Learning Spanish

Try Destinos. This is a college-level beginner Spanish course taught through a video series which is almost a soap opera, but veryengaging. http://www.learner.org/resources/series75.html You can buy a DVD or watch individual episodes for free on the website. We loved it.

Our library offers free access to Mango Languages online. Maybe yours does, too. There are many, many languages offered in Mango, and you see all the phrases and words written out as you hear them spoken. Just listening, as in Rosetta Stone, is not as effective for me either. Although the Spanish is Latin American, what I learned was very helpful in Spain. The focus is on topics helpful for a leisure or business traveler. I also used Mango Languages to learn some Turkish. The BBC also has a couple of online Spanish courses. Mi Vida Loca is intended for 20-something British travelers, but I thought it was fun. The video clips of Madrid and other places were very interesting. I think Pimsler has a written language component, too.

This may sound facetious, but I'm very serious. Spanish is such an easy, regular, language that I would advise you to seek out a fluent speaker in your town/area, even a maid or gardiner, and offer topay him/her for one hour of conversation per day. You might even find a student who would be willing to help on this. I learned fluent Spanish this way, courtesy of the US Army, and I have taught others the basics in exatly that way myself. Spanish is so simple that I can't imagine you going wrong, especially if you have some knowledge of French. This system probably would not be effective with a truly difficult language, such as Russian, Greek, or Arabic, but it will with Spanish.
Suerte, Betsy!

I'm a big fan of going to your library, check out their different language offerings, take them home and try them, then buckle down with the one you like best. You can also Google, free online language courses, for some other choices. BBC has free online language courses designed for tourists. To me learning a language is like learning a musical instrument - there is no substitute for effort. The most important words to learn early are please, thank you, excuse me, sir, maam, as well as basic directions, lodging, transportation and menu words. If you know those, you're close to conversational on the words you will need as a tourist. Once you get started, I think you will find you are more familiar with many Spanish words than you thought you would be - especially if you know some French. I crammed on Italian for a trip; if anything, it was confusing because there are so many similarities to Spanish. While I may have mixed up some words, the locals understood what I was saying and had nothing but praise for my effort.

This may be painfully obvious, but Spanish is all around us these days in the USA. Do you have Spanish-language TV channels where you live? Sit and watch them! If you know some French, you should be able to understand at least some of what's being said even on the most tawdry tele novella. The more you sit and watch and listen, the more your ear + brain will become attuned. And with the TV, you'll have plenty of visual clues to help understand what they're talking about. Hope that helps. Now, if I could just find a local TV channel that broadcasts in Croatian, I'd be all set for my next trip...

Thanks to everyone, again, for your replies. Facetious no, painfully obvious,yes, but apparently not to me!! Yes, we do have two Spanish channels and, although I don't get it, I can try. Getting the rhythm of a language is important. Culpeper library is not the greatest place for up to the minute stuff so I will definitely try the BBC and look at learner.org. We do have someone working on the farm who would be a wonderful person to teach conversational Spanish....great idea and I will talk to him. sounds like fun. I think I may have an old textbook hanging around. The similarity of romance languages are always confusing to me. Maybe I should try Croatian! We don't need to be fluent but we find it rather embarrassing when we can't ask for the basics AND understand the answers. We can read a bit and grunt small requests but that isn't enough. I'll try harder and,yes, one gets out of it what one puts in!

Betsy, I hear you! My husband and I are pretty good at French and can talk and joke in that language. We are currently learning Italian and that is going well. I find Spanish the most difficult of the three as the grammar seems more complex and less intuitive. Spanish TV stations are great practice for someone at intermediate level, bit not so much for a beginner. They talk so fast! That is why I suggested Destinos. You are watching a story, sort of a mystery, but they start slow and repeat the important things. Each episode ends with a teaching session and review by Raquel, the main character. She is an abogada from LA whonis hired to locate a missing heir of Don Fernando in Mexico. She travels to many Spanish-speaking countries (Spain, Argentina, Puerto Rico, and Mexico) in her search. I looked forward to watching each episode. There is an accompanying textbook and workbook available for purchase if that suits your learning style ( reading as well as watching and listening). With just that program and some tapes for the car to practice speaking, we did quite well on our trip to Spain.

Betsy..Follow on to my earlier. The problem with all the "teach yourself" courses is that you have no monitor for your own speaking and pronunciation, etc. If you can find a native speaker who is willing, he/she can help you in this very important aspect. You can often tell by their faces if you are not intelligible to them and then you can listen to the right way to pronounce words and say phrases. In my own case, I need the book to give me the grammatical structure, but speaking is the only way I have been able to learn widely disparate languages like Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, et al.
And I (and most linguists) strongly disagree with the writer who feels that Spanish grammar is more difficult than Italian and French. Just the opposite, IMO.

Just wanted to let you know that right now you can get a great deal for Live Mocha. Living Social has a deal where you can get 6 months of gold access for $25 or a year it is only $39. This language study is available in German, Spanish, Italian, etc. I'm currently enrolled in GER 102 class in school, but I'm using this as more of a conversational learning. It's very grammatical in school. (obviously)
You can google living social live mocha and it will come up for you - it's available nationally. Just thought I'd throw it out there as an option.

Well, i've spent two hours reviewing some of the learning programs. Destinos gets my vote so i ordered the DVDs. Hope they work; they're not cheap! of course that means you'd better use them. I will also try to set up some conversational time. Thanks, everyone. I'll need all the suerte I can get! i think i can find a textbook for less than $180.

Hi Betsy, I'm like you, I have been a visual learner all of my life. So, naturally, I sought out more "visual" methods to help with my language learning. However, now that I am an adult (and parent), I found that I don't have much time while at home to dedicate to this. Thus, I stumbled onto the Pimsleur method. Yes, it was a little difficult early on (since I was trying to visualize the word to log it into my memory), but they're right. You learned your first language by listening (albeit a long time ago), and you can do it this way too. I listen to the cds in my truck driving to and from work (I'm a captive audience there). I've learned Spanish, French, Italian, and German this way. Many speakers have told me that my pronunciation is very good, and I know that's because I hear native speakers converse with me for 30 minutes every day.
Pimsleur won't really help you read, and the vocabulary is limited, but if you get through all 3 (or 4, depending on the language) volumes, you will have a great basis from which to build on. I pick up my grammatical structures from books, and my speaking from Pimsleur. Consider it. From one visual learner to another, it works.