Whatever your reasons for learning to speak Spanish, below are some of the really important Spanish words and phrases that all of us should know.

Hopefully, you won’t have to use them, but just in case you do…

ESSENTIAL SPANISH WORDS AND PHRASES

pharmacy/drugstore
la farmacia

medicine
la medicina

ambulance
la ambulancia

hospital
el hospital

Help!
¡Socorro!

I need help!
¡Necesito ayuda!

I need a doctor!
¡Necesito un médico!

It’s an emergency!
¡Es una emergencia!

Call an ambulance!
¡Llame una ambulancia!

Hope those are useful. Any more that you know, please commentbelow.

When you start to think about learning a second language, it’s tough to work out which one is going to be best for you. You’ll be putting in a lot of hard work and effort, so I want to help you make the best decision.

The interest in learning Spanish has hugely developed through the increase in many professional opportunities now available to foreign workers. Also, the popularity and affordability of travel over the last 30 years has created a hunger for understanding of Spanish and Latin American culture. Spanish can also a very romantic sounding language to learn and it is estimated that around 21 countries have Spanish as their official national language.

It’s very important that when you embark on learning the language, you get to understand the culture too. This is why immersion courses have become increasingly popular with people of all ages. Immersion courses are an excellent way to explore the Spanish and Latin American cultures whilst learning the language quickly.

Immersion will not suit those with busy hectic lives and schedules, so the alternative is to learn Spanish online. Online software is perfect for allowing you to study at your own pace and to fit in with your schedule.

It’s also kinder on your budget.

It’s also interesting to note that, although the language rarely changes, the methods of teaching often do, so finding the course that suits you best will make the difference between just getting by and confidently learning Spanish.

Find out more about Rocket Spanish.

You don’t need to buy a new downloadable Spanish course if you already have one on CD. You canobviously just use iTunes to convert the audio so that you can play it on your iPhone. This will need to be in MP3  format. iTunes has made it easy to do this. You can then learn spanish wherever you are; in the train, the car, at work or even on holiday.

If you don’t have an existing course there are many Learn Spanish applications on the Apple iPhone that you can download from the App Store. 24/7 TUTOR is one that seems to be very popular.

24/7 TUTOR gives you a set of the most common and useful Spanish words and phrases, organised by topic and category. Every phrase has an audio recording. A priority-filter mechanism is provided that allows you to optimise your efforts by focusing on those items that need more practice.

Listening to Spanish will help you improve your listening skills; but you really do need to practice Speaking Spanish to do it properly. Just ten or fifteen minutes every day is all it takes to see a great improvement.

It’s a great question with a tonne of answers. Here are just five of them:

1. Increase your understanding. You will no doubt have noticed that more and more you’ll hear as much Spanish as English in hotels, restaurants, airports and many other places around you. Wouldn’t it be more sociable if you could understand what those around you are saying? Who know what knew friends and acquaintances you would make if you were able to communication and understanding.
2. To stay young. Yup… I said it… to stay young. Learning a language can slow down the aging process. It’s been demonstrated that you can halt the age-related decline in mental function by learning a foreign language. Surely that will save you a lot on those anti-wrinkle creams.
3. Improve your career. Knowing more than one language always looks good on a job application, and Spanish is the most useful one to learn. Even if the company doesn’t trade internationally, there is always a chance that second and even third languages will need to be spoken.
4. Increase your brainpower. Learning a new language expands the range of your thoughts and also the way that your brain processes ideas and concepts. When you learn Spanish for instance, there are expressions you will come across that don’t exist in others. These can give you a new way to think in everyday situations and maybe even in your work environment.
5. Improve your memory. It has been proven on many occasions that most people experience a whopping improvement in their memory from studying a second language. When you think about it, this makes sense as you are leaving your comfort zone and activating parts of your brain that may not have been used for a while.

Feel free to leave some more ideas on the comments section below.

How to Learn Any Language in 3 Months

Time is a phenominal blogger and writer. He brings some fresh perspective and ideas to learning languages. Including the three main system components that he feels are essential for language learning:

1. Effectiveness (Priority)
2. Adherence (Interest)
3. Efficiency (Process)

Oh and while you’re there check out his other posts. Tim is a very interesting guy.

Twitter is also very simple. Around 2 Million people use Twitter at the moment, compared to Facebook’s 90 million users, but this will change quickly as people become more aware of social networking.

learn Spanish on twitter

This is way that the web is transforming, so it’s important to get onboard now if you want to be effective later. Learn the social networking ropes at the ground-floor so you’ll be on the higher floors when the elevator goes up.

All you need to do is sign-up, login and type in the little box: “What are you doing right now?” That’s it. Just go ahead and describe what you’re doing. You need to be short and precise by the way.

Twitter is an awesome place to learn. But could you learn something specific such as learning Spanish?

Firstly, you need to find the people that are chatting about learning Spanish. You can do this by scrolling down to the bottom of the twitter page, click on search and type in ‘learn Spanish’. You’ll then notice there are stacks of people chatting between themselves on this subject.

Here’s a list:

http://www.twitter.com/spanishonly

http://www.twitter.com/nowlearnspanish

http://www.twitter.com/spanishlanguage

You can easily enter these conversations by replying to the twitters that you find interesting. On average, 1 in 5 people will then reply back to you. There are also many Spanish teachers on Twitter that are teaching a word a day.

This is both fun and a great way to learn with others. Tell me how you get on…