Study New Languages

I don’t know how many books I’ve now read in Spanish.  I’ve just lost count.  I do think the beginning of my real expansion of my vocabulary came from forcing myself to read through several books.  The first pass, I let myself look up a couple words per page.  I tried to force myself to learn by the context and repetition.  (I was reading something I had read MANY times before in English.)  The truth is that if I had stopped to look up each and every word, I might still be on my first 10 pages. I was at a point where I knew some very basic vocabulary and could recognize/distinguish the verbs. (Although I might not have been able to identify person/tense beyond the present tense.) As I forced myself through I learned a fair amount from context. Some words that I just couldn’t figure out that kept popping up got looked up and so a bit at a time I learned a vast amount of vocabulary. Could I pull it out of my head in a conversation. Certainly not all of it, but I feel like my knowledge of it is getting deeper with each book or short story I read.

Let me start with a great online reference:

Wikipedia Español – I remember spending a fair amount of time looking things up in the Encyclopedia growing up… wikipedia makes encyclopedia browsing much easier (and they have portals in a great many languages including Spanish.)

Even more reading material can be found at Project Gutenberg with this direct link to their listing of Spanish language downloadable e-books/e-texts.

One of the early books I got was this: Laugh and Learn Spanish with For Better or for Worse. . The idea with this book is that it gives comic strips from a popular US Comic strip, written in Spanish. It takes the opportunity with each strip to learn bits about the language as well. They have a “what you can learn” prelude to each strip, a fill in the blank section in Spanish describing each strip, key words and phrases and working with words and patterns for all the strips.

Really, this idea of learning through comic strips is great. I wish there were more books like this that could help walk you through all the grammer that you can pick up this way. It is possible to get familiar comics like Calvin and Hobbes in Spanish online though. (There are other cartoons available in Spanish on the gocomics site by clicking the quick link drop down box that says “Comics” and scrolling almost to the bottom. )

Next up is First Spanish Reader: A Beginner’s Dual-Language book. Now, you need to have a pretty good start with the basics before getting to these texts I think, but dual language readers like this are great! They put Spanish on the left hand page, English on the right hand page and have many short stories. The end of the book has Notes exercises and vocabulary. There are some entertaining stories here too. I LOVE the fact that they are short stories so that you can spend some time on a complete tale, bookmark and come back later.

Along these lines I also HIGHLY recommend the following:

I thoroughly enjoyed all the dual language readers that I got. Some had stories that resonated a bit more with me, some had stories that were a bit slower, but all were fun to work through. Your approach to reading them may be a bit different than mine. I seem to recall taking a couple passes through, one in English, the next in Spanish referring to the translation and vocabulary and a final time in Spanish only (with no peeking at the English translation.) You should understand these are not word for word translations, but in translating from one language to another IDEAS are translated. I highly recommend this type of reader to increase your vocabulary. (In fact, now I’m thinking it might be time for me to go back through these again to pick up things I may have missed the first few times through.)

Once I felt like my vocabulary was solid enough I got a one year subscription to Selecciones (Spanish Language version of Readers Digest.) To tell the truth I still haven’t finished reading all twelve issues (I’m up to about the 7th one.) It took me longer to weed through each one than a month I think and I did get a bit tired of the subject material. Recipes and beauty tips were scattered in which…. well… didn’t really get me. They do have good short stories and jokes as well. (Celebrity interviews too, which again didn’t really grab me.) But, there is a diverse range of reading to be had there..

In English I have read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings Trilogy more times than I can count going back to my teens…. (more years ago than I wish to count…) So, I had an idea that since I was so familiar with those novels I would read them in Spanish. I have now, twice.

The first read through was a HARD slog, but the second read through was much easier. I’ve learned lots of vocabulary in the process. (Hey, If I see an orc while in a Spanish speaking country – I’m SET!) Now that I think about it, I’m ready to read these again and see what I missed the first two passes.

I’ve also got a copy of The Silmarillion in Spanish although I haven’t completed reading it yet. (I know I’m a glutton for punishment aren’t I?) I’ve only made it through once in English, but… it’s worth having challenging material.

I’ve also read Treasure Island in Spanish:

(In fact that’s the most recent book I’ve finished in Spanish.)

Currently I’ve just finished reading my first book that was originally written in Spanish: Zorro by Isabel Allende:

Oh, I also have a copy of the Bible in Spanish (1995 translation) that I like reading passages in from time to time.

I’m not sure yet what my next book to read may be. I’m wanting to go back and revisit some that I’ve already read because it seems that each new book that I read my vocabulary really deepens. I’m curious to go back to those first dual language readers and see how well I do. At this point I’m reinforcing my memory and understanding of the words (so maybe I could think of the words in a conversation or in writing.) Thus far speaking and writing seem to be somewhat slow and painful still. In part because conjuring up the right words takes a bit more thought than I’d like. Although I should say that reading was slow and painful. I remember taking a good amount of time on each page when I first started. (Reading 3 pages in an evening might be a fair pace.) Recently I’ve picked up the Selecciónes that I didn’t finish reading the first time around and was somewhat surprised to breeze through a five page article in about 15 minutes with only about 2 or 3 words that I needed to look up. (That’s a far cry from 3 years ago when the first issue arrived in the mail. Then I had maybe 6-8 words per page that I let myself look up (more that I just tried to understand from the context or just plow through.) Even at that low rate of looking up words it still took probably 15 minutes per page.)