Language as a 'capacity' makes it seem to me that acquiring it is all about quantity rather than quality. Maybe I am looking for something superfluous in this thread, an optimized approach to acquisition rather than going out and just doing all I can, haphazardly or not...?
I have watched television in Spanish and, even with subtitles, found it extremely futile. It is like trying to catch a minnow with a toothpick - everything comes so overwhelmingly fast it really doesn't help me at all. I have also been listening to the Spanish channels in the car, typically 25 minutes/day and I am almost no better off than when I started 
. It feels futile to listen to a whole 3-4 minute song and catch 10-20 words.
As I said, you must approach language learning the same way you would approach the learning of a piece of music. Of course listening to TV the way you described is not going to bear any results. This would be the equivalent of sight-reading (laboriously and not very well) a new piece everyday and at the end of a month wondering how come you cannot play the piano.
Instead get a DVD. Select a 4 – 5 minutes scene. Now watch it repeatedly. Write down the script. Memorise it. Get the meaning of every word. Repeat it with the actors. Do this several times a day with the same scene. Do it several days.
consistently keep at it. Ask help from your girlfriend if you think you need it. Make sure you know that scene back to front before even thinking of moving to the next one. This may take as much as a couple of weeks on a single scene if you are completely ignorant of the language. Fortunately, language, like music, is very repetitive (otherwise no one would be able to master either), so when you move to the next scene it will take less time. By the time you finish going through 10 DVDs like that you should start to feel confident.
Now, get yourself a small notebook and pen. Then as you go through your day, try to say (in your mind) in Spanish, everything you say during your day. For instance, you catch the bus and ask for a return ticket. How would you say that in Spanish? If you don’t know, write it down in your notebook. We say pretty much the same things day after day. If you do this systematically for a couple of weeks, soon you will have a collection of useful, basic and practical communication sentences to get you 90% of what you need in your daily life. Again, ask your girlfriend to help you .
Don’t think of language as some rational subject that you must somehow “understand”. If that was the case children would never be able to learn it. Instead think of language as “magic spells” – chains of sound that make no sense, but which have the magical power to get you what you want,
if you say them right (and that means pronunciation and sentence structure). Most of the stuff we say makes no sense anyway (“Thank you” “How do you do?” “Good bye”, etc.).
And make no mistake:
It is all about memory.
The Hammer is absolutely right. The moment you learn a new sentence/word, you must apply it and say it/write it several times until it sinks in. In the beginning it will look impossible. But being systematic, consistent and persistent will get you there surprisingly quickly.
About memory, language is quite a bit more. I was talking with my friend's mom (who used to be a translator) and she says that English is all about hearing it and just reacting to it. Memory is too slow, it seems, to be of much use - you have to hear it and know it. As with Spanish, knowing the vocab. from flash cards is great, but when it comes to making a conversation, I'm slow as Bobs' snails .
This is partly because you are probably trying to make conversation by translating the question they are throwing at you into English, figuring out how you would answer it in English, and then translating it back into Spanish. All this takes a lot of time. To be fluent you must overcome this back and forth translating. You must understand the language on its own terms – like a native speaker does.
Consider this exchange:
What
is your favourite colour?
My favourite colour is red.
Notice how most of the answer was already in the question (I underlined the common bits). So, you must ask your girlfriend to help you in designing this sort of drill: She asks a question, and you have to answer by throwing back at her most of the words in the question, without translating them at all. This is the beginning of fluency training in conversation. Take this principle and expand it for all the main questions (when, where, who, how, etc.) Of course no one speaks like that in real life, but that is not the point. The point is to get rid of the translating habit. Incidentally, this is far easier in Spanish than in English, since they do not use the verb “to do” as an auxiliary to make questions and negatives.
It seems to me that my stumbling block IS vocabulary - maybe I'm taking it too literally, but when I come to say something, I just don't know enough words to say what I want to - typically equal numbers of 'meaningful' and 'meaningless' words. I can usually piece sentences together with this 'glue' of 'meaningless' words, but I don't have enough substance ('meaningful' words) to make anything.
The secret here is, again, to be consistent and systematic. Don’t try to master everything in one go. Start with one single area and stick to it for as long as it takes to completely master it. For instance, food. Just learn the name of foodstuff. Learn how to order food in a restaurant. Learn how to compliment/criticise food. Learn how to read recipes. You get the idea. In the mean time watch cookery programs. Read restaurant criticism. Go to Spanish restaurants and try to put in practice what you have learned. When you feel confident in this area, move on to the next area, for instance, illnesses. How to talk to a doctor about symptoms. How to describe what you are feeling, etc. You will notice that much that you learned in the food area can be applied in the illnesses area, so as you go systematically through different areas, the time spent to learn the totality of vocabulary/ways of talking becomes less and less. Suddenly and perhaps surprisingly you will find your self fluent in Spanish.
What do you mean by different 'realities'? Is this something like the gestalt of each language, how it feels when used?
This will take too long to explain. But I mean it literally. Spanish speaking people live in a world of their own. English speaking people likewise, and so on. If you were to perceive the world through a Spanish speaking senses, your mind would blow. And vice-versa. Sometimes people call it “cultural shock”, but it has little to do with culture. As your relationship progress you may experience what I am talking about (maybe you have already experienced it). If this aspect of language interests you, check out Benjamin Whorf's work ("We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language. Language is not simply a reporting device for experience but a defining framework for it.")
PS - She actually is my girlfriend which makes me want to learn it even more! But I don't drink, so this may be the best learning catalyst I will have
This is a great opportunity. Don’t miss it. When you divorce, she will get the children, the car and the house, but at least you will have learnt a new language
(which is more that can be said for same language marriages
).
PPS - One more thing - do you (to all who has English as a secondary language) still feel more at home with your native language or is English equally comfortable? Will it always seem slightly foreign to you?
Having lived in the UK for over 20 years, I am completely at home with the language to the point where I dream in English (when you start dreaming in Spanish you know that you are there). In fact, and related to the point I made above about different realities, I very often – depending on the subject - prefer to express myself (both in thinking and in writing) in English than in my native language. since English is better at describing what I want to convey (and the reverse is true as well)
Best wishes,
Bernhard.
Topic: Best method of learning a new language?