HOW to LEARN SPANISH (from a Spanish native speaker)

if you ask any Spanish native speaker right the subjective I think like 95% of them would be like who cuz we have no idea about that all righty then so how to learn Spanish what a title right so I mean I don’t claim to be an expert in Spanish or anything I mean I’m I’m kind of cheating because I’m a native Spanish speaker so I didn’t actually have to learn Spanish as you would I mean I I I guess I did have to learn Spanish I mean that that’s that’s how I learned when I was a small child right but uh what I mean is like it’s a total different experience to learn a second or third language whenever you’re an adult or at least a young teenager right but I did have to learn English and well this is me speaking in English right so I hopefully this will convince you that I know what I’m talking about especially with Spanish I I figure I would make a video because so many people get confused with uh what to do what to learn what not to learn is grammar okay uh do I have to do like immersion or not please understand you have a such a big Advantage because you I mean if you’re watching this video you either know English or you are a native English speaker uh so I mean that’s the first Advantage you have you already learned a language that is very similar to Spanish and some people would actually like say what English and Spanish are to totally different and I do agree like grammatically they’re kind of different um the pronunciation is totally different of course uh but in general I mean a lot of the words are shared across both languages whenever I say banko you kind of get it right I’m talking about the bank or if I say um Caro right you you you understand it’s car right however if I say Talco that is not talk and that’s that’s I think that’s a big problem with English it has so many cognates uh which are like the words that are similar between English and Spanish but you also have a lot of false cognates which are words that look similar but they are not what to do first you should do Anki an I think is the best thing ever it’s going to give you a lot of words to start with if you don’t know what Anki is is basically like this app that shows you a card and so let’s say it shows you a card of a word in Spanish and whenever you click on it it it will show you like the back side of the card which is in English and you you’ll see oh do I know that word do I not know that word and eventually you’ll get to recognize that word across days or weeks or months whichever I mean however long you study for I would just do it at the beginning just so you notice that a lot of the words in Spanish are so similar in English the deck I recommend is is going to be the refold 1,00 word deck I think that’s the best deck ever because it’s going to give you like the most common words in the language not the most basic ones CU sometimes you know like you get people telling you that oh well oh you you’re starting Spanish you need to learn the colors and you you need to learn the months and all I mean sure they they’re useful to know but uh they’re not as common as you would imagine right because the method we’re using right now is going to be comprehensible input which is basically immersion you have to immerse in the language you have to consume content in that language so I mean how often will a color come up you you might think it will but it’s not it’s not a very common word to see the word yellow or red is not more common than all of these words like can would will all of these words are super super useful in English and you will see them in Spanish as well uh it is much better to know the difference between starting here I would like to divide this guide in two parts the first three months of your uh immersion with Spanish and after those three months first of all the first three months right what I would do is um I would actually I wouldn’t stray from one accent if you’re interested in the Mexican accent right you would probably watch TV shows or YouTubers that that have that one accent every country has its own words and the way like the way the people talk is different right so I would probably just say and focus on one country at least one accent right I’ve heard people that are trying to learn Spanish they learned Mexican Spanish and then they travel to Argentina and they feel like they’ve been ripped off because like people talk just way too different uh in in that that country right compared to to to to Mexico so just focus on one uh I mean this is not like English where uh sure like Australian uh English is very different from British and American English sure but that’s three of them we have a lot of countries that speak Spanish in in the world and every single country sounds different I think the only two countries that that I have found that sounds very similar and it’s hard for me to pinpoint if they’re from that country or not is Mexico and Colombia I think both of them speak you you know it’s it’s it’s uh Peru also I think all three of them I think they’re kind of you know okay they sound kind of similar but if you actually pay attention you can you can notice right the the difference but I would recommend 100% to stay on one accent for the first 3 months the next thing is immersion right uh and whether to do passive immersion or active immersion and if you don’t know the difference great because you don’t you don’t need the active emersion in my opinion for the first three months just do passive immersion which is consume content right just watch TV series uh movies uh watch your favorite YouTuber uh and yeah just consume media in the language and use no grammar at all like nothing at all no grammar allowed here if you ask any native speaker any Spanish native speaker oh um sorry um right the subjective uh like you’ll be I think like 95% of them would be like who cuz we have no idea about that we can use it of course right we are native speakers and we we are master or own language right but we don’t know the grammar of it and people who who claim they know they just Google it right now so yeah that’s that’s why I say grammar is not very important especially at the beginning towards the first three months definitely not it’s not it’s not very important at all if you want to you know like Del into grammar and try to like you know check one point cuz you you’ve been encountering it constantly you have no idea what it means you actually want to know sure go ahead it’s going to hurt you but you don’t need to depend on it don’t do it because you feel you have to just do it because you want to do it right that’s that’s great that’s why we’re doing immersion in the first place because we want to do it it’s it’s fun it’s great okay so um yeah so the active immersion right so I wouldn’t do active immersion at all active immersion is basically using the content to study it right so an example of this would be like uh you’re watching a TV series you stop the the the movie or the series and uh you actually get to see one of the words and uh you’re like okay what does that word mean right let me let me check okay let me see if I can have an exam of that word and yeah okay I think I I have it memorized let’s keep going right so that’s how you would do active immersion I wouldn’t recommend it for the first 3 months CU most everything would be new or kind of newish to you so you would be stopping at every single sentence and I think that’s super tiring uh if you feel like doing that I mean no power to you I wouldn’t do that I think it’s super boring and I would never do it I’ve learned five languages with this method and I’ve never done that in the first 6 months in my experience not even three now after the first three months with immersion and Anki you’ve been going through the motions for the first 90 days what to do next right okay I believe after 6 months you should be able to watch a a TV a Spanish TV show very comfortably I would I that’s my experience with English I would imagine that is the same for Spanish but again I’m not I’m not an expert I don’t claim to be an expert in Spanish learning I’m just a native Spanish speaker who has learned English this way and I I think you this could work the same just the other way around oh also at this point you should watch TV series with different accents as well so do do not focus only solely on on the Mexicans accent for for instance if you chose that one after the first three months I think it’s okay to deviate and try to see if you can find something else that is fun for you or like interesting for you right that’s the first option now if uh option number two is that if you got pretty good at understanding pretty much anything in Spanish at this point like okay I can watch a TV show very comfortably I I have no trouble I mean yeah sure like I miss one or two words but I get the gist of it right if that happens to you then it’s probably time to Output um now this is important you need to start doing output I mean producing the language while you keep doing whatever you’ve been doing so far because it has clearly been working so do not stop doing it this is not like okay that’s enough input now let’s go for the output no you have to keep going with the input and just you know include the output in there all right so you will be doing output at the same time you’re doing your input the only thing I would probably cut is the an key I don’t think ankey is super necessary at this point to be honest with you now for output what to do for output how do we produce the language right so first of all start off by writing I think writing is the best tool ever to be able to speak and that may confuse some people but think about it writing is basically speaking without a voice you’re kind of writing and you’re producing the language but you can take your time you can actually Google a word or two that you really wanted to use that you didn’t remember the meaning of and uh I think that’s much better than to just go and try to straight up talk for the first time now why because this way you’ll be able to control what you’re trying to say you’ll realize oh wow I actually know a lot of words and I can put them on paper which means yeah you can probably also speak now if you feel like no I don’t care about writing I just want to speak I I just want to talk go for it it’s okay A lot of people are very uh cynical about this and they’re like there’s no way you’ll be able to speak if you have never tried it that’s not true at all so eventually if you get enough input if you understand the language enough you will be able to speak it of course the first few times is going to sound a little weird cuz that’s the first time you’re enunciating the words right of of course sure but after a while and I’m talking about days not even weeks you’ll be able to speak very comfortably and if you start talking to people to native speakers or people who have a very high level of proficiency in the language you will be able to you know like improve a lot and I mean a lot right if you think about it this is just how you learned English when you were a child or this is the way you learn whatever your first language is that’s how you did it this is exactly the steps you follow except an I guess and that’s that’s that’s why an is so good it kind of it allows you to skip some of the years that took you to understand these words in the same language right so zero practice before you’ll be able to speak English took me a long time to learn because I was very young when I learned English I mean very young as I was like 15 years old but I didn’t know about this right so it took me a long time and I basically learned the same way without realizing playing video games I just play a lot of video games I talked to a lot of people online whenever the internet was a novel thing right so yeah that’s how I did did it and that’s how a lot of people learn Spanish as well in like one year one year and a half uh I would probably argue that if you are a native English speaker or you have learned English as a second language you can probably learn Spanish in a matter of months I actually don’t like to say that out loud but I believe they’re so similar and they’re so easy to like they compliment each other so well I think you could be able to speak very comfortable Spanish in like 10 months or so I I would say probably a year just you know just to give you a solid number that I’m confident in saying probably say a year I’ll Venture and say that yeah a year to be able to be fluent in Spanish that doesn’t sound ridiculous at all I think it sounds very very plausible so this is my guide guys hopefully hopefully you like it if you like the content in English in my channel I mean sure I I I usually just do it in Spanish uh just to tell people about like how to learn English but I I figured hey there’s some of you that watch me from other countries and I know you guys can speak Spanish some of you but I thought hey why don’t I get some new people in here and and you I you can use my channel to learn Spanish right this could be your immersion I talk about languages I talk about every single thing and hey if you want to join my my community there’s a lot of Spanish speakers who would love to have someone uh a native English speaker or someone who who speaks really good English to talk to and uh you know just uh interact with in order to learn U English and Spanish well there you go hopefully you like it and I’ll see you in the next one see you later class dismissed …