www.CostaRicaTicas.com

Hola, I just started trying to learn Spanish, starting with Duolingo on my smartphone, it makes it like a game so it keeps it interesting rather than like school. I appreciate the posts by BD and Orange on the forum, very informative and maybe a bit daunting, it reminds me of an episode of the big bang theory about time travel (will have has had.... That's my boy). But I will keep plugging along.

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If the women don't find you handsome, at least let them find you handy - Red Green

Practice, practice, practice. You can study/learn all you want but if you don't practice on a regular basis you will not learn much more past vocabulary and verb conjugation.

Find somebody local to practice with, somebody in a chat room that wants to practice English and take turns helping each other, somebody on CRT who is also learning to practice with each other,

Stay with it. You will notice the quality of your sessions improve as you get better.

Good luck.

Thanks Orange, I live in central Florida (Ocala) so I can drive a few miles and be in my favorite Mexican restaurant among other chances to practice. A lot of the reason I'm trying to learn is thoughts about retiring in some Latin American country, but the prospect of better sessions keeps me motivated in the short term, won't be retiring for 9 more years, probably take me that long to get comfortable with a new language.
Duolingo reminds me every day to practice and I do, sometimes 4 or 5 times if something doesn't sink in.

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If the women don't find you handsome, at least let them find you handy - Red Green

I am lucky in that I am fluent in both. Many people ask me about that and my advice is don't be afraid to make mistakes and when you get a chance watch a Latin novella. The vocabulary is simple and really a good way to learn.

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I am NOT a Cien Boy!!

Hey Whitecat, thanks to the advice and encouragement, I've watched some Spanish language TV but they talk so fast I get one word out of a hundred, but I've just started. I am trying to catch Spanish sesame street , that's about my speed. The nice thing about the Mexican restaurant I mentioned is that its run by 5 very sweet women that I know fairly well and we could have a good chuckle at my mistakes.

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If the women don't find you handsome, at least let them find you handy - Red Green

Try meetup.com they have local social groups that meet at coffeeshops etc to practice Spanish, probably have them in your town in Florida.
Mexicans speak very fast, Costa Ricans moderate speed unless they are animated, Guatemalans more slowly. And don't even talk to me about Puerto Ricans.

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" Omit no happy hour that may give furtherance to our expedition."

I suggest you start using Quizlet to memorize words. It is an easy way to fill your head with vocab quickly, and easy to review yourself every morning. Send me a PM and I can get you started with some basic simple lists.

Don't tackle lists more than 10 to 15 words. You can memorize those easily and retain by repetition. When you start with a list of 50 words, it takes forever to remember the entire thing.

Then, once you have them retained, make up sentences with your inner voice, and use google translate to see what it says. Just remember that google cannot teach you correct spanish. It merely translates your crap english to crappier spanish.

Learn the basic Present Tense conjugations so you can practice verbs: "I speak, you speak, etc". Since you have a restaurant to visit, write down new phrases and have them chuckle and correct you.

Sign up to Italki.com. You can use your Notebook daily, write sentences (and eventually short stories) and you will get several global members correcting your spelling, grammar and usage. Awesome site for peer help. You can also hire a tutor for like $4 an hour over Skype.

On my Language thread is a bunch of unimportant advanced stuff. Knowing any of that is not necessary to speak Spanish. Once you get a vocab in place, a lot of that will start making sense.

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bypassin' kinky, and usin' the whole chicken!!!

BW,
All of the above are great suggestions, especially keep practicing & don't be afraid to make mistakes!

A friend I met in Colombia on another thread was amazed at my Spanish, much more so than I am of course & he reached out to me and asked what he would need to do to become adequate at Spanish for his trips to the MDE. The following is my response to him, just my 2 cents worth & it may help you compartmentalize your process:

The first step in the learning Spanish is wanting to learn Spanish. I don't understand these people who live in Latin countries and refuse to learn to speak the local language. Life is so much simpler when you understand and can speak basic Spanish.

If I were you, the first thing I would do is learn the numbers. By that I mean counting to 1000 and telling time and working with the local currency. It's not near as hard as you might think what you get past 100 it becomes very repetitive and very easy.

Step two, would be to learn the daily pleasantries. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, how are you doing, nice to meet you, see you later. Stuff like this.

Step three would be food as in ordering in restaurants, buying stuff in the supermarket or from those little sidewalk restaurants.

Step 4: This should be a very good start for you and not take too long to master. And the main thing is practice every chance you get. Every store you walk into you should say good morning/ afternoon/evening, how are you doing? There are probably a gazillion YouTube videos on basic Spanish. Once you learn these basics you can get a text book from Amazon on basic conversational Spanish and increase your vocabulary and conversational skills.

Step five. Once you get comfortable with basic elementary conversation, telling time, counting, etc. find a book that instruct you on all the verb tenses. The main ones you need to concentrate on of course our past, present and future. I think there are 23 different tenses in the Spanish language. In English we only have three that most of us are aware of so if you start using the correct past, present or future of the verbs you will impress a lot of people!

I hope this step-by-step approach to basic Spanish helps. Remember, don't get discouraged as this is your at least 2nd language you were trying to learn.

Burnas Suerte,

CostaReeker

Also, I'd like to add that training your ear is far more important than training your mouth or eyes. I can speak a little Spanish (poorly, but adults can figure out what I am saying), but I can seldom understand what is said to me in return.

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bypassin' kinky, and usin' the whole chicken!!!

[quote="BashfulDwarf"]I suggest you start using Quizlet to memorize words. It is an easy way to fill your head with vocab quickly, and easy to review yourself every morning. Send me a PM and I can get you started with some basic simple lists.

Don't tackle lists more than 10 to 15 words. You can memorize those easily and retain by repetition. When you start with a list of 50 words, it takes forever to remember the entire thing.



Then, once you have them retainer , make up sentences with your inner voice, and use google translate to see what it says. Just remember that google cannot teach you correct spanish. It merely translates your crap english to crappier spanish.

Learn the basic Present Tense conjugations so you can practice verbs: "I speak, you speak, etc". Since you have a restaurant to visit, write down new phrases and have them chuckle and correct you.

Sign up to Italki.com. You can use your Notebook daily, write sentences (and eventually short stories) and you will get several global members correcting your spelling, grammar and usage. Awesome site for peer help. You can also hire a tutor for like $4 an hour over Skype.

On my Language thread is a bunch of unimportant advanced stuff. Knowing any of that is not necessary to speak Spanish. Once you get a vocab in place, a lot of that will start making sense.[/quot

Whnever to run thee y

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" Omit no happy hour that may give furtherance to our expedition."

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" Omit no happy hour that may give furtherance to our expedition."