Reply To: Evolving from Spanglish to Spanish

  • BajaGringo

    Organizer
    July 5, 2022 at 7:25 pm

    I taught myself Spanish over a half century ago and today consider myself extremely fluent. I figured out early on that the best and easiest way to be able to carry on a fluid conversation in Spanish had very little to do with understanding the Spanish rules of grammar or even proper pronunciation.

    At least in my case, it was all about building a large and diverse vocabulary.

    So back when I was first learning Spanish, I dedicated myself to learn at least 50 new words each and every day. My method back then was to simply grab a newspaper or magazine in Spanish and begin reading. Each time I came upon a new word I didn’t know, I would record it in my vocabulary notebook and then look it up in the dictionary, recording the English translation along with different/alternative meanings. I found that actually writing them down was a huge help as it helped me to better memorize the meaning as well as the proper spelling and accents.

    I would then make an effort to carry on conversations in Spanish (very rudimentary at first), using the new words I had learned which helped to both reinforce the new words as well as learning to understand spoken Spanish.

    Each day I would make it a point to review the new words as well as the prior words I was still struggling with and after just 10 days I had accumulated a vocabulary of 500 words. In 3 months my vocabulary was nearly 5,000 words!

    We only speak Spanish at home and most of my friends here are locals so I rarely speak English anymore, with my online work here really my only connection to English anymore. If someone speaks to me in English anymore, my mind translates it to Spanish to think about what they say. When I am writing in English online I am usually translating from my thoughts in Spanish.

    It’s a process and you can get there if you commit to it.

    If you are not around someone who is a native Spanish speaker, there are many tutors who can help you via Zoom sessions. I know one, if you need a referral.

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