Agree... and disagree
 

I totally agree.

And I totally disagree, and I explain why:

Spanish is spoken in a VAST area, so vocabulary varies enormously (not slang, but regular vocabulary). However, we all understand each other, we only need to understad the word in the context or just ask. Yes, it's the same for me as a native. When I'm told a REMERA (translates to rower woman) in Argentina, which is a Camiseta (T-shirt) for me in Spain. Like you, I don't know the word. Well, you'll only have to ask "¿qué es una remera?", since you may understand the rest of the sentence and you already have the sufficient knowledge and confidence to ask. Say I go to Scotland and don't understand anything people say. Well, I still can read or ask!

So, what you studied before the trip provided you with the "structure of the language", and that's what allowed you to put in the right place every bit you learnt during the trip. I'm 100% sure that you learnt much more and way faster than someone who knew nothing: you already knew that all infinitives (verbs) in Spanish end with "ar", "er" and "ir", so you could identify them easily, you knew anything ending in "mente" is an adverb (if adjectives define nouns, adverbs define actions=verbs), you knew most words ending in "o" are masculin, while those ending in "a" were femenin, etc. You built the house on well laid foundations. Now look at all those who learnt almost NOTHING in 6 months/1 year and now remember absolutely nothing. Needless to say that you were able speak 100 times more correctly than them while in South America ("me want pork stick").

Of course, getting there will boost your knowledge and cannot be compared to classes once a week. But studying before the trip played a key role and was not a waste of time at all, I'm sure.

But even most important: consider a language as a long term investment, you want it to last, and "what you learn quickly, you forget it quickly" and the language you learn "naturally" (hearing and speaking), you forget it also "naturally" when you don't use it that much. I know this 1st hand.

That applies to ANY language, but much more to difficult ones. And READ once you are back. Get an easy and interesting book and read. You only understand 30%, no problem, go ahead, check only the meaning of essential words, but keep on and you'll improve.

But to keep alive a "naturally learnt" language really requires a titanic effort once you'r back. Then you really have to go to classes and study a lot (although you never know your level: you talk a lot better than others in your class, but make many mistakes in grammar, talk as a football player). Of course, you can be naturally talented, have an excellent memory and be a genious, but just like people who smoke two packets of cigarrettes a day and live up to 100 years.

PS: It may sound weird, but people who speak the language save a lot of money compared to those who doesn't, since they cannot be scammed so easily, can find out more info and get better deals, etc. I've seen it many times and experienced it myself in Latin America, where people took me too often for a "gringo". PS2: All this had to be very boring to read...

alternatives to rosetta et el ......
 

ive always liked learning languages - though in the past this has been a long hard slog...
ive tried rosetta , and found the experience very dull ...

ive learnt that software programs etc are no real help - and no substitute for self enquiry ..

there are some good teach yourself books - which can take you from beginner to intermediate ,, good example : for russian " teach yourself russian in 6 months -dr brown/" for arabic " teach your self arabic -a. gowan ".... but they in themselves can be a bit boring ..

these days ,, i find google translate to be an indespensible means of langauge learning and MUCH MORE fun...

pick a language you are interested in , take chinese for example ... select it as the target language , and in the source start typing in some really simple non idiomatic sentances - and see the chinese translation ,,, keep doing this every day for 15 mins or so ... varying each sentence eg : " yesterday , i wanted to listen to the latest news " to .." tomorrow , i will listen to the latest news " etc etc - after a few months youve not only gained some volcabulary - but a good sense /recognition of grammer ,,, ( if not a concrete knowledge) - learning in this way is much better than reading some boring text book / or worse still using a rosseta type program...


additionally ,,, try reading newspapers from the country youre interested in -
eg ... if learning french ,, go to lefigaro.com and let google translate automatically ,,, hover your curser over each word /sentance and reveal the origional text - bit by bit ,,, you will teach your self to read ....


from reading ,,, everything else follows ...

ive learnt to read russian and polish in this way , reaching a point that i could dump the dictionary and listen to russian radio news on the net - of course at first i couldnt understand a word .... but hour by hour /// week by week - each word that i could hear , i could also "see" as well - the experience became as if i was reading a news article and not listening -which ,,, of course is the stage you want to get to...


from reading and listening , speaking becomes easy -

i think this is the best approach to language learning ...

buck for buck - learning to read is the quickest way to learn a language and gives the best return on any study ...

Report 4: 80%
 

Has it been that long since my last report here? (125 freakin' days!?) If you're wondering why, it's because I wanted to complete the first of 3 units before I got back here. It was a kind of motivation that failed. The excuse is that I spent a lot of time on and inside (not like that you sicko) my bikes, so fair enough.

The real deal here is that I've completed the first of the 3 units. Each unit has 30 lessons at about 30 mins a piece. If my math is correct that's 15 hours per unit. So how that f@*k did it take so long to get through it? I believed I mentioned before that I often repeated lessons in order to really understand each word I learned. I may have been a little to strict on myself though. Once you get to the end of the 30th lesson in the first unit the recording pretty much says:

"If you only got 80% of the shit we filled your head with then you're the right track."

So I guess I'm good. I can comfortably say that I fully understand 95% of what was said, but that means shit all as far as I can tell. I sometimes hear people speaking in Spanish when I'm on the street or leaving my building. It's really cool because if I listen carefully I can pick out 5% of the conversation. FIVE PERCENT!? That's balls, but I figured it would be this way. With no one to chat in Spanish with, these lessons are like what learning how to play a guitar is to actually playing a full song... in a band... on a stage... in front of everyone... and there's pretty girls in the front row.

On the flip side, winter is approaching and I'll have much more time. I'm actually really excited still about learning the language and I haven't gotten all that bored of the audio lessons. The only problem is: YouTube or Pimsleur?

Any Toronto kids want to meet up and form our own Spanish/coffee meetup? That's like a dream come true!

AVID, i can chat in spanish if you want, or you can create a "spanish chating thread"

bier

Well put. Now back to lessons...