Not everyone likes or does w ell w ith classes, and not ever ybody picks up a

new language quick by sudden immersion. So hundreds of methods compete

for your attenti on and money. But Cabo Bob has a plan for learning Spanish
that doesn't cost a lot of money, doesn' t require a bunch of heavy books,
lets you learn about the current culture as you go... and is a lot of fun.
This approach has w orked w ell for those w ho' ve taken the excellent advice,
basically a supercharger for the natural means by w hich children and
immigrants have alw ays acquired languages. After a getting your hands on a
couple of inexpensi ve, simple aids to learning Iisted below , the main path of
learning is in reading and listeni ng to materials easily and cheaply acquired
in Mexico or the United States. Easy reading that devel ops natural speech
pattern and reinforces ever yday common speech patterns effortlessly, w hile
having fun reading things that Mexicans read for enjoym ent, not homew ork.
Click on the pictures of study aids below to visit sites where they
are shown or sold.
The first step is to get hold of an essenti al tool that all language students
use: a Spanish- English dictionar y. But not just any gi ven dicti onar y: I w ould
very, ver y strongl y recommend the pocket-sized
Uni ver sity of Chicago
paperback. It's compact, cheap, and superior to
other Span/Eng dictionaries (even the big thick
ones) because of it's very special key ver b
section in the middle. It's the most efficient w ay
of deal w ith conjugation, by far. Any verb you
look up has a number. Go to that number in the
middle section and you'll see a sample of full
conjugation. Your verb w ill use that same
conjugation
structure.
For
regular
verbs,
hundreds w ill follow that same model, any
irregular verb w ill follow some model in that
section. For instance, conocer and paracer
use the same model. So you know that if the first
person singular for the former is conoz co , then
the same tense for the latter w ill be parezco . A
beautifully simple method to gi ve you all the ver b
trees you need in a small space.
I highly
recommend this over all those 501 Verbs books,
w hich I consider bulky and useless. So many of
those ver bs are conjugated identicall y. .. w hy
bother to have hundreds of pages for them w hen a few w ill do?
When you're picking up you dictionar y also grab a steno notebook or
something similar that fits your habits in havi ng paper handy to jot on
quickl y.
Mexican stores alw ays have a
good vari ety of handy notebooks, by the
w ayask for cuadernos or look in the
secti on for escolares items or papeleria
stores . In the U.S. of course, you can get
anything from pocket pads to elegant
leather Moleskines. And, of course, you
w ant a pen or pencil handy.
This is the acti ve part of studying a
languageyour ow n collecti on and lexicon.
When you hear a new w ord or turn of
phrase, jot it dow n in your pad and look it
up as soon as you get the chance. If you
can't find it in a dictionar y, ask the next
Spanish-speaking person you meet to
explai n it, then right that dow n. Periodically
revi ew
your
notes,
committing
these
defini tions and idioms to memory by
repetiti on. You'll be creating your ow n
customized guide to speaki ng Spanishthe Spanish used and understood in
the w orld you inhabit, not an office or classroom.
The third item for your initial kit can be found in any college bookstore or
ordered online: a one-page plasti c laminated study guide to grammar. These
one-sheet guides, generall y three-hole punched for
notebooks, are a compact presentation of basic
grammar like you'd find at greater bulk in a textbook.
But they are w eight nothing, take up no space in your
luggage, and are impermeable to w ater damage and
damned near indestructi ble.
It takes some learners
aw hile to get enough vocabular y to start w orrying
about grammar rules, but it's all there for you w hen
you need it. These three items equip you to start
learning, and to be able to li ve off the land once in
a Spanish-speaking countr y or neighborhood.
There are now cheat sheets larger than one page,
tw o-fold or even three-fold guides to grammar. It
really doesn't matter that much. The idea is to have
access to the rules for help w hen you need it. If
you have questions you can't sol ve w ith your handydandy cribsheet, or Google, jot it in your notebook and w ait for a chance to
pester somebody for an explanation. You'll find that peopl e actually enjoy
educating people about their language.
Speaking of ready for grammar, by the w ay, the w orst thing you can do is
to refrain from speaking out of embarrassment because you're not yet fluent
or competent. If you haven' t attained full mastery yet, speaking to people is
more important than it ever w ill be again. If you don't know conjugation, use
infinitives. They w ill hear this as cave man talk--savages in their comics
talk like that. They w ill get the drift, perhaps correct you, and you'll learn
strong w hen being aided like that.
See if you can find local conver sation groups. Try to find a Mexican
restaurant to patroniz e to the point that they w ill talk w ith you, give you
good pronunciation. Join online groups dedicated to Spanish.
One thing to be ver y careful of... just as English is very different as spoken
in England, compared to the U.S.
or Jamaica or Nigeria, Spanish has
regional differences that can be ver y different, indeed. Be sure to learn the
kind spoken w here you are going to learn. If you get a textbook slanted
tow ards Spain, rather than Latin America, you w ill be like a person trying to
prepare for livi ng in Texas by studying British magazines, thus referring to
kerbs and lifts. The biggest divide in the New World is betw een voseo
countries like Ar gentina and tuteo countries like Mexico and most of the
rest. So instead of sayi ng Tu eres, you'd say Vos sos. Only different in
second person. If you are going to Argenti na, get Mafal da books, mentioned
below . If you're going to Cuba, God help you. Nati ve Spanish speakers
despair of comprehending the island's machine gun deli very and dropping or
sw allow ing of final consonants.
One more introductory comment: one of the beauti es of Spanish (and horrors
of English) is that in Spanish any w ord you can read, you can pronounce.
There are no w eird sounds, an a is alw ays pronounced the same w ay.
This is the pronunci ation guide from my Mexican Slang 101 books, nice
and brief. Any other rules w ill be found in your grammar sheets. Learn the
vow els, w hat the accents mean, and you w ill find that, unlike English, you
can acquire Spanish ver y nicel y just by reading. The questi on is, w hat to
read? Read on...
And since you now have your basic tools, lets move on to w hat you w ant to
read in order to most effortlessl y learn Spanish.. The novelty of the Cabo
Bob Method is that instead of bulky, boring texts, or tryi ng to read
new spapers and Don Quixote , you extend your familiarity w ith children's
books and comics.
When Mexicans ask me how I learned
Spanish, I sometimes say that my maestro w as Condorito. The
little condor, here on your left, is ubiquitous in Latin Am er ica
w ith thousands of little comic books on new sstands and used
magazine stores. He's a w ild and irrever ent bird, even more so
than Bugs Bunny, and he alw ays speaks the local variations.
And has a cute girlfriend, and the usual little nephew , w ho
sometimes stars in his ow n comics for younger children. I
highl y recommend getting and reading his comics (or
historietas ) and other kid's comics for beginning language
acqui siti on.
Some prospecti ve learners are surprised, even offended, at
the suggestion that they peruse things w ritten for children and
semi-literates, books w ith pictures. They miss the point that if you don't
speak a language, you AR E a child in that tongue. In fact, it's great if you
can learn around children. They are delighted to encounter a grow n-up w ho
is for some reason stupider than they are and needful of being taught the
ropes. The thing is, d o kids learn their ow n language w ith new spapers and
novels? Or course not, they learn from kid's books, generally w ith pictures
or Dick and Jane or The Cat In The Hat. Follow their lead.
I particularly advi se against trying to use new spapers to learn in Mexico.
Unlike (or w orse than) Am er ican papers, they are w ritten in a very stilted
elevated style, not the w ay people talk. Calling doctors Galeanos instead
of Medicos , tossing out complicated w ords and arcane usage like en esta
Puerto instead of just saying, Here in Mazatlan.
Plunging into a novel is extremel y punishing for a beginner. Most tire quickly
of slogging through w ords to look up w ithout getting to anyw here
entertaining. With comics you read one page, maybe learn a few w ords, then
you're done w ith that lesson, maybe had a laugh, maybe learned a joke you
can pass on, read as many as you have patience for.
Painless and
productive.
There are plenty of booklets avai lable; I suggest Condorito
because many times somethi ng like Bugs or Japanese anime w ill be
translated and not have quite the right ring.
Local comics are very
populist.
And, ideally, you w ill outgrow n them. At some point you shoul d be able to
read through a Condorito or one of the crime, w estern, romance, or cartoon
booklets w ithout needing a dictionar y or jotting.
You'll
be a man, my son. You might still find that attempting
literature is fatiguing, but there are books for the
nominally grow n up.
My second major teacher w as Mil Chistes. The four-eyed
Thousand Jokes dude, a sort of Alfred E. New man of
Mexican gags and cheesecake, had a great little comic
packed w ith jokes of all quality and the cream of Mexican
artists' renderings of sexy w omen.
Unfortunatel y (and
inexplicably) the magazine w ent out of print, but it w as so
popular that there are still thousands of copies around to
be had, not to mention all over the Internet
It w as Mil Chistes w ho brought me to Slang. I w as running
into w ords and usage that made no sense and had no dictionar y explanation.
Asking people about them w as leadi ng me into the territory of national guy
talk and popul ar idioms. So if you w ant to be au currant w ith hip people,
check out this too-lucky sex maniac and get a slang dictionar y like, need I
say, my ow n Mexican Slang 101.
By the w ay, I am mentioning picking up cheap comics and children's books
at new sstands and bookstores, but if you have not yet moved to your
Hispanic goal countr y, you can access a great deal of this over the Internet.
Google up any of the titles mentioned and you w ill probabl y find pages or
strips to read.
There are tw o more series of books, both w ith pictures but both much more
intellectuall y and culturally significant, that
I w ill w holeheartedly recommend. Mafalda,
created by the Ar gentine cartoon genius
Quino is a unifying actor in Latin America.
If you become familiar w ith the delightful
little girl in the comic strip you'll find that
ever ybody is familiar w ith her, her quotes,
family and friends. She is the Peanuts of
Hispanic Ameri ca.
But more grow n up.
Draw n during Ar gentina's turbulent sixties,
she is alw ays quick w ith a social or political
quip, in addition to endeari ng kid humor.
Her books are avai lable throughout the w orld and are richl y suggested as
both Spanish- learning tools and cultural education. She's got a ver y sw eet
movie , too.
The Mexican artist/author Rius is even more sociall y significant.
dozens of books are funny, but are almost alw ays
of political or societal import. Rius is anti-Yanqui
(sometimes absurdl y so), ultra-leftist, crusader
against sexism, racism, and homophobia. He even
has books on how to eat in a more healthy manner
invaluable to Mexican men w ho w ould never pay
attention to anybody else on the matter. He is
rabidly anti-Church, and his clever cartoon books
exposing the Virgin of Guadeloupe scam are
meticulous and damning. A few of his titles, like
Marxism For Beginners, are avail able in English
and on Am azon, but most are only in Spanish and
a decidedly interesti ng intermediate learning tool,
agree w ith his politics or not.

His

Even though Spanish is so easy to learn from reading, there's nothing like
hearing it out loud. And the best w ay to hear it is in rhyme. The reason so
many elementary teachi ng materials are in rhyme is
because it makes things easier to remember: w hen
you learn a song you never forget it, and you'd be
surprised how often you refer back to lyrics for the
w ay to use a tense or construction.
So the recommendati on is to get music and listen
to it; not such bad homew ork. And to make it come
faster and more efficiently, you w ant to have
access to the lyrics, preferably in both languages,
though of course is you have the Spanish letra
you can alw ays translate them one w ay or the
other.
In pre-Internet days the hot set up w as looking in
music and bookstores for Cancioneras that listed song lyrics, sometimes
w ith chords or staffs for the melody. Especiall y hand are the Guitarra
Facile series if you play guitar or keyboards.
Linda Ronstadt's "Canciones De Mi Padre" records are perfect for this
perfect: popular in Mexico (they are old timey Mexican songs know n to all
generations), easily avail able in the US A, and both
come w ith lyrics in Spanish and good English
translati ons.
But anything you can find the lyrics for w ill w ork, and
that means almost everything in these days of
Googl e. Search for the name of the song w ith the
term letra and you're sure to turn up the w ords for
w hatever songs you like to listen to.
Type in
translate from Spanish and you w ill generally get a
site w here you can paste in the Spanish lyrics and
get a crude translation instantl y. And of course, you
can also use the ask around and w rite it in your notebook method. This is
one of the most useful and enjoyable w ays to learn, and also acquaint you
w ith the music of the country. If you hear songs you like on the radio, or on
videos in restaurants or clubs, find out the name and artist and look up the
w ords.
The next step should be obvious.. . start w atching films and TV show s. You'll
find that in Mexico movies are much cheaper than in the U.S. And that most
of the films are subtitl ed in Spanish. (Not
children' s films, and you w ant to look at the
cartelera of chains like Cinepol is for SUB
rather than DOB or ESP for films dubbed
into or filmed in Spanish. You'll find that the
subti tles aren't perfect translations: they are
greatl y cleaned up for one thing, and
sometimes have errors that can be a little
funny, or annoyi ng. But it's a great form of
immersion w ith training w heels.
The Internet offers a lot of good instructional
view ing, tooand you don't have to be in Mexico to do it. Netflix is w idely
use in Mexico for films and TV programs in
both languages. (Note many residents and
expatriates get Virtual Private Netw orks, so
they can w atch Netflix and other streaming
movie sites from both Mexican and U.S.
locations. YouTube is inval uabl e for
learning and searching for learn Spanish
and other terms can show you anythi ng
from songs to films to new s broadcasts. A
huge advantage is that you can pause and
replay in order to slow things dow n and
learn. You can even send links to friends
w ho speak Spanish and ask for translati ons
and explanations. And of course w atching a new s show also helps you get
the picture on the society and culture behind the language.
The advanced step w ould be to just w atch normal TV show s. If you can do
that and get most of w hat's going on, you're there: no longer learning but
just refining and getting more fluent and comprehensi ve.

CABO BOB'S
NOTORIOUS BOOKS
The s la ng book a ll Me x ic o k now s a bout, the
new book of jok e s a nd ve r y Me x ic a n for ms
of hum or .
P r oc la im e d a s fun, c ultur a l
guide s ,
big
tr ouble ,
a nd
jus t
pla in
ne ce s s ar y
for
tr a ve le r s ,
e x pa ts ,
a nd
s tude nts .
Le t' s put it this w a y... if yo u don' t ha ve
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e ve n le ar n S pa nis h?
Ava i l a b le in pa pe r
a nd e book .
C hec k ' em out, le t us k now how you lik e d
'e m .
M e x i c a n S l a n g 1 0 1 i s a u n i q u e b o o k t h a t r e ve a l s t h e hi p t a l k a n d o c c a s i o n a l l y
l ew d e l o q u e n c e o f t h e S p a n i s h c o m m o n l y s p o k e n i n M e x i c o a n d L a t i n
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"Mexico Mike" Nelson
Th i s b o o k i s n ' t a l i g h t w ei g ht g i m m i c k b u t a u s e f u l ,
i n si g h t f u l
guide
to
a
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p a d r i si m o !
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An d don' t be a s tr a nge r ...

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