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Am I correct that the 'manner' of Spanish is rather different IN Spain vs the former colony countries?
If so... does that style have a name? Catalan? Galician?
Thanks
As Saibot rightly said, Spain adopted Castilian (a dialect of Castile) as the official language and that is the variant inherited by the former colonies. Does that mean we speak the same language as Spain? The answer is a bit ambiguous: Yes and no.
I can speak and understand myself perfectly well with any Spaniard, as long as I stick to a standard language. But in Latin America we have many variants by country and even by region. The Spanish we speak in Argentina is quite different from the Spanish spoken in Colombia, Panama or Mexico. And they are all different from the one in Spain as well.
Castilian (castellano) is what the Spanish spoken in Spain is called.
Gracias. I had the two C words confused.
Doing ancestry I've only recently learned that one side is nearly 100% Iberian incl a fair bit of activity in the Galicia and Asturias regions.
And because of this, I now want to a deep immersion program or maybe find a woman who speaks Castilian and go on a long vacation with her.
Two birds with one stone.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Luis Antonio
As Saibot rightly said... Does that mean we speak the same language as Spain?
The answer is a bit ambiguous: Yes and no.
Exactly. I've already learned that lesson!
Last edited by MrRational; 01-22-2024 at 04:05 AM..
Reason: spelling
I did 15 words each day. Then the following day added 15 more while reviewing Monday's words. By the weekend, you know 50+ words. Do this for a month and you will have a solid base from which to build a good foundation for communicating. Then you learn to conjugate often used verbs.
Initially when spoken, it seems like 1 long word. Over time you develop what I call the ear. You may not know the meaning of the word. But you can decipher 1 word from the others. And if needed, you can repeat it back.
You will know that you have arrived when you experience your first dream where the people in the dream are speaking a language that isn't your mother tongue, but you will understand what they are saying.
Like others have said, you just start and learn new words as you go. Basically just like you did when you were a baby and started learning English. You build on it as you go. As you learn more, you actually stop translating back to English. You actually learn the words in the other language and you start thinking in it. That is when you start becoming a little fluent where you could actually communicate in that language. There are many people that are fluent in 3 or more languages.
Just use one of the apps such as Duolingo or Babel to get started. You will be surprised how many words you learn in a couple of months. Before long you will be able to read enough to comprehend what something written in that language says.
It's beyond me how someone can learn the meaning of 4000 Spanish words and how to pronounce them and what they mean in English to be able to give a sermon in Spanish for over 4 years. I find that hard to believe and I doubt 4000 words would even be enough. I bet I could write down 100 English words which I would select and then ask this person to tell me the Spanish word as we go down the list of 100 and they fail to be able to do it.
It's beyond me how someone can learn the meaning of 4000 Spanish words and how to pronounce them and what they mean in English to be able to give a sermon in Spanish for over 4 years. I find that hard to believe and I doubt 4000 words would even be enough. I bet I could write down 100 English words which I would select and then ask this person to tell me the Spanish word as we go down the list of 100 and they fail to be able to do it.
Four thousand words is quite enough to have a foundation for basic communication in Spanish. Once you have the basics of numbers, calendar expressions, question words, and basic nouns, pronoun, verbs and prepositions, you can start building on learning the more complicated parts of the language such as all the verbs and their various forms. You try to build your vocabulary as you go.
I've been learning French since 1982, when I got a copy of Le Petit Prince for my birthday. The local Alliance Française is about to offer another class for advanced speakers, most of whom are also French teachers. They first offered the advanced level about twenty years ago. Several sessions boosted my skills to the point where I was able to spend a month in France without resorting to a dictionary more than a handful of times.
Learning a language is a little like eating an elephant. It's a lifetime job. You'll never finish the elephant, but you have to start somewhere. It doesn't really matter where you start. Get the basics and plunge in. Learn the words to a hymn in Spanish. Music activates a different part of your brain. The more of your brain that you use when learning the language, the better able your brain becomes at using the language.
Put on a Spanish language TV show on Netflix, or on the internet and just let it play in the background. Having subtitles in English or captions in Spanish can also help you understand the dialogue. I sometimes watch a Spanish language soccer broadcast when my favorite French team is playing and no English language broadcast is available. I am gradually moving beyond knowing just the word "gol" (pronounced "gooooooooooooooool!") to being able to understand short bursts of the commentary.
Going back to your original post, here are a couple of useful links:
What if I told you that you could understand about 50% of Spanish by learning only 100 Spanish words?
Would you think I’m crazy, or would you give it a shot?
It’s true! By learning the 111 most common Spanish words, you can begin to understand half of the language.
Like others have said, you just start and learn new words as you go. Basically just like you did when you were a baby and started learning English. You build on it as you go. As you learn more, you actually stop translating back to English. You actually learn the words in the other language and you start thinking in it. That is when you start becoming a little fluent where you could actually communicate in that language. There are many people that are fluent in 3 or more languages.
Just use one of the apps such as Duolingo or Babel to get started. You will be surprised how many words you learn in a couple of months. Before long you will be able to read enough to comprehend what something written in that language says.
I started Spanish with Duolingo a year and a half ago. I am amazed at how much I can read. Speaking and understanding are more difficult in real life than on an app, but I went to Costa Rica for Christmas this year, and once I told the servers and hotel staff I was learning, they were very gracious and, for example, would ask me in the morning if I'd slept well and were kind enough to wait while my brain translated it and then came up with the correct response. I think if I had longer exposure to the language every day, I would pick up speaking and hearing/comprehending even more quickly.
By the way, I am 65 years old. The learners with the longest "streaks" on Duolingo; in other words, those who are sticking with it the longest, are people over 60.
I also started French, but I concentrate and spend more time on Spanish. Still, I am surprised at how much French I picked up, too. I would be at least able to go into a French restaurant, ask for a table, and order some food.
It's beyond me how someone can learn the meaning of 4000 Spanish words and how to pronounce them and what they mean in English to be able to give a sermon in Spanish for over 4 years. I find that hard to believe and I doubt 4000 words would even be enough. I bet I could write down 100 English words which I would select and then ask this person to tell me the Spanish word as we go down the list of 100 and they fail to be able to do it.
3000 words is considered enough to be conversational. You're not fluent, but you can get around. You need more than just the individual words. You need to know how to put them together into a sentence.
It's beyond me how someone can learn the meaning of 4000 Spanish words and how to pronounce them and what they mean in English to be able to give a sermon in Spanish for over 4 years. I find that hard to believe and I doubt 4000 words would even be enough. I bet I could write down 100 English words which I would select and then ask this person to tell me the Spanish word as we go down the list of 100 and they fail to be able to do it.
Well one thing is that when you actually get to the point you have learned a good bit of a language, you one day realize you are not translating from that language to English, thinking of a response in English and then translating back to the other language. You just start thinking in the other language. Also, the words and dialogue often do not translate one to one from one language to the other. The sentence structures and the way they use adjectives are different so translating back and forth is not always easy to do quickly. An example would be in English we say a green hat but in other languages they may say the hat green. So anyway, my point is you might write down 100 English words or some phrases but they may not translate exactly one to one with another language because of the language structure.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mightyqueen801
I started Spanish with Duolingo a year and a half ago. I am amazed at how much I can read. Speaking and understanding are more difficult in real life than on an app, but I went to Costa Rica for Christmas this year, and once I told the servers and hotel staff I was learning, they were very gracious and, for example, would ask me in the morning if I'd slept well and were kind enough to wait while my brain translated it and then came up with the correct response. I think if I had longer exposure to the language every day, I would pick up speaking and hearing/comprehending even more quickly.
By the way, I am 65 years old. The learners with the longest "streaks" on Duolingo; in other words, those who are sticking with it the longest, are people over 60.
I also started French, but I concentrate and spend more time on Spanish. Still, I am surprised at how much French I picked up, too. I would be at least able to go into a French restaurant, ask for a table, and order some food.
I am about the same way. I can read quite a bit of Spanish and a lot of French. I cannot speak much Spanish but I can speak "Tourist" French and do common things like ask for directions, exchange greetings, read menus, order food, ask for more towels at the hotel and those sorts of things.
It is surprising how much of the language you can learn to read in a couple of years. If we were in contact and speaking with native speakers regularly, we would pick up the spoken language as well. It is just hard to learn to speak another language when you do not have the opportunity to converse with native speakers regularly.
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