Those rare individuals with the gift of tongues please feel free to skip this article. For those who struggle with Spanish however, help and encouragement is always welcome.
A rather depressing British Open University program claims that learning a foreign language, as an adult, is an impossible task and therefore motivation has to be a number one priority.
Of course this simply means that any language covers such enormous areas that no one person can acquire total knowledge. This makes sense when we consider all the subsets of language within English. Medicine, science or engineering all require specialized languages which most learners, and even native speakers, can happily ignore.
Fortunately it is somewhat easier to maintain motivational levels with Spanish than many other languages. It is Latin based and widely used. North Americans can often tune in to Spanish language television channels, or buy newspapers, as well as finding people to practice with. Europeans can still take advantage of cheap package holidays to Spain to practice their new found skills.
This gives learners a degree of hope. Explore the reasons for learning and fluency becomes attainable. There is no contradiction here. A person wishing to enhance a holiday by being able to ask for a beer, or a coffee, can become expert in just a few minutes. Within their own needs fluency will have been attained.
Incidentally the Spanish for beer, cerveza, is an extremely useful word to practice until perfect. Each letter is pronounced differently than it's English equivalent and it isn't easy to join them up fluently. C is th, e as in say, r with a very pronounced roll which is particularly difficult for English speakers to master. The v can, confusingly, be pronounced as b and another th gives us the z. Pronounced sloppily cerveza can sound very much like servicios, which is the rest room. Most of us enjoy the beer before searching for the toilets.
A very real difficulty when struggling with a new language is to hear it. As this is a problem that can last for an awful long time it can destroy any enthusiasm, reinforcing negative beliefs about abilities.
Fortunately there are ways to improve this. The simplest being to ask people to speak more slowly. But that often isn't helpful. After all an unknown word is unlikely to become clearer with repeats. It is much more useful to learn how to say that you don't understand and ask what a particular word means. At least then there is a chance to hear alternatives.
Try to describe the word you want. This only highlights the need to be flexible in your own understanding. Practice saying things in different ways. For example if you don't know the word for carrot could you express it in a different way? A long, thin, orange vegetable would probably get you to the right place with an understanding nod and an exclamation, "si, zanahoria."
A piece of advice often given is to watch TV or films. This can be just as frustrating as listening to conversation without understanding a single word. A more fruitful approach is to watch selectively. Is there a subject that interests you? Something you know about which involves demonstrations. Cooking is a good example.
TV chefs provide a wonderful forum for learning. If they use one of those brightly colored vegetables in their dish of the day you will see it. Quite often the chef will hold a bunch of them up to the camera and tell you what they are. Of course there might be a wish to educate the audience in the health giving qualities of the carrot. Followed by an enumeration of the calories and vitamins to be gained by eating them. You might even be told they help you to see in the dark. What will certainly be said at some point is zanahoria, often reinforced by a written onscreen menu.
Watch your favorite chef regularly and you will soon differentiate between the serious business in hand, preparing and cooking food, and the stylistic chit chat which is usually a mix of the chef's personality and showmanship. The basics will come quickly, usually the nouns describing foods and kitchen utensils at first, but pretty soon you will pick up a few verbs. After all you will see what is happening. Is the food boiled or fried or served raw?
If you can get signed Spanish shows for the deaf in your area do watch them occasionally. The sub titles are often verbatim, which might be difficult to follow, but you will be able to match them to the spoken word; invaluable for pronunciation.
And don't forget the advertisements. These tend to be repeated so often that you can work them out over time. Once again there are usually lots of visual clues and written messages providing extra hints. And, in a world of multi national companies many of the products will be all too familiar.
Reading is another tool to help your Spanish along. But have you tried reading aloud? We invariably read our first language at a faster pace and with different, internal, rhythms to the spoken word. Reading aloud forces us to slow down, to pronounce each word distinctly. Poems, usually written for the spoken voice often come in short, easily digested passages.
Speaking to the mirror is a remarkable exercise. It might sound crazy but just a couple of minutes a day will improve pronunciation at an unbelievable pace. The Spanish language uses the lips and tongue in ways which often seem alien to English speakers. Repeat words that you have heard on TV and watch your mouth. When you get the pronunciation right you will actually see the change.
Invest in a good dictionary and, more importantly, learn how to use it. Pocket versions are fine for quick reference but the larger, more comprehensive, editions describe language as it is used. Harraps Concise Spanish Dictionary clearly marks false friends; all those words that look the same in both Spanish and English but have different meanings. The most commonly used words are also clearly marked.
Learn something of Spanish culture. Native Spanish speakers will feel much more comfortable holding conversations with someone who has shown an interest in their own lifestyle.
Finally, don't give up. Use Spanish as often as possible, in as many ways as possible and it will start to fall into place.