Is two years enough time to learn functional Spanish?

Spanish is a member of the Indo-European language family’s Ibero-Romance branch, which originated from many dialects of Vulgar Latin in Iberia following the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. The earliest Latin documents with hints of Spanish date from the 9th century in mid-northern Iberia, and the first formal literary use of the language occurred in the 13th century in Toledo, a prominent city in the Kingdom of Castile. Beginning in 1492, modern Spanish was introduced to the Spanish Empire’s viceroyalties, most prominently America, as well as colonies in Africa and the Philippines. It is also a Romance language, with about 500 million native speakers, the majority of which live in Spain and America. As a Romance script, Spanish is a descendant of Latin and, along with Sardinian and Italian, has one of the smallest degrees of difference from it (about 20%). About 75% of modern Spanish vocabulary comes from Latin, including borrowings from Ancient Greek. It has borrowed vocabulary from other languages, most notably French, Italian, Mozarabic, Portuguese, Galician, Catalan, Occitan, and Sardinian, as well as Quechua, Nahuatl, and other indigenous American languages.

Two years should be a good enough time to learn Spanish well enough to get around in a Spanish-speaking country. However, to be fluent you will have to work dedicatedly on learning Spanish the right way.

There are three keys to learning Spanish and really any language…

If you set yourself realistic, measurable, short and long term goals, plan your 2 years and study regularly, two years is more than sufficient time to learn any language. While the correct methodology will empower you in 6 months to a reasonable learning ability, not taking the correct measures might take you way more than 2 years, or it might even take forever.

You would need to spend time learning it every day. Earmark at least 5 hours a week to begin with gradually raising it to 10 and so on and so forth. Studying consistently! Learning on weekends will do no good as compared to learning every day. Identify the real need, the driving reason, your motivation or your passion to learn the language. Only a real passion, with lots of hard work, will be able to help you achieve your target goal. If you won’t be learning it every day, two or more years, nothing will be enough. Regularity is important. You can take an intensive course in the first month, get to a decent level, and then forget everything during the next 23 months if you don’t come back to the language!

Immerse yourself in a Spanish environment wherever you are. Create a small Spanish corner at home. Put up important pics with their Spanish names. Label all objects at home with the respective Spanish words so that you do not have to translate from your native language into Spanish and you can identify those objects with their respective Spanish names. 

Find yourself a conversation partner, somebody in and around your neighbourhood, who can talk to you in Spanish and help you improve your Spanish. If however, you are unable to find one I recommend you volunteer for Spanish community services to find a Spanish speaker who could help you or go shopping in a Spanish store, that would force to read labels in Spanish, besides talking to the staff in Spanish and who knows you may be able to get a Spanish speaker who is willing to help you improve your Spanish from the customers! 

If none of these work then I suggest you go online to sites such as conversationpartners, languagepartners, Hello Talk, Italki to find a conversation partner for yourself, who can help you improve your spoken language and correct you. 

Listen to Spanish music only, write a daily journal or diary in Spanish gathering all those words which are used in most common conversations every day. 

Listening is ALWAYS key, you could opt for reliable online audio resources such as audiobooks, Spanish podcasts, News, Radio, Music Playlists in Spanish and many more.

Join online courses such as Baselang to make a head start!

Start the first half of the year listening to the language in as many audio forms that you can lay your hands on, speaking the language, laying greater emphasis on proper speech and accent, and the rest half in learning to master speaking Spanish with the accent marks. 

Spanish is an easy to learn a phonetic language that should be able to inspire you to continue learning, pushing till your farthest end, exploring the best of your potential to speak, read, listen and write properly. These little victories will empower you to stay on track motivating you to stay connected with the language in some form or the other. Start the next half of the year intensively studying grammar. Spend the rest half mastering the Spanish accent or learning the Mexico-Spanish ‘dialect’! 

Further sharpen your learning with apps such as Duolingo, Google translate, etcetera. For tracking your progress you can use an app similar to ‘toggl’ to track your time on different tasks. 

Spanish is one of the United Nation’s six official languages, and it is also the official language of the European Union, the Organisation of American States, the Union of South American Nations, the Community of Latin American and the Caribbean States, the African Union, and several other international organisations. Along with English and French, it is one of the most widely learned foreign languages in the world. Despite having a significant number of speakers, Spanish is underrepresented in scientific writing and technology, though it is more prevalent in the humanities and social sciences. Furthermore, after English and Russian, Spanish is the third most commonly used language on internet websites.

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