I'm on the point of despair!

I am having too many senior moments I know but why oh why am I not a fluent Spanish speaker after the 10 to 11 hours listening to Mr T and the bright young woman and at times unbelievably slow young man.

Didn't do too bad until about lesson 6 but it was downhill all the way after that. How on earth could anyone of normal intelligence take it all in in the time Mr T says. When he gets to "I call it the w.ing tense" my wife and I just looked at each other with that "it can't be me, can it" stare that we last got listening to a Best of Prince album.

So, for anyone out there attempting to learn Spanish with Mr T or any other contender - here's confirmation - you are not thick (or!)

p.s. for those who think I seriously expected to learn in 10 or 11 hours - no I never did. At this rate though maybe I misheard and he meant years.

no comment


actually I will

I have more problems with students who have used those tapes than with any others


so many bad habits to break & misunderstandings to correct!!

I've used the Thomas tapes along with various other teach yourself books and discs.
He certainly has some rather odd methods but I think that the main thing with his tapes/discs are that he gives you confidence to use the little that you know, well he did with me. You'll probably speak Spanish unlike any Spaniard but you will be understood. The problem comes when the Spaniard responds to you as he can't teach you to understand what is said to you, if that makes sense?

He sent me to sleep.
You`re right, for every question you need to ask, you need to learn at least two answers.

My husband swears by him ... I, on the other hand, swear at him, and find him hard to understand even when he is speaking in English!

a woman after my own heart

I tried night school in the UK, classes in Spain, tapes and CDs galore, text books by the dozen, etc and finally gave up.

Having given up, I still persisted going into Spanish places and watching Spanish TV and suddenly realised, much to my surprise, that I could speak and understand the language at quite a good level. I've got the Spanish news on now and understand most of it, especially the heat wave warning for tomorrow.

I don't know when the turning point came, it sort of crept up on me, but it did take a while.

I look forward to that day. In fact I'm thinking of knocking Castillian Spanish on the head and concentrating on Catalan/Valenciano. It might serve me better.

To be honest, were I going to a catalan area, I'd focus on that first, with a bit of Spanish as backup.

For me, very few tapes or CDs have ever proven worth the money.

There are plenty of teach yourself Catalan courses but I haven't found one for Valenciano. How different are they? Is it a case of a slightly different way of pronouncing things or is it more than that. ie. If I spoke Catalan in Valencia would I be understood?

We will hopefully be visiting Els Poblets quite soon for just over 8 weeks and will try to avoid speaking to all the Germans who Mitzyboy says live there (kidding). We will continue with Mr T until we go and take the discs with us for more work in the day when not out and about.

Hopefully we will find a few Spaniards to speak to or at least attempt to reply to when spoken to. We will also try TV.

For extra punishment may also take the Linguaphone discs too.

As we will not be moving to Spain for more than a few months at a time this is the best we can do. No Spanish classes available locally I'm afraid.

Still, keeps the brain active - even if only in a confused state

In all honesty, I don't know. Catalan is an interesting mix (to me) of Italian and Spanish. If you read the history of the area you will see why.

How it varies from Valencian I don't know, but if asked to guess I'd assume dialectic drift as the language moved away from its core location.

The standing joke is that a language is a dialect with an army.

Read up on the subject and see just how much it varies, and whether or not it will merit the effort you will have to put into it. Catalan is IMO well worth learning in its heartland, but whether it would be worth bothering with in Valencia, only you can decide. I'd think that Valenciano in Valencia would be worth less than Calalan in Catalunya.

I found El Jueves a great help. It's a funny, slightly vulgar mag that takes the p*ss out of almost everything, and has articles and comic strips that range from easy to more advanced.

It's particularly useful for 'street Spanish' and more colloquial expressions.

if you're planning to stay in the area all well & good


a lot of Brits do find Valenciano easier to learn than Castellano

We have a place very near Els Poblets and although the Spaniards certainly speak Valenciano among themselves, it seems that any attempt by an English person to speak Spanish is well-received, and they will either reply in English or Castilian Spanish in my experience