Two weeks to learn a little Spanish?

May 6, 2019 12:30 PM

I am unexpectedly going on a business trip in two weeks to Mexico. I speak absolutely no Spanish. What are the best online options for gaining some basic conversational abilities if I had time to put in, say, 30 minutes a day? Duolingo looks like it is focused on long term learning and would not be a good fit.

(My work meetings will be in English but I'll have a good deal of time to explore on my own-- restaurants, getting around town, etc.)

posted by O Time, Thy Pyramids to Writing & Language (17 answers total)

No specific recs, but I found YouTube videos useful when I wanted to pick up some basic foreign phrases quickly before a trip. You hear different voices / accents, which helped my comprehension a a lot. Make sure you are finding Mexican Spanish and not Spanish Spanish - there are some differences, including in pronunciation.

Google Translate is also really good now, if you find yourself in a pinch once you're there.
posted by momus_window at 12:40 PM on May 6, 2019 [2 favorites]

For a quick trip with 2 weeks prep, the Lonely Planet Mexican Spanish Phrasebook is ideal. It separates phrases by setting, like restaurant, hospital, hotel, etc. Each phrase has 3 columns: English, Spanish and a phonetic version of the Spanish that if you pronounce with English rules will closely approximate how it should sound in Spanish, including accent and slang for Mexico. I used the Brazillian Portuguese version years ago and it helps considerably. Duolingo is good, but as you surmised not ideal for short term.
posted by Short End Of A Wishbone at 12:40 PM on May 6, 2019 [7 favorites]

TripLingo (app) has basic phrases and other travel tools.
posted by eyeball at 12:50 PM on May 6, 2019

Mango Languages focuses on practical, conversational Spanish. Their units and chapters have really clear focuses (like Salutations and Small Talk; Currency and Counting) so you may be able to hop around a little bit, though they do build on each other. They also have topic-specific language sections, like one for business. You may be able to access it for free through your local public library.
posted by carrioncomfort at 12:51 PM on May 6, 2019 [3 favorites]

Ordering in a restaurant is a stereotypical first thing to learn in a language for a reason. There's a script that you and the waiter follow, and a lot of the vocabulary you'll need is written down on the menu. You're almost never expected to recognize and understand an unfamiliar word, unless it's one of the ones on the menu. This would be a great interaction to learn.

(Getting directions, on the other hand, is much, much harder. You have to recognize unfamiliar words a lot, with no context: if someone says "Turn right at the ______," it could be literally any noun filling in that blank. Getting to the point where you can do that in two weeks is not realistic. So, don't concentrate on it.)
posted by nebulawindphone at 12:57 PM on May 6, 2019 [2 favorites]

Pimsleur is pretty geared toward introductory phrases. You can get individual sections on Audible. Duolingo does have sections on basics like food, though that seems fairly easy to find in a translator app.
posted by Crystalinne at 1:09 PM on May 6, 2019 [1 favorite]

I would second momus_window's recommendation of Google Translate. Download the offline Spanish version before you leave so you don't have to worry about International Data Roaming. Don't put a lot of pressure on yourself to learn a lot in 2 weeks. It's easy to forget what you just learned in the heat of a moment while traveling in a foreign country. Having something handy on your smartphone would be nice if you need to say something you can't remember. One great thing about Spanish is that most of the words are pronounced like they're spelled. This website has some good phrases to learn.
posted by mundo at 3:41 PM on May 6, 2019

I think there are a lot of good suggestions above. My Spanish has long played second fiddle to my French, but as we're going to Mexico City in June, I've been working hard on it. Part of it for me and probably for you is just conditioning oneself to *hear* Spanish. Being able to recognize individual words takes practice! So I recommend a lot of passive listening where you're not really trying to learn the words so much as absorb the sounds and rhythms with the occasional burst of understanding. Besides doing app lessons (a bit of Duolingo and a lot more fo Wlingua, which has more explicit grammar instruction and lots of sample sentences), I'm:

1. Watching Mexican TV using free apps. On Android, there is "TV de Mexico y Mas 2.0," which is fugly but it works and is free. Click on the station icons until you find one that loads. Some of the channels are HD. Just like American TV, sometimes the content is great, sometimes not. I've watched live music, dubbed American movies, game shows, news, sports, PBS-style roundtables, pottery how-tos, travel dossiers, and lots mroe.

2. Watching over-the-air Spanish-language TV. Univision and Telemundo are high-quality. Plus, since we leave near the border, we get 30-40 stations from Mexico.

3. Listening to Spanish-language audiobooks to go to sleep. I get them free from my local library. Try to get ones that are voiced by Latin American readers. Books by Arturo Perez-Reverte and Gabriel Garcia Marquez are likely to be.

4. Listening to Mexican Spanish-language podcasts when walking. I like Fernanda Familiar (https://fernandafamiliar.soy/, https://us.ivoox.com/en/podcast-fernanda-familiar_sq_f1644971_1.html), who is a radio talk-show host who interviews people (kind of like Terry Gross but the guests are lower caliber and Fernanda is more earthy and more prone to emotion) and Historiografía (https://www.historiografiamexicana.com/), which is highly professional readings of writings about the history of Mexico.

5. Reading the news in Spanish. This should get you lots of US news in Spanish: https://news.google.com/?hl=es-419&gl=US&ceid=US:es-419. At your level, you won't understand much but it may slowly start to make sense and on desktop and phone most OSes allow you long-click or long-press on a word to translate it or look it up.

Good luck!
posted by Mo Nickels at 3:45 PM on May 6, 2019 [4 favorites]

I recently (a month ago?) started Duolingo and despite your reservations, I'd say give it a shot.. the first few topics you go through would be very useful for restaurants, shops, and general travel. If nothing else, it'll help you notice some patterns in the language and it'd complement the phrasebooks others mentioned above. Plus, it's kinda fun! My husband and I have greatly reduced mindless social media scrolling with this app. (Also, if you think you know something, you can always try to "test" out of a level by clicking on the key icon that pops up when you're about to click start on a lesson.) I've been combining these lessons with looking up other nouns as I want them or get curious.
posted by adorap0621 at 4:11 PM on May 6, 2019

Depending on how active a learner you are prepared to be in those 30 minutes, you probably could get a lot from Language Transfer (based on my experience with a non-Spanish course), especially if you might work more on spoken Spanish in the future.

I agree with comments that a phrasebook and introductory phrases might be a better use of your time for two weeks, assuming you have no desire to stick with the language.

Based on another non-Spanish course, shotgunning Duolingo before a trip may not be as useless as one might think--the spaced repetition can help lodge a tiny bit of vocabulary firmly enough that you may recognize bits and pieces of language on the street, which by two-week standards can be pleasant and comforting, if not necessarily useful.
posted by deeaytch at 5:22 PM on May 6, 2019 [1 favorite]

The literal words I found most in a recent trip
- greetings (at different times of day)
- politeness
- hearing numbers (Mexico has a lot of cash transactions)
- “la cuenta” (the bill)
- directions

Good luck and enjoy your trip!
posted by gregglind at 5:24 PM on May 6, 2019 [1 favorite]

I agree with Mo Nickels, listening is the most important skill to practice. You don't actually need that much vocabulary when traveling... hello, goodbye, thanks, where is the bathroom, can I have one of those please?, how much, etc... But the hard part is figuring out what someone is saying back to you when you say any of those things.

Practice listening, especially with simple conversations with subtitles. Destinos is a classic of the genre, and the retro public television production values are a bonus.

Nail down your numbers, directions (left, right, up, down, upstairs, downstairs) and days of the week. That, plus basic greetings, will get you by pretty well.
posted by LeeLanded at 1:00 AM on May 7, 2019 [1 favorite]

I took Spanish in high school and college and have used Duolingo for Spanish off and on over the past few years. Despite all of this, my conversational Spanish is only so-so. Last year when I went to Mexico City, these were the key phrases (outside of polite greetings and thank yous) that were the most useful to me:

-¿Puedo tener un/a...? (Can I have a...?)
-¿Cuanto cuesta? (How much is it?)
-Soy de... (I'm from...)
-Estoy aquí de vacaciones por X dias. (I'm here on vacation for X days.)
-Me encanta/me gusta mucho. (I love it/I like it a lot.)
-La cuenta, por favor. (Check, please.)
-¿Dónde está el/la...? (Where is the...?)
-Lo siento, no hablo muy bien el español. (Sorry, I don't speak very well in Spanish.)
-Más lento, por favor. (Slower, please.)

Also, everyone is 100% right about knowing the directions and numbers, but MAN numbers have always been super tough for me to remember. Keeping my phone handy so I could fire up my calculator (or Google Maps) in case of emergency was super helpful. The Google Translate app's live translation feature was also really useful for deciphering menus in restaurants.

The Butterfly Spanish YouTube channel has some good videos on travel Spanish if you wanted to learn some useful phrases and also hear the pronunciation. Have fun!
posted by helloimjennsco at 7:39 AM on May 7, 2019 [2 favorites]

Michel Thomas. I find phrasebook-style teaching ("This week we're doing how to go shopping") a real grind, as it's just memorisation. Michel Thomas is purely audio, and he really helps you tap into how much you can understand already (through English/Spanish cognates), builds up carefully but quickly your comprehension into longer, more complex sentences, drip-feeding grammar and vocabulary, and tunes your ear in very well. Even though his own Spanish accent* is not great, there's something about the way he focuses on emphasis and stress that really helps. Just listening to a few hours of his CDs quickly makes you feel like you're getting a knack for the language.

It's not online, but all audio. I bought mine on CD it was that long ago, but I assume these days it's downloadable. You can try a free Spanish lesson and see if the teaching style suits you.

* There are two generations of his resources - the original ones, which I've used, include Michel Thomas himself. There are also other courses made after he died called Michel Thomas Method, which presumably use similar teaching techniques but without him, which I've not tried but I assume are just as good, without his slightly tetchy manner and not superb Spanish accent! Neither of those are a barrier to it being a great teaching method, anyway.
posted by penguin pie at 7:48 AM on May 7, 2019 [1 favorite]

Just went in and got myself a free Intermediate Michel Thomas lesson, and yep, it's got an app that you listen through now so should be straightforward to do digitally.
posted by penguin pie at 8:10 AM on May 7, 2019

Another recommendation for Pimsleur. You won't learn that much, but what you learn you will be retain and be able to use. It drills you in listening and speaking in a very effective way.

I also like watching TV shows in the language with English subtitles as a low effort way of developing an ear for the language.
posted by kjs4 at 7:00 PM on May 7, 2019

Pimsleur has some weird topic choices and is also quite creepy. For such a short amount of time Michel Thomas will give much better bang for your buck.
posted by turkeyphant at 4:08 AM on May 12, 2019