Mastering Spanish fast (looking for best systematic approach)

[WilliamSmith]

@Lucas88 your input would be valued on this one:

I've escalated my interest level in the Dominican Republic (and to a lesser degree several other interesting Spanish speaking Latin American countries), so while grinding on learning daily 漢字 (Kanji and Traditional Chinese Characters), I'm also going to tackle some Spanish as part of my polyglot agenda.

Do you have any recommendation of a systemic plan?
Best resources you'd recommend like all your helpful recommendations on Japanese?

My tentative plan:

Outline Grammar Points
Because I like to have a reference sheet of outlined grammar points to be aware of, even if I let the "mastery" come through applied examples: I'm going to outline all the grammar points out of "Teach Yourself Spanish" first.
I like the "Teach Yourself" book series so far (especially for Cantonese).

Translation exercises
I'm going to tackle these right away with some cool stuff (eg Conan comics, Spanish language action movie dub-overs) and try to pull my vocabulary and applied grammar learning from that.

I'm sure Lucas88 and others who say Spanish isn't easy at the higher level are right, but from what I've seen so far the "familial" shared roots with many English language words made Spanish seem way easier to get into and "intuit" a lot more of the meaning than would ever be possible in Asian languages.

So rather than worry about stuff like flashcards or anki for vocab, I think I'm going to try to tackle translating fun stuff directly in bits and pieces and pull grammar and a sense of how the language works from that.
(That worked well for me in Japanese and Cantonese too, I just decided to frontload kanji/hanzi so unknown ideograms wouldn't keep tripping me up.)

Background grinding on some language learning apps:
Some people diss apps like Duolingo, but I think they're nice, even if it's not enough to actually teach you to be fully fluent.
I did Ling app on a 1-year subscription because they're one of the few with a Cantonese course, and it was perfectly solid as a basic language learning app with multiple choice questions and so on. I liked it but was kinda done, but forgot to cancel before the annual rebill date so have Ling for another year as of this month, LOL, so might as well use Ling too for Spanish, as well as reviewing my Japanese and Cantonese again.

Personal sentiment: You can't fault the apps or textbooks for coming up with very practical basics, but the totally mundane subject matter is so boring that it's harder to engage with. For that reason I like to actually do my basic grammar outline and look for more memorable materials to engage with, and then test my knowledge with the apps later on, rather than learn from them first....

Spanish has a ton of good materials for translating, by the way:

Conan the Barbarian comics and Spanish translations of the original REH Conan are one.

I also got some books in Spanish on tantric sex (heheh), the kamasutra, and "LA PAREJA MULTIORGÁSMICA" (The multi-orgasmic couple if I got that right) among others.

And I got the Spanish version of David Icke's book "The Biggest Secret" (El Mayor Secreto: El Libro Que Cambiará El Mundo ) about how the NWO is supposedly the work of cabals of hidden genetic bloodlines of reptilian humanoids. (Of course the jews weren't having any of that: "What's that?" they cried, "Reptilians financing both sides of world wars and promoting tyrannical technocratic neo-bolshevist global government while eliminating everyone's freedoms and pushing every imaginable form of sexual perversion to destroy gentile families? No, that would be us the jews, not reptilians." So the ADL and other jewish groups just got right out there and started screeching about antisemitism and sent antifa to threaten Icke and so on, but I'm going to give Icke a read in Spanish and see what his theories are all about.)

I noticed Mexicans also produce a shitload of these frankly pretty f-ing trashy but rather hilarious comics filled with chicks with big butts, LOL.

I think a lot of my macho retro 80s action movie DVDs have a Spanish language track too....

Anyway, I'm happy: I like Spanish because it's a GREAT "gentlemanly masculinity" language. Love how they build in the sexual dimorphism into the language too. Sexual dimorphism is definitely one of my big enthusiasms in life.

[Lucas88]

Anyway, I'm happy: I like Spanish because it's a GREAT "gentlemanly masculinity" language. Love how they build in the sexual dimorphism into the language too. Sexual dimorphism is definitely one of my big enthusiasms in life.

Spanish is by far my most beloved language. In Western countries such as the US Spanish is not considered particularly exotic or prestigious since it is one of the "ordinary", widely taught foreign languages available to study in almost every school or college with a language department and unfortunately it also lacks the cultural chic factor of the likes of French and Italian, but despite all of this I am of the opinion that Spanish is one of the most perfectly designed languages in existence and is an absolute masterpiece from a grammatical perspective. Spanish is also the language which I enjoy speaking the most. Its sounds are just so euphonious and have a certain quality of power at the same time and speaking the language connects me to a true macho culture and brings out a much more confident and expressive side in me. This is one of the reasons why I only want to form a long-term relationship with a Spanish-speaking Latina. Anyway, Spanish is an excellent language to study and it well help you a lot in the Dominican Republic and other Hispanophone countries of the Caribbean. In fact there's even a country in Africa where Spanish is spoken natively. It's called Equatorial Guinea. Maybe you'd like to check it out!

Do you have any recommendation of a systemic plan?
Best resources you'd recommend like all your helpful recommendations on Japanese?

Linguaphone

I began to study Spanish with the same kind of Linguaphone starter course which I recommended to you for Japanese. My first Linguaphone Spanish course was the European Spanish one from 1973. I started out with this course because I lived in Europe and knew that I would have interactions with the great Madre Patria of Spain. European Spanish can seem quite alien to those who are accustomed to Latin American Spanish. There can be problems of incomprehension if one doesn't expose oneself to the accent. Anyway, this course is extremely comprehensive and covers all aspects of learning from grammar and vocabulary to natural dialogues and pronunciation (it includes audio content) like all other courses of that type. It is even the absolute best language course I've ever used. I highly recommend it for anybody who is interested in European Spanish.

https://www.amazon.com/Spanish-Course-H ... 16&sr=8-13

For those who are interested in Latin American Spanish there is also LA Spanish Linguaphone starter course. I've also used this course and it's very good too. It uses the same teaching method as the European Spanish starter course and introduces the learner to a rather standardized form of Latin American Spanish although it does also introduce the learner to certain dialects such as Mexican, Colombian, Chilean and Caribbean Spanish.

https://www.abebooks.co.uk/978074730394 ... 303940/plp

Curiously, even though I began with the European Spanish course, I actually speak Spanish with a Latin American accent. All of my girlfriends and many of my friends have been Latin@s and I simply imitated the way they speak.

Essential Grammar

Routledge's Essential Grammar covers all of the main grammatical concepts in a concise and systematic grammar. You should use this book as a companion to your primary courses.

https://www.amazon.com/Spanish-Essentia ... 259&sr=8-2

Breaking out of Beginner's Spanish

This book is great for the intermediate learner. It teaches the learner how to speak Spanish naturally, use idiomatic expressions correctly, avoid common errors and stop speaking like a gringo. I really enjoyed this book and it helped me to improve my Spanish a lot.

https://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Beginne ... 192&sr=8-2

Hide This Spanish Book

This is another fun book for the intermediate learner which teaches how to use colloquial language and slang and also how to cuss in Spanish. You'll really learn how to speak like a native with this one!

https://www.amazon.com/Hide-This-Spanis ... 233&sr=8-1

I'm sure Lucas88 and others who say Spanish isn't easy at the higher level are right, but from what I've seen so far the "familial" shared roots with many English language words made Spanish seem way easier to get into and "intuit" a lot more of the meaning than would ever be possible in Asian languages.

Spanish or any other similar Western European language is much easier to get into than an Asian language like Chinese or Japanese due to its familiar Latin script, its shared European roots and its lack of opaque ideograms. You can jump straight into the essentials and don't need to worry about Kanji/Hanzi or Kana. This makes the language much more accessible right from the beginning.

I think that the hardest aspect of Spanish is the grammar. Don't skimp here. Spanish is much more intensely inflected than English, Chinese and even Japanese to some degree and you'll have to learn various complex tenses and verb forms and things like subjunctive moods. The learner has no choice but to knuckle down and study all of this diligently until he/she gets it down. There's no other alternative.

Also speaking Spanish with correct grammar can be hard for a native Anglophone who isn't used to gender concordance. You have to be able to inflect adjectives and participles in accordance with gender (masculine & feminine) and number (singular & plural) in real time and that can be difficult at first. My advice is that you spend a lot of time talking to yourself out loud and make sure that you conjugate all of the nouns, adjective and participles with the correct gender and number.

E.g., el chico bueno, los chicos buenos; la chica bonita, las chicas bonitas; el hombre belicoso, los hombres belicosos; la puerta abierta, las puertas abiertas, etc.

Also don't underestimate the difficulty of Spanish just because it's a Western European language. It's still a Romance language and therefore belongs to a different genetic language family. You've still gotta put in the effort and learn many Latin roots that don't exist in English (the degree of cognation between Spanish and English is no greater than 30%) as well as grammatical features that are somewhat alien to a Germanic speaker. This is another area where you must not skimp.

All of the above is my advice for your endeavor to learn the beautiful language of Spain and Latin America.

¡Mucha suerte!

[Mew6ix]

Don't sing the lyrics of Despacito to Argentina chicks. They don't like that at all lol

[WilliamSmith]

@Lucas88
Thanks a lot! Appreciate the recommendations! You were also very eloquent about your most beloved language.

@Mew6ix
OK, I definitely won't sing the lyrics of Despacito to Argentina chicks!
Shouldn't be a problem to hold myself back there, due to my "rap is short for crap" sentiment, though I looked it up and skimmed the English meaning of the lyrics, and looked like it was about giving women orgasms, which I approve of a hell of a lot more than all the "pimpin on bitches and turnin' em into hoes" garbage they churn out of the jewnited states ghettoes.