The Language Guide — Spanish for Beginners
Why it pays to arrive with Spanish, and how to learn it — apps, channels, podcasts and my own grammar notes.
Hola, and welcome to a short guide in which I’ll share a few light methods to help you improve your Spanish quickly and enjoyably.
Before you start learning Spanish, it’s worth picking up some motivation and understanding why it’s worth learning at all.
Background
Spanish is the third most spoken language in the world, with around 470 million native speakers and 550 million speakers in total (not counting the Israeli girls who got hooked on Argentine telenovelas in the nineties).
So beyond the big trip you’ll be able to use it day to day, when travelling in countless countries, and in the job market it will open more than a few doors.
Joy
As Adir Miller already said in the video, Spanish makes you happy — and it genuinely does.
Researchers went and checked, and found it’s the language with the most positive words connected to love, happiness and laughter, which makes it the happiest in the world. (Chinese came last.)
And if research doesn’t satisfy you, then how do you explain an entire continent living in the second or third world under corrupt regimes, where people are smiling, singing and dancing on every corner?
Spanish on the trip
“You’re so lucky you know Spanish, I wish I’d learned before the trip.”
I heard that sentence a lot while travelling.
Anyone arriving in South America immediately feels the need for the language, and a great many travellers stop and enrol in schools at the expense of their own travel time, to fix what they didn’t do before leaving.
Arriving with a certain level of Spanish doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll start speaking and understanding straight away. But the knowledge you’ve built will slowly come out of the drawers in your brain, it’ll settle in far more smoothly, and sooner or later you will speak Spanish.
Spanish on the trip will give you a feeling of confidence and of knowing where you are. It’ll make locals open up to you, you’ll understand slang, and you’ll simply get to experience things that wouldn’t have happened without the language.
Learning Spanish
Spanish, at least at a basic level, is very easy to learn. It’s built on the Latin alphabet we already know from English, and in terms of reading and writing, what you hear is what you write, which makes learning much easier. Beyond that it’s a language you hear a lot in music and on television — there’s nobody who hasn’t been exposed to it.
Below I’ll set out a number of learning tools. What matters is that you pick the approach you connect with, regardless of Spanish, and from there the road to success will be shorter and more enjoyable. Try to adopt something that gives you a daily connection to the language.
So if you like music, listen to songs. Like sport? Watch football and read match reports. Like dancing? Learn salsa or bachata. Like television? Watch series and telenovelas. Just like talking and meeting people from around the world? Use Tandem.
Let’s begin
Tandem — a language-exchange app where you can practise your Spanish in return for teaching Hebrew or English, if you’re at a good level.
The app is very easy to use, with tools for correcting each other in chat and built-in translation, so you can talk and practise as comfortably as possible.
Beyond that you’ll meet a lot of people from South America, get local tips for the trip, and even meet up in person. I had three meetings during the trip with people I’d been talking to on the app years earlier, and it was genuinely a very local and interesting experience.
(See the side story, The Homeless Carnival.)
Musixmatch — a free app that connects to the music player on your phone or computer, and works with music apps too. The moment you play a song it brings up the lyrics and highlights the words as the song plays. In recent years they’ve added translation, so beneath the Spanish lyrics you can see an English translation for almost every song. An excellent way to enjoy music and learn Spanish along the way.
The Institute for Friendship with America (Israel) — the leading centre in Israel for Spanish studies, offering courses at every level. I personally met someone on the trip who’d done the most basic course and he spoke at a genuinely impressive level — partly, of course, because he practised and put the work in and got the most out of it.
Beyond the courses, the centre runs weekly conversation meetups at every level, organised by topic, at very reasonable prices. For me it was excellent to get to a few conversation sessions in the month before the trip, to widen my vocabulary and simply feel more comfortable holding a conversation in Spanish.
I want to stress that this isn’t an advertisement. I genuinely came away with a positive impression of the place, and I still go to their conversation meetups now the trip is over.
Link: http://samerica.co.il/
The internet
Yes, dear readers, a tool has recently been discovered called the internet.
Ah, damn, you’re already here. Fine, so you know what I’m talking about.
Online there’s learning material at every level, endlessly. Guides, YouTube videos, podcasts, exercises and an unending variety more.
Here’s a short list of recommended sources.
YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/user/ButterflySpanishola
https://www.youtube.com/user/learnspanishvideos/featured
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuvOWBdv3vqahioA4C3fLyQ
Sites for learning Spanish
http://www.snopi.com/Spanish/LessonMenu.asp https://studyspanish.com/
https://espanol.lingolia.com/en/
Podcasts
https://radiolingua.com/tag/cbs-season-1/page/2/
https://learnspanishbeginner.com/podcast/page/10/
https://www.learnspanishconsalsa.com/learn-spanish-con-salsa-podcast-all-episodes/
Beyond that, here’s a link to a document I put together during the trip, collecting all the grammar in tables with an emphasis on the exceptions. I’d note that it’s aimed at someone who has already started learning — it isn’t the place to begin from scratch.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hi8CH2vc626hZIxfZts5Vg5jwx2kugvbuwpen-AAgUw/edit?usp=sharing