Language apps

[HiggyBaby 2529]

I’m trying to figure out what’s the best app to get that’s best for someone who 30+ years ago was pretty good at conversational Spanish but has gotten pretty rusty and would like to get up to speed quickly. What am I looking for here? Duolingo? Babbel? Rosetta? Basically what’s best for someone not starting from scratch. Obviously a Spanish mistress fits the bill but work with me.

[RDCanecutter 26401]

I've used Duolingo, but seriously, nothing works better than reading old Mexican comic books, blasting La Jefa on the radio, watching Santo movies, and making friends with the cleaning lady from Guerrero who is dying to gossip about the people you both hate.

[iodeac 138]

Start with Duolingo since it's really user friendly. Then, if you decide to get serious, supplement it with podcasts, Netflix tv shows (there are a ton), etc

Enviado desde mi SM-G973U mediante Tapatalk

[Jerry Callo 8699]

I used Pimsleur for a while.  I liked it because you could play it like a podcast and listen while driving. 

[RDCanecutter 26401]

When Rosetta Stone came out, because I have taught languages everybody used to ask me about it. (Still haven't tried it.) We all want a better way to do something. I've tried multiple ways. The one common denominator is that anything will work, if you actually do it.

The ______ app will work, if you use it.

Talking to hobos in Nuevo Laredo will work, if you do it.

Studying grammar out of a 1920s textbook will work, if you do it. (In fact it'll probably work better than a current school textbook, which are based on the assumption that everyone is weak.)

The good thing about any method (and I would use as many as you can think of) is that the act of trying to do anything in the language "wakes up" knowledge that you thought you'd lost, and gets some blood circulating, figuratively, and what do I know?-- maybe literally.

The bad part is that noticeable language gains happen when they feel like happening. Getting frustrated if things aren't easier after X weeks is like staring at a plant in the garden trying to will it to grow. It'll grow as it gets sun and water, and your language skill is increasing as you bombard it with exposure.

I don't believe in language magic, but the closest thing I've found to it is music. As in find a style of music that you enjoy, find artists and songs that you like, copy down the lyrics, like, by hand, like an animal, and follow along as you listen. Read a translation the first few times, but you won't need that soon. Once you learn a song, you've got an entire little world of expressions at your command, and your accent will be better than if you just learned to say it.

[jkates 316]

Bump. While I appreciate RDCanecutter's reply, I am also interested in feedback on specific apps/websites. I have recently gone to work in a role where Spanish would be invaluable. I took Spanish from K-11 and then 4 semesters at UT. I was conversational at any restaurant or jobsite in my early 20s. Much of that has faded. I can still understand some things when my employees speak Spanish, but I am not up to speed and I struggle to formulate my own sentences. I want to jump into something that will help me more with speaking/hearing than reading/writing. Any app suggestions?  

[iodeac 138]

How much money are you willing to put into it? Go to Italki and find a community or professional tutor depending on how much you want to spend. Community tutors start around 10 an hour. Nothing will beat the practice of actually getting to talk to someone

[gmr548 16576]

I’ve been using Duolingo and while it has been helpful for me - with nothing more than elementary school Spanish and some random vocabulary just picked up from living in TX my whole life - I’m not sure it would be the best option for you.

The lessons are set up on a linear path, even I’ve found the early portion of their course easy and a little repetitive - while good for building over time from nothing, probably not good for someone with your background. I imagine the memory will kick in eventually. You can jump to more advanced lessons but I’m pretty sure that “costs” in app currency you earn by completing lessons in the free version. You can do the paid and skip around, but my understanding is that if you’re going to pay, there are better programs.

That said, it’s free so there’s no downside I suppose.

[morehornsepower 887]

1 hour ago, gmr548 said:

I’ve been using Duolingo and while it has been helpful for me - with nothing more than elementary school Spanish and some random vocabulary just picked up from living in TX my whole life - I’m not sure it would be the best option for you.

The lessons are set up on a linear path, even I’ve found the early portion of their course easy and a little repetitive - while good for building over time from nothing, probably not good for someone with your background. I imagine the memory will kick in eventually. You can jump to more advanced lessons but I’m pretty sure that “costs” in app currency you earn by completing lessons in the free version. You can do the paid and skip around, but my understanding is that if you’re going to pay, there are better programs.

That said, it’s free so there’s no downside I suppose.

Same here, except growing up in NM.  We paid for the family plan because the kids wanted to try learning some new languages.  I'm diving into Spanish, but my crazy teenage son is deep into Mandarin now.

[Rimbo 25915]

after 25 years of being with my wife you'd think I'd have learned Chinese by now

at least I've been motivated

[RDCanecutter 26401]

42 minutes ago, Rimbo said:

after 25 years of being with my wife you'd think I'd have learned Chinese by now

at least I've been motivated

How do you say "What's wrong Honey?" "NOTHING." in Chinese?

[Rimbo 25915]

3 minutes ago, RDCanecutter said:

How do you say "What's wrong Honey?" "NOTHING." in Chinese?

你怎么了？

没有！

[RDCanecutter 26401]

5 minutes ago, Rimbo said:

你怎么了？

没有！

Now I'm hungry.

[Doc Daneeka 6769]

I do way too much cardio. During said cardio, I listen to podcasts. A lot of podcasts. I can understand just about anything except idioms and slang, especially if I can throw in a “más despacio, por favor.” I put the idioms and slang in Anki, but I question how useful they’ll be to me in the long run. I’m sure I miss some subtleties in the subjunctive, with layered tenses in the same sentence, and whatever, but I think I can get by in the overwhelmingly majority of scenarios. I’m not yet satisfied with my level of understanding, but I’m content with my progress along the continuum.

On the other hand, I speak Spanish like a toddler with blunt head trauma. No amount of listening is going to fix that, outside of set phrases and the like. I can reasonably manage direct statements and desires (mostly in the present tense), but a lot of the rest is still an exercise in forced recall rather than anything like fluency. 

Hello Talk has basically turned into multi-lingual Tinder. italki isn’t awful but it simply isn’t efficient enough. I can cobble together sentences in Duolingo and Rosetta Stone mostly because the lessons are circumscribed around a known set of concepts or words. 

I’ve just about resigned myself to the idea that I’m not going to become conversational short of immersion in another country (which I’m down for if I can get buy-in from the SO at some point). I know this is a very common stumbling block during the process, but it’s still annoying. 

In the meantime, I’m just working on some sentences that will serve me well in a lot of situations and practice saying those. “Puede que sea mi culpa, pero no me importa” is my current favorite, along with “Sí, sí, soy muy alto. Otra vez, solo necesito pagar mi factura.”

If anyone has thoughts on how to make italki or something like that more useful in terms of time vs. effort/expense — or some other way to practice output rather than input — that would be awesome. I think my next step is probably something based on talking to ChatGPT or the like. 

[iodeac 138]

Have you tried Espanolistos? It's one of my favorite podcasts.

As far as the rest of your post, how well do you know Spanish grammar? For instance, the phrase above "puede que sea mi culpa", do you know about the subjunctive and why the verb Ser is conjugated like sea? When I first started out about 6 years ago, I started with a high school textbook and then a college textbook just to learn the grammar. Some people hate doing it this way but for me it's like building a house with no foundation.

With regard to learning tools, Hello Talk is pretty futile. Try conversation exchange for more serious partners. If you have the money, pay the 150 a month for Baselang. It gives you unlimited online classes with a private tutor and you can change instructors as much as you want.

I've never lived in a Spanish speaking country and I would consider myself an 8.5 out of 10 in fluency. I do more than just get by and it can be done without having to move.

[Doc Daneeka 6769]

4 hours ago, iodeac said:

Have you tried Espanolistos? It's one of my favorite podcasts.

As far as the rest of your post, how well do you know Spanish grammar? For instance, the phrase above "puede que sea mi culpa", do you know about the subjunctive and why the verb Ser is conjugated like sea? When I first started out about 6 years ago, I started with a high school textbook and then a college textbook just to learn the grammar. Some people hate doing it this way but for me it's like building a house with no foundation.

With regard to learning tools, Hello Talk is pretty futile. Try conversation exchange for more serious partners. If you have the money, pay the 150 a month for Baselang. It gives you unlimited online classes with a private tutor and you can change instructors as much as you want.

I've never lived in a Spanish speaking country and I would consider myself an 8.5 out of 10 in fluency. I do more than just get by and it can be done without having to move.



 

I haven’t. I’ll look into it. 

I’m not an expert in the subjunctive, but my understanding is that it’s used to express various permutations of uncertainty: doubts, wishes, desires, and like. It’s conjugated as “sea” there due to, I suppose, the uncertainty inherent in “it may be…” 

I don’t really agree with focusing a lot on the grammar a priori. Imo, in our native language we use set phrases rather than thinking about the grammar. When I say, “If I were you…” I’m not remotely thinking about why I use “were” there (though I know), I’m just saying it the way I know it needs to be said. Same with “Si fueras tu…” But, yeah, things click differently for different people. 

HelloTalk helped me for a while. I found a few people in a city I like and we could converse about the various places I visited and that they knew and it was really cool. Quite a while ago the signal to noise level got so low that I no longer bother. 

$150 a month would be cheaper than relocating. And, yeah, of course one doesn’t have to be immersed to progress, but it takes us years of 24x7 exposure to get proficient in our native languages and even a couple of hours a day of speaking will end up taking a lot of time to make strides. Along those lines, though, one of my targets for the new year is to keep track of common phrases I use to get through the day but that I don’t know or that don’t flow well for me in Spanish and Anki them. And to watch more Spanish shows and snag some useful phrases and do the same.

Thanks for the recommendations. I appreciate them.

Edit: It’s cool that Espanolistos is Latin American Spanish. Adding it to the playlist. 

Edited December 28, 2023 by Doc Daneeka

[Doc Daneeka 6769]

8 hours ago, iodeac said:

Have you tried Espanolistos? It's one of my favorite podcasts.

I listened to the first two episodes while I was doing my afternoon cardio. Nate may already be my hero. He’s out there with a lot of gringo pronunciations, especially on the vowels, along with mismatched adjectives here and there and he’s still communicating like a MF, which is the entire purpose of learning a language. Me gusta mucho. 

[iodeac 138]

I listened to the first two episodes while I was doing my afternoon cardio. Nate may already be my hero. He’s out there with a lot of gringo pronunciations, especially on the vowels, along with mismatched adjectives here and there and he’s still communicating like a MF, which is the entire purpose of learning a language. Me gusta mucho. 

Nate is a good dude. They spend about half a year or so in the States and the other half in Colombia. He used to be an accountant and quit to work on Spanishland full time.

I'm a member of their Parcero program. For the price you pay, you get a ton of content in my opinion. Their podcasts are really good and they've covered a lot of interesting topics. It's amazing how much the program has grown in the few years I've been a member