HOLA

Change your language and you change your thoughts.

 - Karl Albrecht

One of the experiments I want to do next year is to attempt to learn a foreign language, specifically Spanish. What that goal lacks in originality it more than makes up with popularity. Anyway, I’ve been doing a lot of research lately attempting to come up with a workable plan, aka experiment, to make that happen.  It seems the consensus is that the key to quickly learning a new language is…..

IMMERSION

That’s great. And totally unworkable for me. I can not move to a Spanish speaking country to learn Spanish. So I’m working on a faux immersion plan or fauxmersion.  This will involve me watching Spanish tv, listening to Spanish radio, reading Spanish books, surfing Spanish websites and talking to myself in Spanish.

Normally, I like my experiments simple as in I would break down learning vocabulary to a specific time frame, like 2 weeks. Then check results before moving onto watching tv. That way each method could be judged independently. But because I need the fauxmersion, I’m unsure how much I will be able to break down this plan.  I really need to do everything daily to immerse myself in the language, more so once I get a solid foundation.

I also like my experiments not to be too long. But I think this is going to have to be a little on the longer side. I’m going to go with 3 months. Which, although a long time for an experiment, is an incredibly short time to learn a foreign language. Now I do have the benefit of 2 years of high school Spanish decades ago, although that second year was a waste. I’m not sure that my second year Spanish teacher actually spoke Spanish. So I can say some basic things in present tense only.

LESSONS

Obviously just immersing myself in Spanish doesn’t actually teach me Spanish. I’m going to actually have to push start that especially in the beginning. My first decision on that front, is to skip the grammar lessons. I didn’t like them in school and managed to learn English without them in the beginning. So while they may be necessary at some point, they aren’t going to happen at the start.  Instead I think I’m going to focus on some vocabulary and phrases.  

According to this post this is how many words are in an average vocabulary:

Grade 1 Student = 1,000+ words

Normal Person (Graduate) = 5,000 to 6,000+ words

University Professor = 15,000+ words

Spelling Bee Winners = 30,000+ (as claimed by them)

College Dictionary (Abridged) = 50,000 - 70,000

Total Words in English Language = 250,000+ (Growing)

Dictionary (Un-abridged) with derivatives = 450,000+

 Even if you know 5,000 words, you probably rarely use most of them. In fact, most of us use just a few hundred words regularly. When is the last time you used the word neutron or capacitor? So after much internal debate between pushing myself and practicality, I’ve decided 10 words per day for 90 days would yield a respectable 900 word vocabulary.  

Choosing which words to learn matters. Obviously I need to learn the words most frequently used. Thankfully, the internet is full of just such lists. Here’s a list of the 1,000 most common Spanish words, with pronunciation, from Words Galore. There are plenty of other sites with lists of common Spanish words. The important thing is to learn the words used most frequently.

It’s an intimidating list. But to start, I’m going with a list of the 101 most common Spanish words, also with audio, from Top Choice Reviews. They also have a list of 101most common Spanish phrases. Since I’m not stressing grammar, phrases become even more important. So they need to be learned as well. I’m probably going to try and learn as many of the phrases and vocab as soon as possible in order to make the immersion part work better. But I’ll post more on that, as well as some other ideas and resources, in my next language post.