I tried duolingo but had months of apples, brothers sisters aunts and uncles.  I’d really like to put a day to day sentence together within the next 5 months.

Que?

I’ve been using duolingo

Yo como manzanas con mi hermana 🙂

Not an app as such but I’ve been using “Learn Spanish In Your Car” by Harry N. Raymond on Spotify. 5 to 8 minute sessions of listen and repeat are working well for me.

The daily chats with the native Spanish speaker in our office are an added bonus.

I have been mainlining Almodovar films lately.

Tu ausencia llena mi vida y la destruye…

Bound to come in super useful I think 🤔

used both duolingo and memrise with varying degrees of commitment/stamina
audio courses suit me better and 30mins is perfect headphones material for the commute
I enjoyed Paul Noble – same teaching style as Michel Thomas but less annoying
Pimsleur (initially irritating as the ‘english’ part is american, so its all Norte Americano, Estado Unidense, nueva youk y dollares.
pimsleur does a spainsh express, castillian spanish in two courses
or four courses of spanish

si tiene que apprender rapido es mejor que habla con espanolas, no

I’ve been using Duolingo for a couple of months (French not Spanish, although I did try the Spanish one for a bit before going to the Canaries & managed to pick up a few useful phrases!)

There’s a lot of repetition although I think that’s good for someone who’s not naturally gifted at languages. Covered a lot of basic but useful stuff, greetings, shopping, hotels, weather etc. Just started to get onto more complex stuff now (future tense etc) and just unlocked the “story mode” which is quite fun.

I’m doing about 2-4x what is required to hit the daily goal though. If you’re only doing the bare minimum it’s going to be a LONG slog.

Ok maybe I’ll stick with it.   I’m also doing more than the daily requirement, and have quite a few months until I’m in Spain.

Gracias!

De nada

Try to meet someone for intercambios if you can. The problem you’ll have is pronunciation faults go uncorrected, and you need maximum listening practice. If you mispronounce Spanish it makes little sense. They are also generally unused to hearing it spoken with an accent, compared to people who live in the UK hearing English in all sorts of accents. You need feedback. Otherwise your carefully crafted, grammatically accurate sentence is met with a blank stare. And if you do get it right, chances are you won’t understand the native, non-graded reply.
Been speaking it for 10+ years so have native level but people STILL screw their faces up and decide they are not going to understand anythng when they hear an accent, in the same way my dad does to Scottish people.

They are also generally unused to hearing it spoken with an accent, compared to people who live in the UK hearing English in all sorts of accents.

This ain’t so, Galician and Catalan are almost separate languages from Castilian yet mutually intelligible. In urban areas the Spanish are used to accents and dialects in the same way that we are. And the varieties in S America are different again. If you are using Duolingo or other tools, then at least choose the Castilian Spanish or S. American version depending on your destination; they have both .

This is for a family package holiday in the balearics,  I’d be relatively confident they are used to hearing random English interpretations at the bar.

This ain’t so, Galician and Catalan are almost separate languages from Castilian yet mutually intelligible

How is Catalan “almost” a seperate language? True, I can get the gist of something in written Catalan but would struggle to follow a conversation.

Plus, I hear people complain about not being able to understand S.American call centre operatives all the time. Ask anyone from the north if they can understand an Andalucian.