How I Became Fluent in Spanish Studying On My Own

viewers often ask me how long it took me to become fluent in Spanish I’d say that my answer really depends on how you define fluency you know I’ve seen these YouTubers claim that they became fluent in a language in like 30 days or so and then they show themselves going to a local market and amazing the vendors by asking how much the mangoes are in their native tongue um that’s not fluency to me I Define fluency as the ability to carry on extended conversations with native speakers in real time you know your accent is understandable you’re able to create complex grammatically correct sentences you know and spit these things out in real time you’re not delaying going yo quiero none of that and you’re able to understand at least the majority of what the other person is saying and if you don’t understand you’re able to clarify what that thing is and continue the conversation that’s fluency to me and I would also like to add that at least in my case fluency was the point when my translations could stand up in a court of law because you see I needed Spanish for work I was a deputy sheriff and that was the most important thing for me using that standard I would say that I became fluent in Spanish in less than two years probably about a year and a half or so if you’re just starting to learn Spanish and you’re really eager to become fluent that may sound like a long time if you’ve been studying Spanish for a while and you’re struggling to reach that level of fluency that might sound like a very short time if you’re in that second group you might want to stick around for the rest of the video because I’m going to share some tips and techniques that allowed me to become fluent faster one word of warning though this is going to be a long detailed video sorry about that I don’t like videos like that it just needs to be so you truly understand you know what these techniques are why I developed them how they work and you can see what kind of works in with your Spanish it surprises a lot of people to learn that I almost failed High School Spanish no matter how I tried I sucked at it and I barely squeaked by with a d and that’s only because I had a lot of extra credit I think I got points for my name or something anyway um fast forward a few years and I became a deputy sheriff in a rural County in Florida at the time the county was the leading producer of citrus fruit in the state and they might still be I don’t really know I don’t keep up with that now the agricultural industry in that county and the surrounding counties attracted tens of thousands of Migrant Farm Workers most of whom were from Mexico usually when I say oh I learned Spanish in Florida everybody’s like oh Cuban Spanish no Puerto Rican Spanish no Mexican Spanish interesting in my area it was probably like 95 percent Mexican and the majority did not speak any English so I set out to learn the language this was in the early 90s so that meant going to a bookstore or a library I chose the former I bought a basic Spanish book and I would study at my patrol car I really found it super super frustrating because it was laid out exactly like those classes were in high school Spanish and those didn’t make much sense to me nevertheless I kept at it I learned some Basics including um you know the conjugations for the present tense and the preterite that’s the simple past that’s important law enforcement because we talk about things that have already occurred a lot in practicing my Spanish with native speakers I quickly discovered two things number one it’s a bad idea to buy a Spanish book with a picture of Spain on the back cover if your goal is to speak to Mexicans that’s where I learned there are significant differences in vocabulary and everything and I still give that advice pick a country you like their Spanish and focus on their Spanish it’ll just make life easier the second thing I discovered is something that turned out to be a huge deal and something that later I mean propelled my Spanish and that is I discovered that the present tense that I was seeing in my book was not the only present tense I’ll explain when I started conversing with people in Spanish I noticed that they were often but not always using different endings for verbs in the present tense you know I would think it would be quiere ending you know with an e and they would say quiere with an a and sometimes I would expect them to say ba just like ba and instead they would say Baya I would hear other words like AGA benga and things I wasn’t seeing in my Spanish book this was happening every day so I flipped all the way through my Spanish book back and forth looking for these things and there was nothing there so I went back to the bookstore and I started looking through other Spanish books on the Shelf flipping through them and I still didn’t find anything like what I was hearing so I was figuring okay maybe this is just a Mexican thing you know and uh then I picked up a book on Advanced Spanish grammar that was there and started to flip through it and boom there were the words everything was in there there was an entirely different set of conjugations and this thing was called the subjunctive mood yes it said mood and not tense that’s when I discovered that the present tense that I had learned up till that point was actually another mood called the indicative I thought you know what I’m never going to be able to learn this language but I have to keep trying even if I could learn some it’s it’s going to help me right so I kept at it so now I’m aware of this whole indicative subjunctive thing and as I continue to talk to people it becomes pretty clear from listening to them that you have to know both of these if you ever want to learn to speak Spanish correctly they are absolutely intertwined just like this all through the language and then I was asking myself why didn’t they tell me this in school and then I thought maybe they did teach me this in school I mean I got a D I wasn’t learning anything anyway so maybe they did but I still don’t think they did so that brings me to my first tip to help you become fluent in Spanish and that is to stop avoiding the subjunctive you will never speak Spanish well without it ever you just can’t do it so embrace it learn how to conjugate into the subjunctive and then learn when to use it that last part’s the tricky part knowing when to use subjunctive instead of the indicative but don’t worry I have a tip in this video that’s going to help you with that too remember that Advanced Spanish grammar book I mentioned well I ended up buying it and I’m glad I did because as I looked through it and I was very resistant to grammar you know when I was in school I hated the terms and things but as I started to read through the book I realized that grammar is a blueprint for the language I could look in the book read a rule and then make sentences using deductive reasoning these were sentences I may never have heard or even seen before but they were grammatically correct Spanish sentences finally embracing the grammatical rules was really one of the big keys to helping me reach fluency and on that note you know I’ve never understood these people on YouTube who say you shouldn’t learn the Spanish grammar it’s a huge waste of time those people you know just listen to people converse with them in their native language and acquire it that way like we do as babies look that’s got to be the the dumbest advice I’ve ever heard in my life that approach where you’re just going to you know so immerse yourself in a language and learn it that way I mean it’ll work but it’s going to take thousands and thousands of hours of exposure well at least to speak it Beyond just basic greetings and I’m from the United States you know really speak it that’s a lot of time so how is that easier than spending 15 minutes to learn a grammatical construction and then dropping in different words to create phrases and sentences I mean you already know a language you already speak English why aren’t you capitalizing on that to you know create sentences in Spanish it just doesn’t make any sense at all why people would try to choose that other route but whatever by this point in my Spanish learning experience I’m communicating better with people I mean it’s only been a couple of months of studying but I am nowhere near fluent I couldn’t translate fast enough in my head to be able to have detailed conversations with people I was still struggling to understand what they were saying to me also at that point I was listening for keywords and trying to get the meaning out of context but I was not where I needed to to be that’s when I started to work in some techniques to increase my vocabulary in Spanish and without having to memorize as many words individually you know to take advantage of similarities in the two languages and I started to focus on how to speak more quickly and translate in my head faster so I’m going to share some of these techniques with you and maybe they’ll help you too all right let’s talk about vocabulary first it can be very frustrating just learning long word lists I’m not saying you don’t have to do that you need to learn words but you don’t have to learn every word I started focusing on cognates cognates are words that are in two different languages but they share common linguistic Roots they often look very similar you can convert a lot of your English into Spanish using a lot of these cognate tricks by far the most useful cognate trick is the tion cion cognatrick and I use the word trick because it’s almost magical you’ll see the majority of words that end in tion in English can be converted into Spanish by changing the last T to C and putting an accent over the o confrontation becomes confrontation the key is then to pronounce the vowels correctly citation citation justification justification you can see where this could be useful but that’s not the best part you know that’s just creating a lot of nouns for you you can make verbs out of these things just by dropping that ending and adding an R they become ar verbs just using the tin trick I’m getting over a 300 word vocabulary when you count nouns and verbs and I haven’t had to memorize any words so that’s a big one for you I have videos on this channel to show you how to do that and you know some of the ones that it doesn’t work for and how some spelling changes work and little details you can watch that one later that helped boost my vocabulary but it didn’t help me speak faster so let’s talk about techniques to do that one of the big techniques I use is I started relying on three sentence starters actually three verbs um they were already conjugated and then all you had to do do is drop in other unconjugated verbs like confrontar to confront that’s not conjugated I could just drop it in and make set phrases or sentences quickly in my head without conjugating I already knew the first verb was conjugate I didn’t have to think about it it made it really fast so what three verbs are these well I’ll go through them the first one is poder to be able to now that’s not conjugated that’s just to be able to this is super super useful this is where I can say what people can do and can’t do this is when I can give people options you can do this you can do that this is when I can ask for permission can I search your car can I speak to you super useful way to start anything now the key to using this correctly is to already have Bodega conjugate it in your head so you’re just popping in verbs you say it all the time there’s a lot of different conjugations third person singular third person plural but you know what I discovered pretty quickly there’s two people in every conversation I was in me meaning I and you the other person there are two U’s in Spanish there’s the informal do and the formal usted I found right away that the two form was much much easier to use I’ve got about five reasons for that and I will talk about them in another video I don’t want to tie this one up but I just started using those all the time when it was ican puedo when you can fueles so I already had that in my head puedo drop in a verb I could ask somebody can I talk with you or I could give people options you can go to the hospital or you can stay here I could ask people can I park the car here you can just see I can talk about well just about everything but I’m not having to think of puedo I can or puedes you can they’re already in there it’s like a set formula and I’m dropping in verbs I just talked about what people can do now I want to talk about what people want to do so our next verb is to want but it’s not conjugated right we’re talking about our first second person first person quiero I want you want is quieres so I’ve got these two words in my head and I’m just dropping in verbs I want to talk to you Amigo do you want to talk to me do you want to go to the beach and I can use this to tell people what I want them to do I want you to go away I want you to leave by the way you have to know the subjunctive to use that last construction I just mentioned so I talk about what people can do what they want to do now I want to say what they have to do now some people like to use necesitate like they need to I don’t like that one I like tenerke and then you drop in your verb so just think of this as a phrase don’t try to conjugate the K you’ll get confused this is great it means to have to another reason I like to use this expression is because in Spanish tener the verb to have is a mega verb and it is used in a lot more Expressions than we would use it in English so if I get in the habit of being able to conjugate you know tener quickly into at least the first and second person dangle I have DNS you have I can say a ton of different things but with this expression when I’m saying you have to again I’m going to be plugging into after dangote in infinitive means the unconjugated verb I have to do something infinitive you have to do something you have to wash the car you have to pick up the medication at the pharmacy do I have to do it see using those three sentence starters really sped things up for me but it still wasn’t enough the thing that really allowed me to keep up with conversations in real time was this I stopped viewing the language as separate words and started viewing it as like a series of sentence fragments or phrases not only could I create sentences in real time I could create more complex sentences than I could ever create before I’m going to show you what I mean but I’m gonna have to kind of lead you through it okay here are examples of sentence fragments that I may use to say start a sentence saves que you know what I’d be like it came out quickly because I learned it as a phrase I didn’t go sabes okay and it was a good way to pause for a moment so I could think what the next thing was coming another one karaoke I believe that but it’s really close to the equivalent in English I think that really good one is I have a lesson on that one and it’s a great way to start it’s like how about and then whatever you want to do how about we go to the beach again I put a little pause in there just for your benefit these aren’t just limited sentence starters there’s tons of ones you can pop in all through the sentence you can learn tons of these phrases and then kind of pop them in wherever you want but these are not the most useful um I would say that the most useful little fragments or phrases are the ones that are going to tell you when you trigger the subjunctive mood do you remember when I said that the hardest part of using the subjunctive would be knowing when to use it well I found that the easiest way to learn it is to learn these fragments and say that this fragment is going to trigger the subjunctive every single time and when I write these out they tend to look more like a math formula or something to some folks plus the subjunctive is like ah it’s better that we do something for example it’s better that we sell the house now it’s not bendemos because that would be the indicative it’s bendama anytime I’m going to use this phrase I always know it’s going to trigger the subjunctive right now because it’s Esme Jorge that part is going to come out faster so in my sentence that gives me a moment to think how to conjugate that in a subjunctive if I said something like um it’s better we go to the beach that first part comes out quick those three words gave me that time to think of bayamos now as you get faster there may not be much of a gap but to the person listening that didn’t sound like you were struggling or you weren’t fluent in Spanish that’s why these fragments work another useful one that triggers a subjunctive is parakeet plus subjunctive it’s like it’s like the English so but not in like so you’re going to the mall it’s more like I gave him a number so he would call me I know that every time I use pareke I’m going to use subjunctive so I’m always going to use it correctly I don’t have to think part about it looking at these phrases like this it might be difficult to see how this would speed up your Spanish so let me show you um first of all resist the temptation to try to translate an entire sentence in your head in Spanish before spitting it out I used to do that and that will really really slow you down it just takes way too long and you’re never going to reach fluency if that’s what you’re doing instead throw out your first phrase get it moving it’s kind of like the locomotive on a train okay we’re gonna start popping in more phrases as we’re speaking since our phrases consist of more than one word it gives you more time to think with the next car and the train would be all right let’s put some actual sentences together and see how this works all right let’s say um I go out to a crowded club with my wife and it’s well not that I’m a big Club guy or anything it’s just an example actually I haven’t been to a club in a long time so we go into the club it’s crowded and my wife looks at me and asks say how about we sit over there ketal C is one of our set Expressions so I go ahead and send that out I send that train out I’m not thinking I’m gonna put the whole sentence together and try to spit it out okay that’ll see how about and it gave me a second or in this case her just a second to translate that next section we sit there no synthamos so that’s just a little train right it’s like only two cars in that train so let’s try to make a longer one all right let’s say I don’t want to sit there and um you know I think it’s better if we sit by the entrance so I say you know what because that’s giving me a second to think karaoke is I think it’s better we sit near the entrance so what I’m doing here is I’m sending out my phrases like my train cars right my saves que was to slow this thing down I’m kind of it’s a locomotive even though it’s a separate sentence it’s starting this thing I think again that’s a set phrase in my head already conjugated three words come out fast but it’s giving me a second to think how to translate that next part now remember after es mejorque plus subjunctive I know this is going to be in the subjunctive when she says how about we sit there she said no centamos that’s indicative I would say no sentemos but that extra little fraction of a second made it easier next train car cerca day you tend to learn spatial relationships like near far on top of underneath in front of all together those are all little set phrases those are all little train cars in your box you can pop in anytime and then we just put La Entrada on it right pretty easy right now there are people who say you know you can’t really reach fluency unless you’re actually thinking in Spanish you’re never translating um that’s not true you know with this method you don’t have to think in Spanish you can think in English and do your translations but these phrases are giving you the time to make a sentence let’s go back and look what we had service k pretty good train but let’s put some more cars on it all right let’s add um so Juan will see us when he arrives what do we got there that kind of so is what parakeet we know that product K is going to trigger the subjunctive Bella that’s one car next one Winnie arrives hmm cuando when he arrives now this one is a little tricky but not super hard because we you will use it a lot this is going to trigger the subjunctive doesn’t always trigger after quando but if the other Clause is dependent on this Clause happening then that’s going to be in the subjunctive what’s the first Clause so Juan sees us when he arrives so he has to arrive first right before he can see us so that’s going to trigger the subjunctive don’t worry the last car on that train the Caboose there was the most difficult part of the entire sentence but I have a lesson dedicated that too so you can learn how to do that quickly all right don’t worry I’ve got lots of stuff on this channel all right so let’s put it all together and since I’ve been mentioning the importance of learning both the indicative and the subjunctive take a look at that the words in red are in the plain old present tense known as the indicative mood and the words in yellow are in the subjunctive you see how it you can’t really speak Spanish without knowing both of them this approach of stringing phrases together to create sentences in real time is Super useful um I may actually do another video walking you through some different conversations so you can practice this technique you know we can kind of walk through like I just did I don’t know that might be useful if you think it’d be useful leave me a comment or something to that effect in the comments section so in summary in less than two years I was speaking grammatically correct Spanish using these techniques and my translations were standing up to the scrutiny of defense attorneys that’s not bad for a kid who got a D in high school Spanish in this video I’ve just been talking about my you know my early journey to get to fluency probably those first two years of learning Spanish but I didn’t stop speaking Spanish after that Spanish continued to be an important part of my life throughout my 25-year career at the sheriff’s office during that time I conducted thousands of work-related translations I appeared on Spanish language television I spoke at events in Spanish hosted by the Mexican consulate I even conducted undercover operations 100 in Spanish Spanish isn’t something that I just used at work it’s also played an important part of my personal life too my wife is originally from Colombia and we speak both languages in our home when I retired from law enforcement in 2015 we sold everything and moved to Mexico we lived in Mexico full time for six years and the last say two years or so we’ve been dividing our time between Mexico and the U.S because my wife’s mom needs more assistance and she lives in Florida and doesn’t want to live in Mexico so we got that but her mom’s from Colombia so still speaking Spanish every day well thanks for watching the video I hope you found it informative if you are learning Spanish on your own you might find the videos on this channel useful I cover the cognate tricks to turn your English into Spanish I have several videos on the subjunctive and plenty of videos with Spanish phrases that you can pop together like little train cars until next time …