Guide To The Spanish Language
An introduction to Spanish without the grammar - A new and fresh perspective with some interesting items on
language and the similarities between Spanish and English
To speak any language you need some vocabulary. Language is very much about words and how we put those words together to form questions,
commands, requests and statements. Words are like the bricks in a wall and grammar is like the architecture. It is not possible to build a brick wall without
bricks but we can build a basic brick wall without getting a degree in
architecture.
To be able to converse reasonably well in a language we will need to be familiar with about 7,000 words and have some idea about how we put these
words together. If we randomly pick 7,000 words we will probably spend time learning words such as
institutionalised, nephelognosy or recapitulate, which are real words but not used very often and not necessary for everyday
conversation. The point is we need to know approximately 7,000 useful words, not just any words, but words that will allow us to engage in intelligent
conversation.
Now to learn so many words will take quite some time but the good news is we do not have to learn all these straight away. In fact if we
target the right words and concentrate our efforts on critical words and phrases we can have a remarkably impressive interaction in Spanish in a very
short period of time.
We need to master just 700 words. Yes just 10% will give us an impressive ability to communicate in Spanish. Once we get past this first base and start
using the language our progress improves dramatically, but 700 words is really achievable, especially if we choose those 700 words carefully. We need
to decide on which words and phrases to concentrate our efforts.
Normal conversation has been studied and analysed and it has been found that certain words are used with greater frequency than others. Our approach
to learning a language will require us to focus on these key high frequency words first.
These key words are mostly the connecting words of a sentence such as of, their, then, also, always, and, because, it, the, as, etc.
Interestingly we speak a lot about ourselves so words like I go, I can, I do, I find, etc are also very common. There are about 200 of these key words. We
can then identify the next 500 most commonly used words to construct a hot list of approximately 700 words to learn first. Using just 700 words and some
common phrases will allow us to communicate at a basic level that will certainly impress ourselves and those listening, especially if they do not know
any Spanish, they will think you are fluent.
There is some really fantastic news if you speak English you already familiar with thousands of words in Spanish, just not the 200 most common ones. So
if we put in some real effort with the top 200 and then add to these the English words that you already know we can quickly build a very impressive
vocabulary. I can almost feel your disbelief at the claim that you already know thousands of Spanish words so I had better explain.
The reason I can claim you already know thousands of Spanish words is because your first language
is English and, as discussed previously, many Spanish words are derived from the same Latin root, therefore you must know these related words, you
are just not aware that you know them or that these English words have a similar meaning in Spanish. I just need to point them out and you will
recognize them. Some of these words are exactly the same, just pronounced slightly differently, and some are not exactly the same but very similar.
