Spanish

This is my list of the top ten Free Learn to Speak Spanish resources available online. Learning Spanish is difficult enough and can be very expensive after books, courses and private tuition have been paid for, so I went hunting for free resources where I could get started. Hopefully this list Free resources will get you started too, and it is my hope that after trying some of these resources you'll understand a few of the basics be better able to choose the right book or course for to continue your study of Spanish. If you like this list please say hi in the comments, Buena suerte aprender español y gracias por visitar mi blog.

10. Free Spanish Phrasebook to download, written by John Slocum of Amerispan, this compact little phrasebook begins with a quick guide to Spanish grammar and then over two pages goes through a comprehensive pronunciation of Spanish sounds. The rest of this 31 page book is devoted to common phrases that any tourist in a Spanish speaking country should know. You will need to register with a valid email address to get the download location but its worth it for this ebook.

9. Free Spanish ebook to download, this free Spanish ebook course available directly from me is the complete version of the popular "Spanish - Romance Language of 417 Million" and includes all three .pdf documents to print and learn Spanish. In total over 85 exercises to learn and practice including vocabulary, grammar, and miscellaneous facts about Spanish and its people. No need to register, simply download. Read More

Yesterday we had our fifth(?) spanish lesson, gee that's a hundred Euros spent already, oh well it's got to be worth it to learn the language. Every day that goes by we are feeling more and more at ease in Spain, the language isn't as difficult as we thought it would be, although we're still struggling to put together sentences. Anyway here is a basic script we worked on yesterday, and don't ask me why we're asking for an English newspaper, it's one of those things other expats like to do and the other guy in our class is one of those.

Shop Assistant: Buenos dias. Que le pongo?
Customer: Quiero la prensa inglesa, por favor
Shop Assistant: Bueno. Toma.
Customer: Cuanto vale?
Shop Assistant: tres con veinte.

This really basic script essentially goes along the lines of 'hello, how can I help you?', que le pongo is the more formal way of asking although I haven't heard this yet when I've been into a shop. Mostly we just get ignored by the staff who are far too busy chatting amongst themselves. The customer then asks for an English newspaper, to which the shop assistant replies 'OK, take it', and no doubt you've figured out the customer then asks how much before being told 'three with twenty' which the canny observer would guess means three euros twenty.

We practiced this little script for a while taking turns to the be the expat and the shopkeeper, then we got onto some interesting stuff, here are a few phrases we learned;

La cuenta, por favor - Asking for the bill in a restaurant etc
Quitate! - get out of my way
Con permiso - with your permission, same as excuse me
Tarda mucho - it's really late
No es justo - It's not fair
Por supueste - of course
Callate! - Shut up
Mira! - Look!
Para! - Stop!
Lo siento - I'm sorry
Se puede cambiar un billete de cincuento - Can you change a fifty, which is a big problem when you want to buy a coffee that costs one euro but the bank ATMs only give you fifty euro notes
No tengo nada mas pequeño -I don't have anything smaller
Yesta! - Enough!
Que peste! - It smells

And last but not least, a quick phrase you would utter to someone you love, and it's not to be taken lightly, this is serious;
Te quiero, te adoro, te llevo a los toros
It means, I love you, I adore you, I'm going to take you to the bullfight.

My Spanish teacher has given me some homework for the next lesson, basically a bunch of questions I should ask our next door neighbour, except she lives in another city and only comes down for weekends, so I'm running out of time to get the answers hence my plea for help from any Spanish speaker. If any of my readers would be willing to answer the questions, or get a Spanish friend, wife, mother-in-law, man down the street etc to help me out it would be really appreciated. Here's the questions;

¿Tienes cuantos hijos?
¿Vives aqui hace cuanto años?
¿Tienes hermanos?
¿Tus padres estan vivos?
¿Tienes mascotos?
¿A ti te gusta Sevilla?

I know the last question might be difficult, so substitute where you live. Also I need the answers in Spanish not English, and I'll use the trusty dictionary and the free Spanish ebook course to help me work out what you're saying. Oh, one more thing, if someone else has already replied, please still answer, the more practice I get the better.

I just paid a few dollars for a pack of ebooks that come with resell rights, one of which is Spanish. Now I can't be bothered trying to sell this since I doubt I'd make any money out of it (retail price is US$9.95), so I'll just make it available for free to my readers, all I ask is you make a comment below or link to this entry from your own blog if you do download it.

So, what do you get? The Free Learn Spanish Ebook is about 450kb and has the title "Spanish, Romance Language of 417 Million", but within it there are three .pdf documents, covering too many topics to list here, except to say it's a complete course that will take an absolute beginner upto reasonably advanced level once you've learned it all.

I can't say how long it will take to get to fluent stage but it saves the cost of buying phrase books and if you've already forgotten Spanish that you learned at school then this might be a really great refresher course. Personally I'm more interested in it because I'm already learning Spanish with a language teacher and I want the ebook for extra reading material. Yup, you guessed it, I'm a sucker for extra work.