Animalia Newbie United States Joined 5016 days ago 39 posts - 44 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 1 of 12 08 July 2011 at 4:53am | IP Logged |
Hello everyone.
My name is Airrick. I discovered this site one day a while back when looking up tips to learn Spanish. I never posted just kinda crept around.
Yo estudiendo espanol en la escuela por tres anos pero hablo un poco.
I'm wanting to know what programs are reccomended for Spanish?
Im getting a copy of the Pimsleur Spanish plus or I could use the FSI language course. Which would you guys reccomend?
Any other hints, tips, programs or sites to check out?
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Greendog Triglot Groupie United States Joined 5271 days ago 47 posts - 52 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German
| Message 2 of 12 08 July 2011 at 6:59am | IP Logged |
I'd recommend Assimil Spanish Sin Esfuerzo (or maybe it's just called Spanish with Ease). That's what I've been using and it's great. It teaches Castillian Spanish (it's a European based company), but the differences between Latin American and peninsular Spanish are minimal.
Also, a few corrections on what you said (don't have accents on this computer so I'm assuming you know where they go):
Hace tres anos que estudio espanol a la escuela pero hablo muy poco.
I think you could also say:
Estudio espanol desde tres anos a la escuela pero hablo muy poco.
By the way, remember to use the present participle (-iendo/-ando) with estar.
I think that's right, but my Spanish is a little rusty.
Edited by Greendog on 08 July 2011 at 7:00am
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Animalia Newbie United States Joined 5016 days ago 39 posts - 44 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 3 of 12 08 July 2011 at 7:23am | IP Logged |
Muy gracias por su respuesta.
I kind of ran my thoughts together in my Spanish sentence. I was trying to get across.
Estoy estudíendo Español. Yo practicé en la escuela por tres años pero hablo muy poco.
(I am studying Spanish.) (I practiced in school for three years but speak very little)
Does that sound better?
Also I seen you speak french, Which did you learn first Spanish or french? Was the transition easy? Your language studies is mostly what I wish to learn.. English as my native and hopefully one day German, French, and Spanish. Would you reccomend a order for doing such, any tips or ideas?
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Greendog Triglot Groupie United States Joined 5271 days ago 47 posts - 52 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German
| Message 4 of 12 08 July 2011 at 9:06am | IP Logged |
Yes it's better, but there are two corrections still:
Estoy estudiendo (no accent on estudiendo) and yo practique a la escuela. The accent was right though when you said practice, just remember it changes to qu. Don't use "en" unless you're saying you're actually in the place. Here you'd want to use "a"
Also, I think for this sentence you'd just want to say "estudio espanol". The present progressive tense gives a feeling that you're actually doing something this instant and it will be over soon, while studying Spanish is something you've been doing and will be doing for a while.
I started with Spanish then moved on to French. I learned Spanish in high school so the instruction was pretty bad. I never really knew much Spanish and only started studying it on my own after dropping it in school last year (I self studied French and went into a higher level French class instead). The transition was pretty easy, yes.
I don't think there's any order really. It might behoove you to study French and Spanish at different times so that you don't confuse them, but if you're planning on studying two languages simultaneously combine German with either Spanish or French since they come from different language families and are harder to confuse. Then again studying two Romance languages at the same time could help you since they play off each other, so I'm not really sure.
EDIT: Actually, would that take the imperfect? Would one say "Practicaba a la escuela por tres anos"? It's one of those cases where either one could work, right?
Also, I just caught this, but it's muchas gracias, not muy gracias.
Edited by Greendog on 08 July 2011 at 9:10am
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Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh
| Message 5 of 12 08 July 2011 at 9:40am | IP Logged |
Not "por tres años", but "durante tres años". "por" never acts as "for" with durations.
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simonov Senior Member Portugal Joined 5590 days ago 222 posts - 438 votes Speaks: English
| Message 6 of 12 08 July 2011 at 11:26am | IP Logged |
Cainntear wrote:
"por" never acts as "for" with durations.
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No? So what about the following:
Salió por 5 minutos. (for 5 minutes)
Voy a China por 6 meses, o talvez un año. (for 6 months or maybe a year)
That's also duration, a duration that couldn't be expressed using "durante"!
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patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 7016 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map
| Message 7 of 12 08 July 2011 at 4:32pm | IP Logged |
The original sentence was:
"Yo estudiendo espanol en la escuela por tres anos pero hablo un poco."
There are many possible ways to correct this. I'd probably say something along the lines of:
"Llevo estudiando el español en la escuela durante los últimos tres años pero sólo hablo un poco."
Greendog wrote:
Don't use "en" unless you're saying you're actually in the place. Here you'd want to use "a" |
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Using "a" sounds completely wrong to me in this context. Perhaps you're confusing it with French. You could say "Voy a la escuela para practicar el español" but for the example given above, "en" is perfectly fine.
Edited by patuco on 08 July 2011 at 4:36pm
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Hierbabuena Newbie Spain Joined 5029 days ago 19 posts - 36 votes Speaks: Spanish* Studies: EnglishB2, Mandarin
| Message 8 of 12 08 July 2011 at 4:37pm | IP Logged |
Animalia wrote:
I kind of ran my thoughts together in my Spanish sentence. I was trying to get across.
Estoy estudíendo Español. Yo practicé en la escuela por tres años pero hablo muy poco.
(I am studying Spanish.) (I practiced in school for three years but speak very little)
Does that sound better?
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I would write it this way:
Estoy estudiando/estudio español. Lo estudié en la escuela (durante) tres años, pero
sólo hablo un poco.
In Spanish, at least in Spain, in this context 'practiqué' doesn't work, I think that
because to practise something you need to have learned it before so it looks like some
information is missing.
About por/durante, sometimes 'por' can be use as 'for', but in this context, again at
least in Spain, we would use 'durante'.
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