Hola, amigo, que tal?

The next worse thing from being the only non-Spanish speaking person in a crowd of Hispanics is not understanding a word of what is said. It does not only make you feel stupid. You may actually look stupid, with your mouth a little agape, perhaps, and that slightly bewildered, slightly frightened look written all over your face.

Hispanic blood

Moreover, it does not really help if you look Hispanic, or indeed Hispanic blood runs in your veins. Unfortunately, there you are, feeling like an idiot because you don’t speak a word of Spanish. You start feeling sorry for yourself and blaming your parents for not teaching you the language. The truth is, you were either too lazy or too preoccupied with other things to bother.

Never mind. It doesn’t really matter if you have Hispanic blood or not. Right now, what matters is for you to learn how to speak Spanish the easiest and fastest way. The truth is, there are no hard and fast rules. If you are English speaking, the first lesson is; you have to learn how to think in Spanish. This can be tricky because in English, the subject precedes the predicate.

Some Spanish basics

In Spanish, it is the other way around. Another thing; you will be surprised to know that there are feminine, masculine and even neuter genders in simple articles like “the”. Spanish is replete with feminine and masculine nouns with all having the same meaning.

For those who want to go hi-tech and speak grammatically correct Spanish, they will have to wrestle with a mountain of tenses, from the simple present tense to the more confounding present perfect, past perfect and even conditional tenses. Added to these are the singular and plural articles that should precede the nouns, etc. etc.

Conversational as a starter

The easier and less painful way is to focus on conversational Spanish, which is most often spoken anyway. You may start with the usual como estas, donde vas, como se llama, etc. etc. It is not enough, though that you arm yourself with all the conversational and basic Spanish books you can get your hands on and read them every day. The secret is practice, practice and more practice. Befriend a true blue Hispanic, or better still get him or her as your boy/girl friend, and make Spanish as your medium of communication.

Find a Spanish friend

You will learn to speak the language the faster and easier way, than all the books and tapes combined. You may try taking Spanish lessons, but without somebody to talk to in Spanish regularly, getting the feel of the language can be difficult.