Muchas Gracias to Gitano (then known as Bush Pilot) for pulling together the opening info in this post. As Gitano rescued Eureka's posts from the JSSR board, I'm forwarding this Red Snake thread on to Club Hombre, and using it to build the foundation of this "Learning Spanish" section.

Though the original posts from Eureka discuss multiple types of resources, (books, tapes, CDs, etc.) the primary focus is books, so I've placed it in this posting area. Eureka's info is more than two years old, but it is still quite relevant.

The remaining posts I've moved here are from "YoungTom", "Prime" and "TaxiBob". I wish, also, to extend my thanks to these gentlemen for their contributions.

Please feel free to add your own suggestions and ideas. The idea is for this post to be only the beginning.

PLEASE NOTE: Many of the prices listed in these posts have changed.

**
By BushPilot on Sunday, December 05, 1999 - 07:04 pm:

Eureka has compiled a lot of info about books for learning Spanish and also a few for Spanish speakers to learn English. I have combined his posts on this topic and put them here for a more permanent reference, as this seems to be a recurrent topic.

The remainder of this post is from Eureka.

****
Here is my compiled bibliography from two-and-a-half years ago...Originally published on the JSSR site....about two and a half years ago...

Okay, Senor...
Here it is...I took four years of German in high school (I'm 48 now...so it's been awhile...but the basic lessons tend to stick...)...which is useless for learning Spanish...except it does teach you that English is not the only way to communicate...( a concept that is very difficult for some people to except)..Then I went to France about two years ago ( and have been back once since then) and thought..."Gee, I wonder if I could learn French..." I heard about this guy (on KGO radio in the SF Bay Area, who could speak something like 50 languages...and I thought "Wow!"...He had written a book about learning languages...Anyhow...I got his book and basically he said it's just something you have to expose yourself to everyday and in as many ways as possible)...So I went down to Barnes and Noble and bought a bunch of French language books and the Pimsleur Tapes (Vol 1 and 2, as per the recommendation of the aforementioned author)..Then I got exposed to ASPT and O'Toole and El Chamuco...And I thought...hell, I live in the Western Hemisphere...maybe I should focus on Spanish...So I went down and bought the Pimsleur tapes (Vol 1 and 2, at Barnes and Noble) and took it from there....about a year ago...Those tapes teach only rudimentary Spanish...My first Spanish words spoken were the words "Lo hace por la boca." as delineated by El Chamuco....When I got a positive response..from the gorgeous Vanessa, no less...I was hooked...I vowed I would learn Spanish...When, during one of our bouts, the gorgeous Vanessa said "Que?", as in "What do you want?"...I knew my destiny...

In the last year, I have discovered many books that have been very helpful in learning Spanish....Here are the titles:

"Madrigal's Magic Key to Spanish"...by Margarita Madrigal...Doublday....and the best for overall learning...published in 1951 with illustrations by Andy Warhol...(yep!)

"Al Corriente" by Robert J. Johnson...Short cuts to everyday Spanish phrases...muy importante!

"Spanish for Gringos"...by William C. Harvey...a two volume set published by Barron's

"1001 Most Useful Spanish Words" by Seymour Resnick...published by Dover...and only $1.50!"

"Oxford Spanish Dictionary"...Berkeley Reference

and....last but not least...The Rough Guide to Mexican Spanish ( Please note...this is about Mexican Spanish as opposed to Spanish Spanish...and is a great source of info...and easily fits in your Hawaiian shirt pocket... Ed Note: 12/4/1999...2.5 years ago I would wear Hawaiian shirts to TJ, thinking I was being very hip...only to be called a "joto" on the streets (Joto=Fag). The main thing is to learn vocabulary, which is latin based and within which there are many cognates in English....(for example, any word that ends in "tion" in English has it's "cion" correlary in espanol...

Also...the chicas in the Zona have been invaluable as instructors...You have to be willing to fuck-up and seem stupid: to be a baby.... I have stuttered and stammered through many a sentence construction, trying to communicate....You just keep getting better and better...Don't feel intimidated...Don't be afraid to say "Habla despacio, por favor....) (Speak more slowly, please...)..They know where you are coming from and in fact are amazed that you even are attempting to speak Spanish ( I am amazed at the number of USA guys that I see in AB or CC, rambling on and on in English while the chica just nods her head in pseudo-understanding...the guy might as well be talking to a wall...or his wife...)...100 points right there, just for making the attempt, the cabbies will tell you that....An hour speaking Spanish with a chica in the Zona is worth 10 hours of highly concentrated study in the art of speaking Spanish...Every word and/or phrase personally defined by a native speaker of Spanish is somehow indelibly etched in the brain...That has been my experience...

In my most recent report I mention how I tried to test out the English speaking abilities of my two chicas...and their reaction...even though they speak good "bar" English...It was a revelation to find out that basically I was carrying the linguistic ball...

Believe me...speaking a foreign language is not easy...unless you've mastered it...but you gotta start somewhere...In Europe it's common for people to speak 3 or 4 or more languages...So, in that spirit, I have dedicated myself to that model...

Regarding my daily dedication to espanol...I've spent about an hour a day over the last year. Typically, I'll flip through the dictionary and just look at words...see if there's one that really hooks me (BTW, there's a young Mexican kid who works at the place I buy coffee every morning who is learning English largely by flipping through an English-Spanish dictionary...the obverse of what I'm doing...it seems to be working well for him...) I must admit that when I first started, I spent maybe two hours a day. I would listen to the Pimsleur tapes while I drove to work or took my walk along the ol' creekside trail. But the tapes were mainly good for learning correct pronunciation and the basics of asking for directions, for food, for el bano...etc. Once I understood the sounds of the letters, I pretty much switched over to written material exclusively...( I have read in other sources that reading the language is the best way to maintain one's language skills)...When I visit TJ I always read "El Sol de Tijuana", the daily newspaper, and I'll pick up a bunch of revistas (magazines) in espanol...They have a version of the "tabloids" there called "Insolito" (which means "really unusual") and the stories are so weird and bizarre that I can't help but laugh. (I bought a copy a couple of weeks ago, the cover photo being of a guy in the Philippines pulling a small snake through his mouth and nose...(huh?). I had a couple of gals over at my room and I showed the magazine to them and I was laughing so hard I could hardly breathe. They were really grossed out by the picture and I think they thought I was a little nuts 'cause I thought it was so funny, but then one of the gals
wanted the magazine when she left...Reluctantly, I gave it up...I pick up "Nuevo Mundo" here in the Bay Area, published by the San Jose Mercury News...It's a Spanish-language weekly dedicated to the huge Spanish-speaking population in the south SF Bay Area...

I don't reserve a time everyday to study espanol. I just keep the materials around and read a bit when I've got a few spare moments...although typically those moments are right before I hit the sack and pass out. I think the language learning process is cumulative regardless of one's age. And, if one just keeps at it on a variety of levels, day by day, one's efforts reach a kind of critical mass and crystallize into a usable knowledge paradigm. Just like a kid learns language. At first it's meaningless to him, but he keeps at it and one day he graduates from grunts and growls to culturally recognizable speech...regardless of specific language and specific culture...

Another thing I've found is that it is much easier for me to understand Nicaraguans and people from Guadalajara, although a guy I work with is from Nicaragua and claims that all Spanish is the same. But their pronunciation and enunciation is more "clipped"...more easily recognizable as separate words...less slurring...I liken it to English as from the mid-western US versus English from the southern US or English from say, Liverpool...or Australian English (which I can barely understand). Finally, a real test of my language skills came when I called one of my TJ sweeties on the phone from the States. The first time I did it was really weird because it's amazing how much body language and facial expression and gesture come into play in human interaction. Using the phone eliminated all the subtle cues that I had come to subconsciously rely on. I was literally speechless, but things got much better with subsequent phone conversations...

Anyhow, a leisurely daily dedication should do it. The purchasing of so many different "Learn Spanish" books (I've probably spent $250 on various books in the past year) was predicated mainly on the recommendation of that "multi-lingual" author (whose name I forget) that I mentioned in my previous letter. He seemed to feel that a multiplicity of source material was better than reliance on a single text...and I tend to agree...

By the way, when I go to TJ, I always carry the "Rough Guide to Mexican Spanish"($5...Barnes and Noble)...Whenever the chicas who are interested in learning English see me using it to reference something, they invariably want it...I've given away three copies...

For some reason, there is a dearth of "Learn English" material in the bookstores in TJ...one of the most literate and academic bookstores I've found is on Avenida Sanchez Taboado...and it had next to nothing...
Hope this helps...


Note: (12/4/1999)
I've got more coming up...
Eureka!


"Just Enough Business Spanish"
Passport Books
ISBN 0-8442-9655-4

"Breaking Out of Beginner's Spanish"
Joseph J. Keenan
University of Texas Press
ISBN 0-292-74322-X

"Berlitz Spanish Grammer Book"
Phil Turk
Berlitz
ISBN: 2-8315-1355-3
Eureka's Comment: Quite Good Actually

"Buscalo! (Look It Up!)
Pub: John Wiley and Sons,Inc.
ISBN 0-471-24560-7

"Spanish Lingo for the Savvy Gringo"
Elizabeth Reid, MA, Dre
ISBN: 1-881791-08-4

Finally, the books for hispanohblantes que quieran aprendar ingles. Can be found at Sanborn's on the corner acroos from the "Palacios de Jai-Lai" (8th and Rev)...they are published by a French publisher Larousse... and I will post the name and ISBN as soon as I can find the book here amidst my colossal mess....
Eureka!


In Reply to: Bush Pilot...Still Lookin'... posted by Eureka_Eureka on December 05, 1999 at 10:20:18:

Geez, I only had to start sifting through a months worth of of San Francisco Chronicles and a heap of un-read trade publications and...voila!
Here they are:

"Larousse Gramatica Inglesa Comunicative"
Here's the front cover blurb. Test your Spanish!
La gramnatica mas clara, sencilla y completa.
El mejor apoyo para estudiantes de ingles de cualquier nivel. Valioso auxiliar para personas de habla inglesa que estudian espanol. Util para resolver
las necesidades de comunicacion oral o escrita. Para dominar o consultar los elementos gramaticales del idioma ingles.

(I've left all the Spanish accent marks and tildas off the above)...
Author: Gilles Forget
Publisher: Larousse
ISBN:970-607-052-4
Price: about 4 bucks at Sanborn's on 8th and Rev...Booksection
_____________________________________________________
"Larousse Verbos Ingleses, Guia Practica"
All about English verbs as used in common contexts...
No author
ISBN:970-607-650-6
Also available at Sanborn's ( I haven't seen this Larousse series in the USA...)
______________________________________________________
This is a good one, too....
"Cambridge Word Selector, Ingles-Espanol"
Diccionario tematico del ingles contemporaneo
This is a great dictionary for hispanohablantes...has many useful illustrations as well and sample phrases....it's excellent material for an
English-speaker to "reverse engineer" in order to learn Spanish...
Here's the blurb:
Palabras y expresiones agrupadas por temas.
Disntigue claramente entre palabras que son casi sinonimas en ingles.

Todas las explicaciones y normas de uso aparecen en ingles.
Informacion detallada sobre la gramatica de las palabras inglesas.
Miles de frases a modo de ejemplo.
Amplio tratmiento de expresiones idiomaticas.
Expresiones coloquiales para una gran variedad de situaciones de la vida dotidiana.
Indices alfabeticos de todas las palabras ingleses y espanoles.
Indicaciones foneticas de todas las palabras inglesas.
Profusamente ilustrado.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press, Great Britain
ISBN: 0-521-42582-4
I bought mine at Barnes and Noble in San Jose, CA...
Hope this helps. Right now, as of last week (12-3-99) Sanborn's (8th and Rev, Booksection, back wall shelf) was loaded with the Larousse series (
there are about 8 books.... Sometimes they don't have them...
Eureka!

Posted by Eureka_Eureka on December 05, 1999 at 15:08:12:
In Reply to: Found! I got'em.... posted by Eureka_Eureka on December 05, 1999 at 10:49:16:
A couple more books I've found useful, specifically for learning verbs...
"750 Spanish Verbs and Their Uses"
Author: Zamir, Pantigoso, Estanvanovich
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
ISBN: 0-471-53939-2
_________________________________________________
"501 Spanish Verbs"
Author: Christopher Kendris, Ph.D.
Publisher: Barron's Educational Series
ISBN: 0-8120-9282-1
_________________________________
These pups are good for a gringo to learn verbs...you only need a few basic conjugations...maybe 4 or 5 as opposed to the myriad possibilities....
Eureka!


**
By taxibob on Monday, December 06, 1999 - 09:18 am:


I found an interesting web site for learning Spanish. Sort of overwhelms me yet though! {http://www.umr.edu/~amigos/}


**
By YoungTom on Thursday, March 16, 2000 - 09:56 pm:


I recently got hold of a copy of
"Madrigal's Magic Key to Spanish"...by Margarita
Madrigal!)

It really is a good book. For any of you trying to learn spanish I'd recommend it highly. Bushpilot mentioned it in another thread & I tried to comment it there but I couldn't cuz Mrs. YoAmoChicas.


**
By BushPilot on Monday, March 20, 2000 - 12:02 pm:


I obviously agree YT. A thing or two to remember about the Madagril book, which Amazon can have at your door in 3 days for under $15:

1. It was written over 50 years ago. That it is so well recognized today is a testament to the quality of the book. However, it shows in some examples in the book. Words like computadora aren't used and the style seems a little overly polite at times.

2. It covers España Spanish and as a Latin American enthusiast, you need to be aware of this. No big deal in my opinion.

3. It does not cover the informal you until the end of the book. Actually, I think this is an advantage for the novice. It is one less thing to think about and outside of a hooker bar the informal you is seldom appropriate, especially beyond border towns.

All in all this is the most influential book I've read in my 9 month Spanish career. I am also becoming fond of Encuentros and the accompanying computer CD story that I am using in my Spanish classes at night. I recommend taking formal courses after getting your feet wet.

My teacher occasionally pauses and looks at me because I pronounce cuarto and hotel so well. He also never saw anybody have the numbers down
so pat so quickly.


**
By YoungTom on Monday, March 20, 2000 - 07:37 pm:


BP - I got a good laugh out of your cuarto/hotel/numbers comment. You have a great
sense of humor.

I'll have to get hold of a copy of Encuentros.

I seem to have accumulated a sizeable library of spanish text books; if I'd just read half of 'em I think that I'd be fluent.

I also think you're suggestion on the formal courses is a good one. Unfortunately here in Texas, the people that take Spanish classes seem to underestimate their Spanish experience. I took a "Spanish for Beginners" class last fall ; the course catalogue emphasized that the prerequisite for the course was "Absolutely no Spanish". Well, the first day of the class on of my fellow students introduces herself & proceeds to talk in Spanish for about herself for about a half an hour. About half the class probably spoke Spanish as well as her when the class started which made it kinda embarrassing for the 2 or 3 of us that spoke "Absolutely no Spanish". In any event, I think now I'm ready to try an intermediate spanish class; I just hope that half students in the class aren't Spanish professors :-)


**
By BushPilot on Monday, March 20, 2000 - 08:27 pm:


YT,

Encuentros comes with an accompanying computer CD that tells a mystery story with the chapters following along with the constructs in the main text. The point is, you get to hear the words spoken in different voices. You can also stop or bring up sub-titles in either language. The story is kind of fun too.

A lot of people dropped out of my Spanish 101 class because the native speakers intimidated them. Can't blame the native speakers for going for the class in what must usually be an intimidating experience for them (American school).


**
By Prime on Monday, March 20, 2000 - 09:03 pm:


BP and YT, very good information. I'm also trying to improve my Spanish, but can't commit the time to a regularly scheduled class.

Do you know of any resources (books, CD's) that focus on the Mexican and familiar forms? I'd rather improve my border town cantina Spanish first, and then pick up the formal latter. I can use the informal as soon as this week, but don't know when I might use the formal.


**
By BushPilot on Monday, March 20, 2000 - 11:21 pm:


Prime,

There isn't a big difference between informal and formal Spanish. It really is just a matter of the use of the second person singular. tu-usted, ti-usted, lo/la-te, le/se-te, and the related verb conjugations. Most texts cover this as you go. Now if I could only remember all this and talk/listen at the same time.

As far as a book that concentrates on Mexican or Latin American Spanish, I don't have anything to add to what Eureka put down.

I've become friendly with an undocumented immigrant woman who is interested in learning English. She knows very little of it, and is shy. Since I'm about the same way in Spanish, we do ok. But I was wondering if the board had any suggestions for me concerning stuff I could read that might help me help her learn better.

I am asuuming that she is well enough educated to read a book for Spanish speakers who want to learn English. I recently bought fav a copy of

Inglés para latinos: un camino hacia la fluidez
by William C. Harvey, Paul Meisel (Illustrator)

This is the same guy who wrote "Spanish for Gringos". It is a fun approach and fav really likes it.

Your friend could also use something to listen to in order to get used to the pronunciation. Fav liked the Pimsleur stuff I got her last year. I just picked up:

Rapido Y Facil Ingles : Sin Libros Sin Clases Totalmente En Audio
by Pimsleur

I haven't given it to her yet, so no review.

Both are available on Amazon and are fairly cheap.

Also, get your friend comfortable in asking you questions about english, while you are watching movies. Answering in Spanish will help you.

Fav after gaining an understanding of something occasionally comments about my native tongue. "Que idioma feo". I tend to agree.

later,
G

Another book I can recommend is "Ingles en 10 Minutos al Dia" by Kristine K. Kershul, also available from Amazon. They are offering a special price if you buy it together with "Ingles para Latinos".

I tried to include the the direct link to Amazon buying information for these titles in my message, but it was filtered out. Just go to the Amazon website and search by title. You'll find it.

Pura Vida,
TG

TG,

How you be ? I will be in San Jose Memorial Day weekend. e-mail me if you have time for a beer.

G

Gitano,

I'm doing fine and hope things are going well for you. I sent you an e-mail and hope I still have your correct e-mail address. If you haven't received it, e-mail me.

TG

Great suggestion Gitano. Never occurred to me to give a chica English books/tapes.

I recently completed a third year of Spanish at a local JC. The last year entitled "Conversation and Composition" helped my tin ear considerablly. I am still unhappy with my ability to understand native speakers at normal conversational speed. I am pretty much of the opinion that short of living in a Spanish speaking culture or living with a native speaker, it's an unusual person that can gain near native fluency. Then again I have only been at this 3 years.

Anyway, for those of you who would like a recommendation for an intermediate-advanced text, I recommend the text from my last course.

"Repase y escriba - Curso avanzado de gramática y composición" - Dominicis and Reynolds. John Wiley and Sons, ISBN: 0-471-17414-9

Be warned that some of the level of detail and explanation in this book only a gramatician would love. However, there is some additional depth to topics like the imperfect, estar/ser, and other things that us Gringos just never seem to get right all the time. In particular, I found the chapter on the imperfect to be helpful.

que les vaya bien,
Gitano

Here's the name of a good book for learning Spanish:
The Oxford - Duden Pictorial Spanish and English Dictionary.
- 28,000 objects are drawn and labeled in Spanish and English in 384 diagrams.
- 200 pages of indexes in Spanish and English.
- My local library has this book; perhaps yours does, too.
- I photocopied certain pages, such as the ones dealing with the bedroom, and posted them in their appropriate places. Sometimes, I even study them.

"Hide This Spanish Book" was discussed on the South America chat message board a few months ago. I finally got around to my local Barnes & Noble to review it. In a nutshell, it's a Spanish slang / lingo book with words that you can't find in other Spanish phrase books. The book is less than 100 pages, but it's very informative and worthwhile to have.

Berlitz also has a website so that you can download the audio to hear how it's suppose to be said with the proper tone:

http://www.berlitzbooks.com/hidethisbook.htm