How To Learn Spanish Like Crazy

3 Secrets to Learning Spanish Like Crazy

If you want to learn a language quickly and inexpensively, you have picked the right language. With the exception of English, Spanish is spoken more than any other language in the U.S. You will have plenty of opportunities to practice your Spanish with native speakers of Spanish and even Americans that learned Spanish as their first language. The ability to speak Spanish also opens many career or business opportunities. As an attorney, the ability to speak Spanish has enabled me to represent many clients simply because I spoke their language. Of course, if you live in certain cities or states you will have more opportunities to practice your Spanish. For example, if you live in New York you can find many Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Colombians, Ecuadorians, Peruvians, Mexicans, and other Latin Americans an Latinos to practice your Spanish. If you live in Texas or California you may find a lot of Mexicans that can help you with your Spanish. In Florida, there are many Cubans. My objective is to give you a multitude of tips and techniques to help you speed up your learning of Spanish. I also want to reveal a number of things that you can do to make your learning experience as inexpensive as possible.

Numero Uno: Immerse Yourself

If you really want to learn Spanish, you need to immerse yourself in the language and the culture. Do you know why you learned English so easily? It’s not just because you were a child when you embarked on your study of the English language. It’s mainly because you were immersed in it. As a child you heard English 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. If you could hear and speak Spanish 24 hours a day and 7 days a week you would also learn Spanish incredibly fast. Although it may be difficult for you to hear and speak Spanish 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, there are things you can do to help immerse yourself in the language. Instead of listening to your favorite music station when you’re driving in your car, play a Spanish instructional CD. Of course, if your favorite music station happens to be a Salsa or Merengue radio station, you can listen to the Spanish lessons CD some other time. When you’re home watching TV, try substituting MTV or the Discovery Channel for Univision or Telefutura. If you are jogging, working out in the gym, taking a walk, or just waiting in the doctor’s office, play a cassette or CD from your favorite Spanish course. If you are waiting on line in the supermarket, instead of reading that gossipy tabloid, press “play” on your your cassette player and listen to a Spanish vocabulary tape or some other Spanish lessons tape or CD. Have you ever met a Hispanic person that has lived in the U.S. for many decades and is still unable to speak English? That’s because he or she has little or no exposure to English and is constantly immersed in Spanish. That’s what you must try to emulate. Expose yourself and immerse yourself as much as possible in the Spanish language and Latin American Culture.

Numero Dos: Develop the Right Habits

This is probably the most important advice that I can give you about learning Spanish or any other foreign language. More than anything else, your habits will determine how quickly you learn Spanish. In fact, your habits will determine if you actually learn the language or not. Of course it helps if you have a language learning aptitude. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a language learning aptitude. In fact, I couldn’t speak English until I was four years old despite the fact that English was my first language and the only language spoken in my home as a child. However, my desire to learn Spanish was strong enough for me to develop the necessary habits for learning Spanish. Out of habit, every time I turned on my television it was tuned to Unvision, Telefutura or HBO Latino. Out of habit, every time I got in my car the radio dial was set to the Latino radio station Latino Mix. If not, then a CD or cassette from a Spanish course was playing. Out of habit, if I went out to a club it was a Salsa or Merengue club. If I went out to a restaurant, it was probably a Latin American restaurant. Not that Latino food “es mi plato favorito.” But if I go get a steak at Outback, I am probably not going to get a chance to practice my Spanish with the waiter. In fact, if I was dating someone, she was either a native of a Spanish speaking country or she learned Spanish as her first language here in the U.S. If you develop and cultivate these habits, you will learn Spanish extremely fast.

Numero Tres: Learn Spanish the Same Way that You Learned English This may come as a shock to you, but in the high schools and colleges in the U.S., the method that they are using to teach Spanish is all wrong. If you want to learn Spanish, you must learn it the same way that you learned English. Let me you ask you a question. Which did you learn first: How to speak English or how to read and write English? Of course you learned how to speak it first. Then why are they teaching the students in the high schools and colleges to read and write Spanish first? That’s because they don’t expect the students to ever be able to speak Spanish. And that’s exactly what happens. Students take several years of Spanish, graduate, and cannot even speak Spanish. There’s another problem with learning to read and write Spanish before you learn to speak it. By default, you subconsciously learn how to pronounce the Spanish words the way you would pronounce them in English. I made that same catastrophic mistake. It took me countless hours and countless dollars in private instruction to correct the error. After much wasted time and money, I discovered that the mistake could have been avoided. I should not have learned to read and write Spanish until I had at least reached the intermediate level of conversational Spanish. You are going to have to trust me on this one …. Nothing sounds more excruciating to Latin American ears than a “Gringo” with a thick American accent speaking Spanish. How do I know? Because now that I speak Spanish fluently, every time I hear an American with a strong American accent speaking Spanish it makes me cringe.

Patrick Jackson

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