Learning Spanish

The people who clean our building are from Latin America, and many do not speak English. The same goes for my lawncare company's employees, and the company that built my deck. When I go to shop at Home Depot, all the isle signs are now in both English and Spanish. The United States is fast becoming a bilingual nation. Learning Spanish is now more important than even.

In a world that is becoming ever smaller thanks to advancements in technology and free-trade, learning Spanish can be a great benefit to many people. In addition to Spanish being one of the top three languages spoken in the world, the Hispanic culture is becoming more important and influential, not only in the United States, but also around the globe.

Speaking Spanish is also becoming more important in business and career matters. People who are bilingual in English and Spanish are in increasing demand in the market place. Knowledge of Spanish will enable you to more effectively communicate with co-workers, clients, customers and employees who speak Spanish as their native tongue. Recent marketing studies conclude that in North America, the Hispanic population of customers is the most rapidly growing segment of the market, which has many companies scrambling to attract and accommodate the Spanish speaking crowd.

This means learning Spanish can be quite a career boosting endeavor. It can mean advancement in your chosen career, or it can open doors to other careers that otherwise might not have been available to you. More frequently, listing that you are bilingual on your resume can help you to get noticed and increase the likelihood of getting an interview. In the US, speaking Spanish will be especially helpful to you if you work in the areas of healthcare, education or building and construction.

There are well over thirty-five million Spanish speaking citizens in the US, and estimates say that over 40 percent of the increase in the US population is within the Hispanic community. This means that, as time passes, the need to learn Spanish will continue to increase. With the increase in globalization and free-trade between the US and Mexico and other countries in Central and South America, there is no doubt that the people who take the time and make the effort to become bilingual, especially in Spanish, will have a clear advantage over those who are only English speaking.

It is not only in the United States where Spanish is popular and growing is usage. In Europe, Spanish is the second most studied language as a second tongue, with English being the number one most studied second language. Around the world, Spanish is the native tongue of more than 400 million people and is the third most common native language spoken, ranking behind Mandarin and Hindi. By simply acknowledging the current widespread use of Spanish, combined with the growth rate of the Hispanic culture worldwide, it is easy to see why the Spanish language is a wise choice for a second language.

It is also a certainty that Spanish will help to expand your universe of experiences and people. With the continued growth of the Hispanic population, it will become increasingly likely that you will have more interactions with people from the Hispanic community. For example, you or a relative might marry into a Hispanic family, you might have Spanish speaking families in your neighborhood, have Hispanic employers or employees, or simply have more interactions with Spanish speaking people in the routine course of your day. I know I do. For example, my son's father-in-law is from Panama, the cleaning folks for my building are from various countries in Latin America, as well as those who provide lawn care for my yard. The fellow who build my back deck was from Bolivia. The signs in most hardware stores in my area are now in both English and Spanish.

If you are interested in having a fuller understanding of the unique and rich heritage of the Hispanic people, learning Spanish is an excellent way to do that. World culture has been greatly enriched by the contributions of artists, writers, architects, musicians and others over the centuries who herald from Hispanic roots. Add to that the wonders of the rich and flavorful food that come to us from Spanish speaking communities, and there is even more reason to embrace the Spanish language and culture.

Learning Spanish can be accomplished by a number of methods. Generally each method has its own pros and cons. In the next several posts, I'll review the pros and cons of several methods for learning Spanish. Full or total immersion is considered by many to be the fastest and most complete method for learning any foreign language. Full immersion involves actually living in a country where the language is natively spoken. For Spanish it would involve living for some period of time in one of the many Spanish speaking countries of Spain, Latin America or South America.

Informally, full immersion can be as simple as actually moving to that country and living among the populous and picking up the language by observation, watching local television, reading local papers, etc until you finally learn the language. This is a very hard and difficult way to learn a language but is often the method used by refuges or immigrants. The informal full immersion method works best if there are no other speakers of your own native language around, thus forcing the learning of the new language. An Romanian acquaintance of mine used this method of learning English after moving to the United States. However, Spanish speaking immigrants to the United States find many other Spanish speakers to whom they can communicate and thus do not find learning English as much a necessity as my Romanian friend and many fail to learn much English at all.

While expensive in both time and money, formal full immersion programs offer excellent language learning opportunities. They generally require living in a foreign country while attending half day language classes followed by a half day of local field trips. To further immerse you in the language and culture, many courses offer lodging with local families while you are attending the course. Unfortunately, most people are not able to afford the time or money to participate in this excellent method of language learning.

[Note] In an attempt to take advantage of the success of full or total immersion programs, one foreign language learning company has used the term "Instant Immersion" to name their foreign language learning CD program. It is NOT the same thing. Their program not only is NOT total immersion, it is also not very good, and in my opinion a waste of money. I purchased the CD's of both their basic and deluxe programs and cannot recommend them. There are much better options available on the market including the Rosetta Stone Spanish programs (both Spain and Latin American Spanish) and the Pimsleur Spanish language programs (while more expensive, they are much more effective).

In the next post I'll discuss the pros and cons of audio only language learning programs.

The first step to learning a new language is being familiar with its greetings and most basic phrases. Listed below are everyday expressions in Spanish words, with pronunciation guides, to help you enunciate them properly. When written, the Spanish language uses both the inverted question mark (¿) and inverted exclamation mark (¡) at the beginning of every interrogative and exclamatory sentence, respectively.

¡Hola!

[oh-lah]

'Hi, Hello'

¡Hola! is the most basic Spanish expression in greeting other people. It means 'hi' or 'hello'. It can be used both for people you know, and for those you don't know to get them to notice you. This is also the phrase used when answering calls from the phone, followed by a good morning or good evening in Spanish.

Note: Spanish people do not pronounce the letter /h/, making it a silent letter, except when used in the /ch/ sound. Thus, the above expression should not be pronounced as [hoh-lah] but rather as [oh-lah].

These are the daily or timely greetings in Spanish. Similar to English, they are composed of two words, namely bien which means 'good' (modified to agree in number and gender with the noun it modifies which we will discuss later) and the Spanish words for morning, afternoon, and night.

Literally, these phrases mean 'How do you call yourself?' The former being used during informal or casual conversations, like when asking a lost kid what his name is, when meeting new acquaintances in school or organizations, or when getting to know a person younger or the same age as you are. The latter is used during formal instances, like when talking to an elder or anybody with high societal and political positions like professors, mayor, or your friend's mother. The literal translation of "What is your name in Spanish?" is...

¿Qué es tú nombre?

[ke es tu nom-bre]

"What is your name?"

Both expressions above are used for asking how another person is today, what he has been doing lately, how he is feeling, and the likes.

Note: When talking formally, use esta instead of estas in the latter expression. The topic on formality in the Spanish Language, especially on pronouns, will be discussed

Questions on knowing ‘how you are doing' can be answered depending on how you are actually feeling during the moment you are asked. Hence, from the options above, you can reply with a good, a very good, a bad, or a very bad.