Spanish Books And Stuff

[4588686]

I want to learn Spanish.  Feed me information and leads for resources.  Nom nom nom.  

[Era Might]

Spanish poetry is a good way to learn, look up words as you go. Antonio Machado is a good start. Robert Bly has done of lot of Spanish poetry translation.

[Gabriela]

501 Spanish Verbs is a must-have if you're really serious about learning the language and not just some phrases you can use in a Mexican bar.

 

Diccionario del Español Coloquial: Dichos, Modismos y Locuciones Populares is a must-have for someone like you, who I presume wants to know every possible profanity the language has ever contained.

 

El Porqué de los Dichos is a very helpful book not just for the language, but also for the culture. It helps you get inside the head of Spanish-speakers.

 

Spanish poetry is typically quite difficult, and would teach you the "elevated" language, not the stuff used in common conversation. You'd memorize a buttload of vocabulary words for nothing, basically. (Unless the only reason you're learning Spanish is to read...) I suggest starting with children's books in Spanish, ideally ones you know well, so that you can figure out the meanings of words for yourself rather than having to look everything up. Dr. Seuss' books are all in Spanish (and the rhyming is actually totally amazing). From there, you might move up to Harry Potter in Spanish (or whatever adolescent-level books you are already familiar with). From that point, I recommend Gabriel García Márquez.

 

Steer clear of Octavio Paz. ¡Pero qué misógino!

[Kia ora]

I want to learn Spanish.  Feed me information and leads for resources.  Nom nom nom.  

 

If you have ready access to native Spanish speakers, then they should be your testing board. Use Spanish whenever possible with them. After learning about a construction in a book, use it with Spanish speakers.

 

You gotta, as far as humanly possible, pretend you're not in an English speaking country. Consume Spanish-language media, movies, tv shows, music, books.

[LinaSt.Cecilia2772]

Watch TV in spanish.......That's how learned growing up when I would go to my grandparents house. They only speak Spanish so everything from music, books, and TV was all in Spanish.

[Gabriela]

I second the music bit (as well as all the media you can possibly consume). Because music rhymes and has rhythm, it's an excellent way to both learn and remember both vocabulary and grammatical constructions. I listened to A LOT of Spanish rap while I was in college. Helped enormously.

[Era Might]

Spanish poetry is typically quite difficult, and would teach you the "elevated" language, not the stuff used in common conversation. You'd memorize a buttload of vocabulary words for nothing, basically. (Unless the only reason you're learning Spanish is to read...) I suggest starting with children's books in Spanish, ideally ones you know well, so that you can figure out the meanings of words for yourself rather than having to look everything up. Dr. Seuss' books are all in Spanish (and the rhyming is actually totally amazing). From there, you might move up to Harry Potter in Spanish (or whatever adolescent-level books you are already familiar with). From that point, I recommend Gabriel García Márquez.

 

Steer clear of Octavio Paz. ¡Pero qué misógino!

 

I'm a believer in vocabulary first. You can communicate in words even if you can't string together sentences. I guess poetry is not common conversation, but people don't talk like the conversations you find in language books...the only solution to that is to talk to people in the language. But I suggested Machado because he has a relatively simple style. When I started learning Spanish I basically learned as I looked everything up...literally, I would enter sentences into Google Translate, and eventually start noticing pattern. To this day I have not memorized Spanish tenses, but I know the most commonly used tenses from experience. But I also had the benefit of conversation in Spanish.

Edited March 7, 2013 by Era Might