me, my goal is enjoying ranchera music more and learning to read Mexican legends and ghost stories, besides being able to be a polite and useful human being if I should meet any Spanish-speakers :-) 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5451 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 8 of 42 20 June 2012 at 4:31pm | IP Logged | ||
Yes, they did offer separate courses for Castilian and Latin American Spanish. I used the the one for Castilian Spanish some 25 years ago, and as far as I can remember, it was excellent. The course flowed the 30 lesson format from the early 1970s. It was purely Castilian Spanish, with no mention of Latin American Spanish whatsoever. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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