Información: Resources

While I've been studying Spanish, I've run across a lot of useful resources. I thought it might be helpful to you if I posted some of them here.

Web Sites

First of all, there are TONS of resources on the Web that provide way too much information for one person to absorb. Some of my favorites are:

• Reference sites. My favorite dictionary site is the wordreference.com site because it will translate almost anything, even conjugated verbs. It also has some great forums where you can post questions or read interesting thread about translation.
• Some of the Spanish-language media portals, such as univision.com and telemundo.com. Each of these has sub-sites that you find interesting. For example, at Univision, there are sites on news, sports, entertainment, and so on. Check them out!
• Shopping sites. Amazon.com has amazing selection of Spanish-language books called Libros en español. VERY highly recommended! (I've got some book recommendations below.)
• Translation sites. There are several of these. One of the most geeky popular ones is called Babel Fish after the wonderful imaginary creature created by Douglas Adams. Another is Google's language tools site.

Books

Not surprisingly, there are a lot of interesting books out there, too. I own all of these and can personally vouch that they are very cool. They can all be found on Amazon.com, and I have included links to make them easy to find.

• Webster's New World Spanish Dictionary: Every halfway serious student of Spanish needs a good dictionary, and this one is very excellent and very reasonably priced. It's the one I personally use while doing my homework. There's also a very inexpensive but highly reviewed dictionary published by Merriam-Webster (not the same Webster as the first).
• Breaking out of Beginner's Spanish: If you're serious about learning Spanish fluently, get this book. This guy is a native English speaker and has invaluable tips on speaking good "street" Spanish instead of the classroom Buenos días, señor type of Spanish. If for no other reason, buy this book because it's got the cuss words that you won't learn at Georgia State. :-)
• El Principito: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's fantastic tale of The Little Prince is a foreign language standard for intro level readers. It's written in simple language, it's interesting, it's cheap, and will familiarize you with Spanish grammar and vocabulary. Keep your dictionary handy, though, because at our level, it's not easy yet.
• First Spanish Reader: This is a nifty book that contains short stories, proverbs, and other miscellany. It has the Spanish version on the left side, and the English version on the facing right side, so you can look across for reference. Don't be fooled, it's not a kiddie book, it's just aimed at beginners learning the language. Some of them are quite cute and clever!
• Spanish Verb Tenses and Spanish Pronouns and Prepositions: These are two VERY good workbooks. I cannot emphasize how useful these books are! Now I know the last thing in the world that you want to do is more homework, and I'm not suggesting that you do every single exercise in these books. But personally, I don't like the exercises in ¡Arriba! because they're not thorough enough, and they don't get me to the level of fluency that I'm pursuing. These workbooks hammer home critical lessons to learn the stuff we study in class.

Television and Radio

Living in a major media market, we are lucky to have a plethora (or as we say in Alabama, a passel) of Spanish language television and radio stations.

• We have an Atlanta Univision affiliate. The broadcast channel is 34. Look it up in your television listings and watch it sometimes. I particularly like watching the news. Although they speak very fast, they enunciate very clearly. I hate soap operas, but if you're learning Spanish, they are useful to watch also because they enunciate and speak more slowly. The hardest people to understand are the people on the Jerry Springer-like shows. If you're a straight guy like I am, you'll also likely appreciate the game shows and the variety shows. (We straight guys are so easily amused in any language...)
• We have several Spanish language radio stations here in Atlanta. Some of them include FM 102.3, FM 105.3, AM 610, AM 1100, AM 1420, AM 1460, and AM 1600.
• If you have cable or satellite television, you have many more Spanish language channels and music stations available. I personally have DirecTV, and they offer a programming package called DirecTV Para Todos with LOTS of Spanish language channels.

Miscellaneous

• I have several Spanish-speaking friends from various and sundry walks of life. I talk to them a lot, and they all think it's very cool that I'm trying to learn Spanish. They have been very supportive, and we frequently have short conversations in Spanish. I try to learn something from them every day. (¿Cómo se dice "He got jacked up!" en español?) If you have friends who can speak Spanish, talk to them in Spanish! If not, get out and meet more!
• When you go to a Mexican restaurant, order in Spanish! One quick tip: use quisiera instead of quiero when asking for something. It's a verb tense we haven't learned yet and it means "I would like..." instead of "I want..." It's a bit more polite. Also use "¿Me trae... por favor?" which translates as "Would you please bring me...?"
• If you're really motivated (i.e. more than I am) and/or searching for adventure, then you may even want to try something like going to a site like meetup.com. They have a Spanish language group where people learning Spanish (or English) go and meet at various places just to talk and, well, do whatever I suppose.

Well, that should get you started. I may change or update information as I find it. Feel free to post your own comments to this message with suggestions or thoughts!