I posted 12 weeks ago that I was learning Spanish as part of a documentary I was making... For anyone that's interested, this is the full conversation I had with Laura in Spanish. If you have any advice or constructive criticisms, I'd be glad to hear them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4sHt_0x_lE

el nivel que has adquirido en 12 semanas es bastante envidiable, enhorabuena!

desafortunadamente, las criticas "constructivas" no son mi fuerte, asi que tan solo resaltare dos pequeñas cosas que llamaron mi atencion:

1. en el titulo del video, como hiciste para que los diacriticos aparezcan un poco mas arriba de lo que normalmente aparecen? es algun tipo de error tecnico de youtube?

2. al prestarle atencion tan solo al audio, por razones del ruido circundante supongo, me perdi un poco ciertas palabras como "idiomas", "mi/uno", "estas/esas"..


el nivel que has conseguido se me hace muy similar al que Benny Lewis alcanzo despues de sus 3 primeros meses aprendiendo mandarin.. trabajaste igual de duro?

Thanks for responding.

1. That was my error. Whilst typing quickly I put the accent above the 'i' and not the 'o' if that's what you were meaning? It's been changed now.

2. Yeah, the sound isn't great in this video. Although this has had no editing done to it (the audio I mean). When a portion of this conversation is put into the final documentary, it will have an audio clean-up.

As far as how hard I've worked. I don't know too much about Benny, other than he goes to various countries to learn his languages. Although I tried to look at some form of Spanish every week, I am not in a Spanish-speaking country and therefore cannot be surrounded by the language as much as Benny. I also only had a conversation in Spanish once a week for an hour or so, meaning that, in reality, this is after 12 hours of speaking (something that Benny could easily achieve in 2 days if not 1).

I'm not here to compare myself against anyone though. This is the level I got to in 3 months and I'm relatively happy with it. I'm merely looking for native speakers or those who have learnt Spanish for any tips/advice on how to improve.

Thanks for your comment :)

I did not listen to the whole video. I was very impressed. I disagree with tmp, however. Your vocabulary, pronunciation, apparent comprehension and comfort in the language are much better than what Benny achieved in Mandarin. This is not a reflection on Benny the language learner, but a reflection on the inherent greater difficulty of learning a tonal language, with a difficult and non-phonetic writing system, and no common vocabulary, unlike Spanish.

You are to be congratulated. I am sure there are many ex-pats who have spent years in Spain or Mexico who would envy you.

@Steve - Thanks for your kind words. I completely agree. One cannot compare Spanish and Mandarin and Spanish will be inherently easier for a native English speaker to learn due to the aforementioned similarities with words, writing systems etc. The main thing that I'm proud of, and I'm sure you'll agree, is that I can understand a lot of what is being said to me, something which, 12 weeks ago, sounded like noise.

Quiero felicitarte, tienes un buen nivel de español. ¿Y has alcanzado ese nivel en 12 semanas? No puedo ni imaginarme hablando así en 12 semanas de estudio de un idioma. Me das mucha envidia. :-) No tengo ni sugerencias ni críticas, se nota que lo que tú has hecho para aprender el español te ha servido, sigue así.

¿De qué se trata el documental?

Despite the fact that Spanish is considered an easy language (something which I agree with), I was very impressed by your video, Andrew. I've had classmates who couldn't form sentences like this in ENGLISH after some eight-nine years of study.

@thiswaysketch por alguna razon la virgulilla, tilde de la ñ (~), esta un tanto mas arriba de lo usual en el titulo de tu video. para una mejor referencia visual, comparale con la posicion de la tilde

"This is the level I got to in 3 months and I'm relatively happy with it."
solo "relativamente" a gusto con ello? vamos tio, es un muy buen nivel y, si le sumamos las circunstancias especificas a las que haces referencia, podria incluso darte mas "puntos extra" xP

@aybee - He estado aprendiendo Español para un documental el cual es parte de mi curso de universidad.

@Jeff - Thank-you. I still have a long way to go, but it's a start and I'm definitely going to continue learning Spanish.

@thiswaysketch "He estado aprendiendo Español para un documental el cual es parte de mi curso de universidad."
vas a postear el resultado final del mismo en youtube?

@2tmp - I have no idea about the eñe... it appears fine on my computer screen. I would say I'm relatively happy because I probably could have worked a bit harder to learn more words.. or become more proficient with the words that I know.

Yes, the final video will be posted on YouTube and I'll post a link in the forum (or on this thread) when it becomes available :)