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1st post... Questions on Spanish

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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.

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
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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"

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?


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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