Spanish speakers recommend me...

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Chip

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Vacara said:
Chip why don't you try studying something in DR?, some extracurricular activities that will allow you to speak abundantly and get you in contact with Dominicans who speak properly.
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The only way I can take classes at the university is to enroll full time and worse if I want to focus on Spanish I have to work towards getting a degree in Spanish for the purpose of teaching... get that a gringo teaching Spanish in the DR, haha.

As far as speaking faster, no doubt I was nervious and had to do about 20 takes and therefore was more deliberate than normal. As I'm never in front of the camera no doubt my English would be as deliberate as well.

Also, I don't believe Dominicans have a problem understanding me for the most part or are maybe somewhat put off if I speak slower, rather I would like to increase my grammar and diminish my accent to the most minimal level as possible. As it is now, I speak a somewhat simple type of Spanish and rarely if ever "guess" as to how something should be said if at all possible; if I'm not 95% sure of how to describe something at any given moment I will use other words to get my point across correctly.

My goal for speaking would not necessarily to mimic Dominicans but the generic form of Spanish one sees a lot on CNN in Espa?ol(my favorite Spanish channel), some of them speak such pretty Spanish too, without real strong accents one way or the other, at least from my point of view.
 
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? bient?t

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badpiece33 said:
Chip, I would advise you to start meeting some women on Badoo.com or hi5.com and start conversating with them on MSN messenger and you will be learning to write and speak Dominican Spanish at light speed, but I believe your a married man and that would open a whole other can of worms. ;)
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ConverWHAT?

El Chip-Oh! I have yet to watch your video, but I'm looking forward to it. And again, going by your posts in Dominican Spanish, I'd say you are doing quite well.
 
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BlatinoNProud

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One of the best sites in my opinion would be livemocha.com. There are many different languages one can learn while helping others.
 
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El_Uruguayo

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If you really want to improve, check sites from outside the DR, forums, news, online radio. Variety is good, but Colombia would be a good bet, spain too, and hell if you want to get into some different styles, try argentina, or mexico. Not to dis the DR, but the internet is dominited by young people - young people who think its cool to mispell things. Don't drop your s, use the i, drop the d (as in hablao vs. hablado), basically don't do any colloquialisms until you're 100% in the language. Otherwise it will be hard to drop.
 
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Chip

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El_Uruguayo said:
If you really want to improve, check sites from outside the DR, forums, news, online radio. Variety is good, but Colombia would be a good bet, spain too, and hell if you want to get into some different styles, try argentina, or mexico. Not to dis the DR, but the internet is dominited by young people - young people who think its cool to mispell things. Don't drop your s, use the i, drop the d (as in hablao vs. hablado), basically don't do any colloquialisms until you're 100% in the language. Otherwise it will be hard to drop.
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Thanks. I'm actually using less colloquialisms than I did before, although I admit I still will barely if at all pronunce the "s" in some words. It's just that I have found if I speak really correctly the people here get confused, y pronto se funde to' - ie se finge que no me entiendan.
 
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El_Uruguayo

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Ok, that's good, you can get into those later, because using them now they'll stick, and be hard to remove, where if you try to speak the most proper spanish you can, that is what will stick. If you speak properly people shouldnt have problems in understanding you, the only thing I can see throwing people off are uncommon words, or verbs, or words or verbs that have different connotations or meanings in the DR than they do in other countries.

Also important to get a grammer book, with all the verbs and their tenses, and get to know when and how to to use them, and understand the differences between them. Get to know your irregular verbs too.

And probably one of the most important things to stress while you're reaching a more advanced level, is to have people correct your mistakes. Even if people have understood very clearly what you are talking about, if they notice a mistake, ask them to let you know. It's a good way of drilling the things that you need to correct into your head.


"ie se finge que no me entiendan."

Should be "se fingen que no me entienden"
 
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Chip

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El_Uruguayo said:
Ok, that's good, you can get into those later, because using them now they'll stick, and be hard to remove, where if you try to speak the most proper spanish you can, that is what will stick. If you speak properly people shouldnt have problems in understanding you, the only thing I can see throwing people off are uncommon words, or verbs, or words or verbs that have different connotations or meanings in the DR than they do in other countries.

Also important to get a grammer book, with all the verbs and their tenses, and get to know when and how to to use them, and understand the differences between them. Get to know your irregular verbs too.

And probably one of the most important things to stress while you're reaching a more advanced level, is to have people correct your mistakes. Even if people have understood very clearly what you are talking about, if they notice a mistake, ask them to let you know. It's a good way of drilling the things that you need to correct into your head.


"ie se finge que no me entiendan."

Should be "se fingen que no me entienden"
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El uraguayo, according to my sources, "la gente" can be singular or plural, hence I used the singular form.

Also, I'm at a fairly advanced level, after all I've been speaking Spanish almost ten years. My goal is to get rid of 95% of my accent and increase my vocabulary to at least the level of a private high school student here in the DR.
 
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jrhartley

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I could imagine that could get tiresome - someone telling you your mistakes everytime you speak lol, ok for the short term ,but you might end up punching someone lol
 
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El_Uruguayo

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True,

In my case, it wasn't so much corrections, but one of my buddies laughing at me, he found errors comical. He got a good charlie horse more than a few times.
 
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djlawlaw

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Chip if you consider your Spanish inadequate, then I am terrified to post a video of my Spanish.
 
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Chip

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Hey, great news. A son of one of my Dominican American friends suggested getting a tutor specializing in "lectura" to give me classes. I considered this before but though it was too expensive, but he says the going rate is only RD150 and hour. I think I can get a lot of benefit by going for a two hour class once a week.
 
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jrhartley

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you know that putting marbles in your mouth helps with the English accent,are there any tricks to get an Domincan-Spanish accent
 
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Chip

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jrhartley said:
you know that putting marbles in your mouth helps with the English accent,are there any tricks to get an Domincan-Spanish accent
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Seriously, a cousin of the family who had grown up with American missionaries told me the best thing to do to learn how to speak Spanish correctly was to loosen the toungue. I took it to heart so much so that the first few months I did it I had a drooling problem. :) I honestly think it helps because the sounds formed by an English mouth are not pure like Spanish. In order to be able to produce pure sounds one has to relax the mouth. this is another reason why drinking a little alcohol can be beneficial. :) Salud!
 
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Princesa777

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Anyone has advice to improve my 'r' sound. Its sounds kinda like a french-accent r, coming from the throat. I've been trying forever to make a nice rolling r, but its not working at all.
 
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