pluser

I like learning it in a classroom and with flashcards, but speaking it is what helps me the most. My favorite scenario was when I spent a lot of time around Spanish speaking children, ages 2-5. It was very nice talking to (little) people that were at the same level of Spanish proficiency and weren't judgemental. Okay, there was this one little girl that would give me grief. I didn't care much for Diane.

Figuring out what order words should be in a sentence is what frustrates me the most. Even after taking years of Spanish in high school and college, I still struggle with this.

I don't have much of an accent. Many people in my country don't. In those cases, the easiest way to tell where people are from is by the words they use. It's kind of like a dialect, but it's still all in English. Even so, I use a mixture because I've moved around a lot throughout my life.

This is a tough choice because where I live is truly a melting pot. There are all kinds of races with all kinds of languages. I am already fairly proficient in Spanish, which is very useful in my city. It was so easy to learn Spanish because there many Spanish speakers in my city, many classes, and the textbooks are highly developed. I think the next language will be Arabic. There are a lot of people that speak it here, and it is taught at the local schools. Or maybe Mandarin. There is not as much opportunity to use it in my city, but I do some business with vendors in China, so it should still be very useful to me. Unfortunately not as many schools in my city teach it, maybe none of them do.

I haven't watched too many, but the few I've watched have been quite good. Off the top of my head... Y Tu Mama Tambien Absurdistan Pans Labyrinth The last one is really good. I highly recommend watching it.

It's hardly perfect, but it's usually good enough to communicate casually, and it's more than good enough for me to translate articles. It's a very effective tool that still has a long way to go, and that seems to be in Google's plans. That's great news to me since there are some really good hobby sites in foreign languages, but constant translation is too much of a hassle for me to spend much time there, so I really hope for a seamless translation system that allows me to easily participate in those foreign forums.

Same here. I used it frequently about 12-15 years ago. Now it's old, overused and annoying. I'm not totally against using it nowadays, but I use it very rarely.

I started learning Tagalog as a small child. I was probably 5 years old. Maybe younger. Apparently I was able to speak it when I started going to school. Unfortunately my teachers and parents thought it was limiting my English skills, so my parents forbid the use of Tagalog and eventually I forgot it. Occasionally I'll overhear and understand a conversation in Tagalog without thinking about it, but that comprehension goes away as soon as I consciously realize it's in Tagalog.

No offense OP, but I don't care about any of the reasons you listed. What matters to me is that there are a lot of Spanish speakers where I live. I hear Spanish in the grocery store, on hiking trails, on the radio, and in many social situations. Knowing Spanish can make those experiences richer. Also, many of the Spanish speakers in my area don't speak English, or they pretend to understand a lot less than they do, so knowing Spanish helps cross that barrier.

I used to carry around a tiny pocket spanish-english dictionary. When I'd hear or see a new word, I could challenge myself by learning it immediately.

Do you watch the same movies over and over? I think that would be a good idea. It'd allow you to get familiar with the context, and eventually learn the meaning of the words used. It'd be like being a baby again. Repetitive language is frequently used in certain scenarios with babies, and there are often cues as well. It isn't long before babies learn the meaning of food, nap, good, bad, mom, dad and other words. Those words wouldn't mean anything to a baby if it wasn't for the repetition and context.

I learn alone by myself. While I have had study groups for most school subjects, I can't seem to find people that want to study together for spanish. It's really disappointing because I know it would help. I still get A's in spanish, and memorizing the words and rules aren't a problem, but I'm still horrible at utilizing it.