What do you think of language101.com? I’ve un-successfully tried learning French in high-school, (it was a private school that didn’t have a French teacher, so I tried to learn from workbooks and tapes) and gave Russian a try a couple of years ago, but had such a difficult time with the pronounciation, that I gave up after a year of CDs and classes. Now I’m looking for a program that can help me to break the, “I just can’t learn a foregin language” routine. I would like to learn Spanish, in order to work with some new collegues in Buenos Aires, but I’m lazy and don’t want to invest the time in a program that isn’t going to work.

I wish more companies would use this approach. As it is, I have to take every text for a language I want to learn and develop a modal verb approach before I begin. I find all other techniques a waste of my time, but, without a modal tape approach available for other languages, I have depended on Pimsleur to get a start on the spoken language. I then use my own modal verb approaches to go deeper into the language quickly. Good to know Thomas uses the modal verb approach. I have been trying to figure out how to do a similar approach with Mandarin and Japanese, which are different.

Santamaria has a subscription plan which allows me to start and stop as I have time or money. He is constantly developing more advanced programs for listening and advanced conversation. His tapes use native Mexican speakers and are terrific. I assume Thomas teaches Castillian. I grew up in Texas and prefer the Mexican Spanish dialect and Latin American syntax/vocab. He is native to Australia and married a woman from the Baja area of California, according to his website. Much of his approach was developed in Mexico and southern California. I think he may have moved his family to Australia, even though his business is still located in San Isidro.

Other techniques which Santamaria has developed and are applicable to rapid language learning are the use of cognate patterns. He has glossaries of thousands of English/Spanish cognate roots, grouped by the suffix or prefix necessary to change the English word into Spanish. After you learn the patterns you can quickly change thousands of words you already know from English into Spanish. I’m doing the same for Yiddish classes that I teach. This is very helpful on European languages that share many cognates. For Asian languages, it would probably be less helpful. It’s another great technique, and is a terrific next step after you have learned the 100 most frequent words that Tim recommends here.

I know some of this sounds like an ad for Santamaria, but I have never met him and have no connection to him except as a student online. My teenage daughter is learning Spanish from Bard College professors and I find what I learn from Santamaria is identical in quality and content if not technique–and I’m not in a classroom everyday.

On the train the first time I went to Italy I got through about 4 hours of the foundation set and could have basic conversation when I arrived. By the end of 3 weeks I could nearly converse. They’re pretty impressive.

One of the cleverest things they do is emphasize learning ‘helper’ verbs like I need, I want, I can. It’s a neat trick because in romance languages if you use one of these verbs you don’t have to conjugate the second verb, and you can be surprisingly expressive once you know a few helper verbs and a range of other verbs in the infinitive form.

e.g. Spanish

Quiero (I want)
Quiero bailar: I want to dance
Quiero beber: I want to drink
Quiero ir al bano: I want to go to the bathroom.

A useful thing to try if you’re learning a new language and don’t want to buy the michel thomas tapes.