dream in españolSpanish Learning Hacks

Several weeks ago I reluctantly joined the church soccer team. I say reluctantly because I hadn’t kicked a soccer ball since I was a snotty-faced eight year old, and there was a real chance of looking like a useless tool in front of my friends.

Not something I was in a hurry to do.

So, fifteen minutes before the first team practice, I “Googled up” some tips on playing the defender position.

I arrived at (what seemed to me) four fundamental rules of playing the sweeper position in soccer. They are:

1. Watch the ball, not the player
2. Stay goalside, which in soccer terminology means the defender should be closer to the goal than the player being covered
3. Think one move ahead
4. Get directly in front of the opposing player and never give him or her a direct shot on net

I resolved to focus on these four tips (and not try and get fancy with the ball).

The result? I held my own amongst a group of experienced players. In fact, an english friend who played on the opposing squad likened me to the late Bobby Moore, the team Captain and legendary sweeper of the 1966 World Cup champs.

Note: This was a gross exaggeration on his part of course, but it was a big vote of confidence for me.

The experience enlightened me on how dominant the fundamentals are in sports.  The lion’s share of a  player’s game play is performing the basics, with a much smaller share relying on technical skill and athletic ability ( Pareto principle anyone?).

Moral of the story: Stick to the fundamentals and you can hang with almost anybody.

Now let’s turn our focus on learning Spanish. If speaking Spanish could be boiled down to four fundamental rules – rules that when followed would enable anyone to go from knowing absolutely zero spanish to hablo espanol in very little time – what would those four rules be?

I don’t know the answer, but since I brought it up, here’s my list of…

Four fundamental rules of speaking Spanish competently and quickly (even if you can’t speak a word):

1. Cognates, Spanish words whose look and meaning are almost identical to their English equivalents, are gifts from heaven. Learn them
2. Memorize conjugations like “I have”/tengo, “I need”/necessito, “I want”/quiero and so forth
3. Commit to memory as many infinitive verbs as you can. Mix and match with the conjugations in rule #2. Add in the cognates you learned from rule #1
4. Know the Spanish alphabet and how the letters sound. Correct pronounciation is essential to being understood

UPDATE

At the the Waterloo Spanish Language Meetup I asked Norbert and Matthew what they thought were the four most important rules to speaking Spanish.

Norbert’s Four Fundamentals:

1. “Nouns, nouns and more nouns”
2. “Verbs, verbs and more verbs”
3. Learn three tenses, past (I spoke), present (I speak) and future (I will speak).  If you can say that in Spanish, you can build from that.
4. Learn prepositions like “of”, “to”, “in”, “for”, “with” and “on”

Matthew’s Big Four:

1. Inmersión
2. Música (here’s a fine example how rhythm can help you memorize tricky Spanish grammar)
3. Cerveza y chocolate
4. A partner (una mujer ;-)

Now it’s your turn. Please share your big four fundamentals in the comments section.

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