Top 10 tips for beginner learners of Spanish
Friday, 13th November 2009
Spanish is not only a nice-sounding language, it's also one with increasing global significance, which makes it a very useful language to learn! Here are some tips that may come in handy for any beginner learner...
1. Concentrate on getting your pronunciation as close to that of native speakers as possible, especially on the vowels – there are only five of them and they are single vowel sounds rather than diphthongs (combinations of vowel sounds) which are common in English.
2. There are many words in Spanish which are similar to English. There are differences in spelling and pronunciation, but once you’re familiar with those differences you can recognise many such words. For example, many words that end in “ic” in English end in “ico” in Spanish – académico (academic), elástico (elastic) and diplomático (diplomatic), and words ending in “tion” in English often end in “ción” in Spanish.
3. Learn Spanish important verbs, such as ser / éstar (to be), hacer (to do), tener (to have/hold) and ir (to go), thoroughly. These verbs are the most frequently-used and being able to use them fluently will really help your Spanish.
4. Learn when to use tú and Usted, the informal and formal you forms. You can do so by listening to a lot of Spanish conversation in a variety of contexts and making a note of which forms are used.
5. Remember that personal pronouns (I, you, he, she, etc) are used for emphasis in Spanish. So “I’m from England” is “Soy de Inglaterra” rather than “Yo soy de Inglaterra”, unless you want to stress that it’s you who comes from England and not someone else. Because of this, it’s important to get the verb endings correct as they indicate who you’re talking about.
6. Learning the genders of nouns is fairly straightforward as most masculine nouns end in o and feminine ones end in a. There are some exceptions though, such as mano (hand – feminine), idioma (language – masculine) and poema (poem – masculine), which have to be learnt individually.
7. The structure of some Spanish sentences differs significantly from English. For example, “I like languages” is “Me gusta los idiomas” (literally, “to me is pleasing the languages”). These structures can take some getting used to, but with practice they will become second nature.
8. Try to listen Spanish as often as possible and to get exposure to different varieties of Spanish too. This will help you to become familiar with some of the relatively small differences in pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar between the Spanish of different countries and regions.
9. Practise using your Spanish whenever you can.
10. Have fun – if you can find ways of learning Spanish that you enjoy, you’re more likely to remember what you’re learning.
Tags: england, language, languages, learning, spanish, english
Posted by Simon Ager 2009-11 under Attitudes to Language Learning,
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