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2nd Trimester
Azrayla
member
semi NBR: So how long does it take to learn spanish?
Azrayla
member
Sorry about two NBR posts..This one is kinda related though!
I am about 75% hispanic. My father was from Puerto Rico (no longer have contact with him).. My mom wanted him to teach us spanish when we were younger but he didnt try till I was about 9? I was in fourth grade and really couldnt care less so I never bothered with it..In highschool I took french for two years which I kind of forgot a lot of aside from a few phrases..
SO wants me to learn spanish so I can teach it to our LO and I know three months is way too soon to learn it ALL but I'd like to get the ball rolling before LO gets here and learn some..I have a way to use rossetta stone so I'll be doing that just wondering if anyone else has learned it as a second language and how long it took you?
(plus it's a bonus for work!)
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Re: semi NBR: So how long does it take to learn spanish?
Hah well I dunno how it is in canada but where I live english is like the second language around here..I know basics so I dont think it would b too hard if I could try and do some at home then find a friend or a coworker to help me out when not on the program too..this is my hope at least!
Also had to keep my memory sharp SO forgets enough stuff for the both of us..I swear I'm surprised he can remember his own name sometimes..
It depends on a lot of things: How are you at picking up languages/accents? Will you have someone to practice conversations with, because learning by rote is a lot different than conversational spanish? Will you be taking a class or teaching yourself?
1. I can pick them up pretty well I think.. French was easy when I was in class..I think the only problem I have is I understand a lot more than I can say my accent may be off but wont be horrid. (I have a coworker who is totally fluent in spanish but her accent is waaay off)
2. I can find someone easy as I posted above *Everyone* and their mom pretty much speaks it here and a lot of friends I had in highschool I can dig up and at least practice or converse with on the phone if needed.
3. I will be doing it myself though with rossetta stone.. And possibly the tv and baby cartoons ;D I thought about a class and may invest in one a bit later with my mother,
Well, you may not learn Spanish in 3 months, but you can try to learn along with your baby. But if you're not consistent the baby will not continue learning the language and may lose the ability to speak/read/understand Spanish later on. I have plenty of friends whose parents tried to teach their kids Spanish, but did not stress the importance of constant Spanish in the home and they have lost a lot of the Spanish they learned when they were little because they didn't practice or learn how to read and write in Spanish early on.
Your baby will absorb other languages in its early years if you just do your best to have Spanish tv on, read to him/her in Spanish, and just do your best to speak basic Spanish to the baby. But the key is consistency. Will there be anyone else around the baby who is a native speaker who can immerse the baby in Spanish for several hours a day? I think that's really important.
I learned Spanish as my first language because my mom didn't speak English, so we only spoke Spanish in the household. (In fact it was a strict rule growing up and to this day I do not speak to my parents in English, even though they both understand it).
I simultaneously learned English by watching tv probably, having friends over, and my mom taught herself English while she taught me to read in English, etc. I am 100% fluent in Spanish and can read and write because my mom was consistent in speaking to me my whole life.
Case in point about consistency being key: when my little brother (4 years younger than me) was born, my mother already spoke fairly decent English and he was around a much more English household, especially because WE spoke to each other in English only! My mother and father only spoke to us in Spanish growing up (they NEVER speak to us in English) but my brother was allowed to answer back in English a little more and we communicated in English, he had more English speaking friends and so did my mom by then, so... he has a pretty big accent in Spanish and you can immediately tell that Spanish is not his first language, and he cannot read and write like I can. The difference is really astonishing if you hear us speak Spanish together. He has a pretty hard time actually expressing himself consistently in Spanish.
So, the key is consistency and I think that you really have to immerse the baby in Spanish, otherwise English will just take over and you also have to follow through by reading to your baby and teaching them to write in Spanish. ( I think that was a big difference between my brother and I too, he did not get the private Spanish lessons that I did from my mom by the time he came around).
Either way, good luck, I'm sure you can do it!
My DH and I plan on our child being completely fluent but it will take a lot of work and thank god my aunt will be watching the baby for a while and she doesn't speak a lick of English!
Oh I'm also throwing French in there and sign language... yeah wish me luck with that!
http://balletandbabies.blogspot.com
I speak enough spanish 'to get by', if you catch my drift. My husband is currently taking an intro class and it's online, and they give you Rosetta Stone. The system is expensive on its own, but it's really good. I find myself saying the phrases along with the program and my husband gets mad b/c it's based on voice recognition lol. I'm picking it up just from being around it, and he walks around saying things in Spanish, and he doesn't pick those things up as easily as other things.
I know I learned some Indonesian with an audio cassette from my local library, maybe they have something similar to rosetta stone. For sure they'll at least have audio cassettes, but they're set up the same way a foreign language is learned in school, not the way you'd learn your native language.
If you start speaking and reading Spanish to LO right when she gets here, do not be surprised when she started speaking Spanish first. It's common for bilingual children to start out with one of the languages, rather than both at the same time.
My mom's friend is German. Her son is two, and he is the cutest thing ever. He will point and say things, but it's all German, so I don't know what it is. She will say "Yes, yes! That's a duck. Ente!" So she says both the English and the German.
I'm hoping to do the same. I'm not Hispanic at all, but Spanish speakers are all over where I live and I've always wanted to learn. I got Rosetta Stone a few month ago. I love it, but I'm not always super consistent with it. I will watch some Spanish TV every once in a while and listen for what I can pick up. I also bought a parallel Eng./Spa. Bible and I have a website saved that has free audio downloads of the New Testament in Spanish. It's not exactly the same translation as my Bible, but it's close and I use it to follow along.
I also recently found a few kids videos from Netflix online that I'll watch to help me as well. I recently read an article saying the more a baby hears 2 or more languages in the womb, the more likely they are to pick it up (when consistently hearing it of course) after they're born.