Teach Yourself Instant Spanish - 2 Audio CDs and Book
Brand New : . 2
CDs and Book
35 minutes a day in 6 weeks you'll speak Spanish!
Teach Yourself Instant Spanish is the book for you if you want to speak basic Spanish immediately or if you have tried other courses without success. The carefully structured method targets only the most important vocabulary and grammar and gets you speaking straight away. The special learning programme takes only 35 minutes a day for six weeks and has fewer than 400 words for you to learn.
The grammar is explained in a no-nonsense way in simple English so you will not get bogged down by unnecessarily complicated structures that you will not need. There is lots of practice for you as you work through the course, and by using the flashcards provided at the end of the book and by memorizing the sentences in the 'learn it by heart' sections, you will find that you are speaking in whole sentences and with confidence right from the start.
The rules of pronunciation are simplified and are on accompanying CDs, so you will have a model to follow rather than trying to follow written
instructions.
About the Author
Elisabeth Smith, the author, is German and has taught French, German and Spanish at different levels all over the world for the past 30 years. She was the Chief Executive of a South African publishing house before moving to Spain, where she now lives for most of the year.
About the Spanish Language
Spanish (español ) or Castilian (castellano) is a Romance language originally from the northern area of Spain. From there, its use gradually spread inside the Kingdom of Castile, where it evolved and eventually became the principal language of the government and trade. It was later taken to Africa, the Americas and Asia Pacific when they were brought under Spanish colonial rule between the 15th and 19th centuries.
The language is spoken by between 322 and 400 million people natively, making Spanish the most spoken Romance language and possibly the second most spoken language by number of native speakers.
Today, it is one of the official languages of Spain, most Latin American countries and Equatorial Guinea. In total, 21 nations use Spanish as their primary language. Spanish is also one of six official languages of the United Nations.
Spaniards tend to call this language español (Spanish) when contrasting it with languages of other states, such as French and English, but call it castellano (Castilian), that is, the language of the Castile region, when contrasting it with other languages spoken in Spain such as Galician, Basque, and Catalan. This reasoning also holds true for the language's preferred name in some Hispanic American countries. In this manner, the Spanish Constitution of 1978 uses the term castellano to define the official language of the whole Spanish State
The name castellano is however widely used for the language as a whole in Latin America. Some Spanish speakers consider castellano a generic term with no political or ideological links, much as "Spanish" is in English. Often Americans use it to differentiate their own variety of Spanish as opposed to the variety of Spanish spoken in Spain, or vice-versa, to refer to that variety of Spanish which is considered as standard in the region.
Mexico has the world's largest Spanish-speaking population. Spanish is the second most widely spoken language in the United States and by far the most popular studied foreign language in U.S. schools and universities. Spanish is among the most popular foreign languages for study in the rest of the nations of the Anglosphere in general, where on top of the widespread use of English globally, the large number of additional countries and geographic territory that Spanish allows exploring is an attractive prospect for many people. Due to proximity, linguistic similarities, and trade reasons it is also a very popular second language in France, Italy, Portugal, and particularly the southern states of Brazil. It is estimated that the combined total of native and non-native Spanish speakers is approximately 500 million, likely making it the fourth most spoken language by total number of speakers. Global internet usage statistics for 2007 show Spanish as the third most commonly used language on the internet, after English and Chinese.
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