Fear of learning Spanish

If I had the option, I’d enroll in Spanish I at night high school. You can certainly learn idiomatic Spanish by being immersed in it, but with any language until you have a grasp of the grammar you can only understand and parrot back what you’ve heard.

Think about English: If I taught you to say, “I want to buy eyeglasses.” you could buy a pair of spectacles. Of course, you wouldn’t know which of those words was the noun and which the verb. But if later on you wanted to say that you had already bought eyeglasses (past tense) where would you begin? A basic understanding of Spanish grammar will put you in a much better position to conjugate the verbs, make nouns and adjectives agree (it’s important) understand the uses of [i]ser[/i] and [i]estar[/i], etc.

Immersion is the best method to learn another language. Before I left Canada twelve years ago, I hired a Spanish Teacher (a Colombian Lady Lawyer married to a Canadian), on a one-on-one basis, five days a week, Monday to Friday, for two hours per day, followed by readings in Spanish and written exercises each day of approximately two more hours and questions the next day on what I had read and written. After about three months of this (limitng the conjugation of the verbs to the past, present, and future tenses and no conditional tenses), I had a reasonable understanding of basic Spanish and how to communicate.

After moving to Costa Rica, I subscribed to La Nacion, the most sophisticated daily newspaper in Costa Rica, which I religiously read each morning. This I do to this day, along with watching the local News on TV and it has helped immensely with the understanding of Spanish.

A perfect understanding of Spanish is not something that you will require in order to have a very happy and rewarding life in Costa Rica.

[quote=”tiffen”]A big concern for me in contemplating a move to Costa Rica is learning to speak Spanish. I have never taken any language courses and although I always try to know the basic words for any country that I visit it doesn’t come easy.

How did this go for you?
[/quote]
1st question is “Where is your sense of adventure?”
1st response is language is not as important as finding a means to communicate.

When we moved to Costa Rica neither of us spoke anything but a few words of Mexican Spanish. My first efforts were at the B&B where we stayed for the first 10 days I was able to use the Langenberg site on the internet.

Two years+ down and I am able to deal with most simple issues face to face but never over the phone. Sometimes it requires a lot of hand signaling or examples of what you need.

Biggest problem for me is the rapidity of speach and Tico’s dont seem to comprehend the concept of “despacio” (slowly).

We have a family living with us with whom we communicate in “Spanglish” and they help with difficult issues.

Additionally when you are caught needing help with translation you may find a Tico nearby who has enough English to help.

We have a Spanish/English teacher who comes to the house every Saturday to teach an hour of Spanish to us and an hour of English to the family.

Accept the challenge and find out how wonderful life can be. It is PURA VIDA.

“Visual Link Spanish” (http://www.visuallinkspanish.com/)worked better for me than Rosetta Stone.

I first got their free CD with several very basic lessons (numbers, days of week, months, directions, most used verbs, survival expressions, etc.) What I liked was that I could learn Spanish while driving to work (back then I had one and half hour one-way commute). The best part is that all you need to do is push the button, and the lesson starts. There is no escape, too;-) I was “forced” to listen and learn for 3 hours a day, 5 days a week
It worked miracles for me.

That’s the basic level.
To become more or less fluent you need to come here and start a project. Our Spanish improved tremendously once we started building.

Main thing: it’s not a rocket science: Anyone can do it. All you need is put a little effort.

Good luck!

[quote=”tiffen”]A big concern for me in contemplating a move to Costa Rica is learning to speak Spanish. I have never taken any language courses and although I always try to know the basic words for any country that I visit it doesn’t come easy.

How did this go for you?
What is the best way to learn – classes, tutors, etc?

My second question deals with the first – how do you hire a translator when you need to do something that requires complete understanding of oral and written Spanish? A lawyer is my first guess but are there other options when they are not available?

muchas gracias[/quote]

Everyone has their own learning style. Some people do well with private lessons, others with Rosetta Stone-type self-teaching courses and some (lucky) others just naturally pick up with immersion.

If you REALLY want to learn Spanish, you should first think HARD about how you learn in other areas. Do you prefer to read? Learn from classroom settings? Learn from listening / watching TV & Radio? Learn from one-to-one interaction? Whatever your style, this will probably suit you with language learning.

I have lived in several countries and have been most successful with structured classroom training or one-on-one tutoring. It’s my style.

Whatever you do, TRY HARD. Your time in Costa Rica will be much more rewarding if you can communicate with the locals, if even at a basic level. Nothing is worse than living abroad in a language isolation bubble!

Regarding translators – if you don’t want to pay Lawyer rates, you can easily hire translators on the cheap on the Internet. Beware, though, you DO get what you pay for. If the translation is important, you need to pay for a professional job. If you just want a basic understanding, you can do it yourself with sites like http://www.freetranslation.com, and have a huge laugh at the literal translation that pops out.