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In my last article I started to talk about a Spanish textbook called ‘Pasos’. This was the textbook I used when I first started learning Spanish. When I started studying from it I didn’t use it to its full potential. This was really down to time constraints and the fact I was about to embark on a long trip to central and South America. I wanted to finish the book before I set off.

The point of the article was really to warn others against falling into the same trap if possible. This particular Spanish textbook and others like it are full of quizzes and exercises that are designed to test the reader’s ability to retain and understand the information that is being taught. I didn’t spend enough time working through the various chapters or attempting all of the exercises. In hindsight I know it would have been better to spend as much time as I needed in order to cover everything that the book had to offer.

In this article I want to talk some more about the same Spanish textbook, in particular about how it dealt with teaching Spanish verb formations. Learning how to form Spanish verbs can be very frustrating for native speakers of English. This is because they are formed very differently. In Spanish it is often not necessary to use subject personal pronouns (I, you, he, she etc) with verbs like it is in English. Look at this simple example:-

I live in England. = Vivo en Inglaterra.

Notice in Spanish no word for ‘I’ is used. This is because much of the time the way that a Spanish verb is formed will automatically indicate what subject personal pronoun is being referred to (I, you, he, she etc). At first this can seem very confusing and then later on it can still seem very confusing! The difficulty is that there are so many different ways that one single verb might be formed. Not only does the verb change depending on which subject personal pronoun it is used with but it also changes depending on what verb tense is being used (present, past, future etc).
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In the last article I talked about mental preparation. If you are thinking about learning Spanish then it makes sense to think carefully about what you hope to achieve and how you hope to achieve it. This is because the learning process is likely to be a long one and full of trials and tribulations. It is wise not to underestimate yourself.

In this article I’m going to talk about what I did when I was first thinking about learning Spanish. That was about four years ago now. At the time I knew nothing of the Spanish language, so for me it was a case of starting right from the very beginning.

My concepts of how other languages worked were really very basic. I thought all I had to do was to take any English word and simply learn what the equivalent word in Spanish was. Therefore I could simply put the words together and hey presto I would have a complete sentence. It didn’t’ take me long to realise that this basic theory rarely works!

For example, “I always buy strong coffee”. In Spanish, ” siempre compro café fuerte”. In this sentence there appears to be no Spanish word for “I” and the word for “coffee (café)” comes before the word for “strong (fuerte)”. This is only a simple example but it shows how my basic theory falls down. The Spanish word for “I” is “yo”, but it is often not used in Spanish sentences because the construction of the verb it is used with already tells us that “I” is being referred to “compro = I buy”. Secondly, in Spanish, adjectives usually come after the nouns that they are used with whereas in English they usually come before them. “strong coffee = café fuerte”.
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In the last article; ‘Anybody can learn Spanish’ I talked about the different reasons why people might decide to learn Spanish. I also talked about the great sense of achievement that learning another language can bring you. In this article I am going to talk about the different things you should consider before embarking on such a crusade.

I think a lot of people believe that learning another language won’t actually be that difficult. Well, maybe it won’t be for some, but if like me you have never tried to learn a foreign language before then it may well turn out to be one of the most challenging things that you are ever likely to attempt. Of course I don’t want to put anybody off, after all, in my last article I said that anybody can do it. Well, I absolutely believe this, but I also believe that you should realistically think about how and when learning Spanish can be achieved for you.

Of course not everyone is the same. Some of us are better at doing some things than other people are. So, it stands to reason that learning Spanish might be easier for one person than it is for another. The truth is that learning a new language can be achieved by possessing any number of different skills. There is no proven formula for learning a new language that 100% works for everybody! What you need to think about is what methods work best for you.

When I first started to think about how and when I would learn Spanish I honestly thought it was going to be easier than it actually was. I think one reason was because I was comparing myself to the millions of Europeans that fluently speak English. Anyone who has been to Germany, or Scandinavia will know that pretty much everybody can speak English. I thought if so many of them can learn a new language then it couldn’t be that difficult!
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When learning a new language, it is always useful to be familiar with its main grammatical units. This constitutes the first necessary step in order to understand and create meaningful speech.

Here are the main grammatical elements in Spanish and some useful information about them:

Nouns:
A noun is a word which is mostly used to refer to a person or thing. All nouns in Spanish have a gender, meaning that they are either masculine or feminine. For example, “niño” (boy) is masculine and “niña” (girl) is feminine. The best way to identify gender is undoubtedly experience, although here are some general guidelines which may be useful at the beginning: usually nouns ending in –o are masculine and nouns ending in –a are feminine. Of course there are always exceptions.

For example, “mano” (hand) and “radio” (radio) are feminine. On the other hand, words of Greek origin ending in –ma, such as “dilema” (dilemma) or “problema” (problem) are masculine. When you are learning new vocabulary, it is recommendable that you learn a noun together with its corresponding article. That will help you to remember their gender. For example “la niña”, “la mano” or “el problema” and “el niño”.

Adjectives:
Adjectives are used to qualify a particular noun, to say something about it. It is important to remember that in Spanish they are usually placed after the noun. Since adjectives are always related to a noun, they have to agree with them in gender and number.

This means that if you want to say something about the noun “niño”, which is masculine and singular, the adjective that you use will also have to be masculine and singular. Thus, you can say “niño alto” (tall boy), “niño pequeño” (small boy), etc. If, on the other hand, if you were talking about a girl, you would have to say “niña alta” and “niña pequeña”.
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