stmc2 Diglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6049 days ago 45 posts - 58 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German
| Message 1 of 51 30 August 2012 at 8:02pm | IP Logged |
Hello, there was a post a good while ago about a Spanish course that taught just 150 or so words and claimed a decent level of communication with those words. I don't believe that to be possible but the idea sounds interseting and then you can build on that vocabulary easily .
Does anyone remember the name of this course? i think it was an internet based course. Any help would be great
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chrisphillips71 Groupie United States Joined 5034 days ago 64 posts - 86 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 2 of 51 30 August 2012 at 8:49pm | IP Logged |
The course is Synergy Spanish. However, after studying Spanish for two years and
learning (or attempting to learn) many words, I believe that their claim that you can
"speak" Spanish knowing only 138 words is hogwash.
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dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4820 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 3 of 51 30 August 2012 at 9:00pm | IP Logged |
Yep- You definitely can't "speak" Spanish with only 138 words. However, synergy Spanish
would make a great start to your studies if you have no previous knowledge. If I
could go back in time I would definitely start with it, and maybe combine it with MT. I
think I would have made far faster progress had I done so.
Edited by dbag on 30 August 2012 at 9:01pm
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Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6395 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish
| Message 4 of 51 31 August 2012 at 1:22am | IP Logged |
Offtopic but while we're at it, what's that site that offers good public domain courses in Greek and Spanish? Googling "learn greek and Spanish" or similar finds only commercial shite...
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Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5581 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German
| Message 5 of 51 31 August 2012 at 1:31am | IP Logged |
I think you mean languagetransfer.org and
their YouTube channel
is here.
Edited by Random review on 31 August 2012 at 1:33am
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stmc2 Diglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6049 days ago 45 posts - 58 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German
| Message 6 of 51 31 August 2012 at 11:48am | IP Logged |
Thanks for the information. I have already done the Paul Noble course and just came back from a holiday in Spain. The excellent response that my wife and I got with our very low level of Spanish was very nice. Just looking for one more starters course befote I start Assimil.
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fanatic Octoglot Senior Member Australia speedmathematics.com Joined 6944 days ago 1152 posts - 1818 votes Speaks: English*, German, French, Afrikaans, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch Studies: Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, Modern Hebrew, Malay, Mandarin, Esperanto
| Message 7 of 51 01 September 2012 at 4:13am | IP Logged |
I love Synergy Spanish. It teaches the basics you need to know and reminds me of Lewis Robins Language for Travelers that teaches the essential nuts and bolts of a language that you can use to build on.
Actually, Synergy Spanish teaches much more than the 138 word vocabulary. It teaches how to simply change the endings of (I think) more than 1000 English words to make Spanish words. These are words that have endings like "tion" and some other endings I can't give off the top of my head.
The most important aspect of the course is that it gets you saying things like "I need to..." or "I want to..." followed by the infinitive of the verb which means you don't have to learn all the verb forms at the beginning.
I like the course because it has you saying important sentences right at the beginning.
Each lesson contains more than a Pimsleur lesson but the lessons only last for less than 10 minutes.
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Wulfgar Senior Member United States Joined 4469 days ago 404 posts - 791 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 8 of 51 01 September 2012 at 7:05am | IP Logged |
dbag wrote:
Yep- You definitely can't "speak" Spanish with only 138 words. |
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I disagree. Say the word "hola". You spoke Spanish. You spoke Spanish fluently. You might have even spoken
Spanish with a native accent :)
There was a really long thread posted here about counting words, and 300 words being some sort of "speaking
threshold". To quote Frank Zappa - "the torture never stops".
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