Listening to learn Spanish Mp3s are an excellent way of learning Spanish. You can use them on your computer, an mp3 player or in your car.

There a many options available when choosing learn Spanish mp3 program. These programs all come with downloaded interactive audio lessons. This means they will get a native speaker to say a phrase in Spanish, then they will tell you what it means in Spanish. Then you will have to remember the word or phrase and repeat it in Spanish when the narrator tells you to.

This is a very effective and natural way of learning Spanish. You learn how to pronounce the words properly and it teaches you to think of the words in Spanish. It also teaches you how the words and phrases get used in a sentence.

Below are two of the best Learn Spanish Mp3 courses. They both cover a lot of content and are great value.

• Rocket Spanish
• Learning Spanish Like Crazy

I recommend Rocket Spanish for beginners and intermediates and people who are just getting started with learning Spanish. The other course, Learning Spanish Like Crazy, is more difficult and is suited to people who are serious about learning real Latin American Spanish.

These programs can both be downloaded and are high quality. They also both come with bonuses besides the main course which are a great extra.

They both have a level 2 course as well for more advanced learning. Rocket Spanish calls it there ‘Plus’ course and Learning Spanish Like Crazy calls it ‘Nivel Dos’.

Learning Spanish like Crazy is a course made by Patrick Jackson. It’s selling point is that it teaches ‘Real’ Latin American Spanish. I decided to give it a try and here is what I found.

What’s Included:

• Learning Spanish Like Crazy Level 1 (Lessons 1-30)
• Re mastered copy of FSI Spanish Level 1-4.
• ‘Los Dichos’ Common Spanish sayings.
• ‘Los Insultos – No Vulgares’ -Non vulgar insults
• ‘Los Insultos – Vulgares’ -Vulgar insults

Audio lessons review

The lessons from the main course are harder than most courses. This is because they introduce new things quickly and each lesson has a lot to learn. There is less time to respond with the correct answer compared to other courses, but still enough if you know the answer. A lot of the time they also get you to use the words that have just been taught to come up with new phrases that have never been spoken before. Which also makes it more difficult. This is not necessarily a bad thing because it teaches you to think and the lessons can be repeated until you become proficient.

The lessons use a similar technique to that of the Pimsleur courses where you learn a word or phrase then repeat it before the native speaker does. What makes Learning Spanish Like Crazy different is that it only teaches Spanish that Latin Americans actually use. Patrick the founder and creator wanted to make sure it was the same Spanish that is spoken every day in Latin America and the US. No one in Latin America says ‘Ablo Castallano’ ( I speak Castilian – a word for Spanish, which is what Pimsleur teaches).

Even though this is the level 1 course you will still get a lot out of it even if you have gone through the Pimsleur series. Especially if you get the LSLC level 2 course as well (which is available at 70% off if you buy it at the same time as level 1). This is because the content is different and more difficult than Pimsleur and a lot faster – more is crammed into each lesson.

Bonuses

Learning Spanish Like Crazy also comes with the Foriegn Service Institute (FSI) level 1-4 course that Patrick re-mastered at a recording studio. This is the same course developed by the FSI 40 years ago to train diplomates in Spanish. You will learn stuff that you wont find in the main LSLC course, however the FSI course is getting a bit dated now. The main value is with the main LSLC course.

Also included are ‘Los Dichos’ common sayings that Spanish speakers use. This is great because you learn the common phrases that wouldn’t make sense if you just translated them literally. Also you get a lesson each on Non-Vulgar and Vulgar insults. Patrick developed this because it can be important to recognise them being used by Spanish speakers.

Recommended for

I recommend Learning Spanish Like Crazy for people who want to become conversationally fluent or better in real Latin American Spanish. You will get a lot out of this course even if you have gone through the Pimsleur levels because the content is more difficult, plus you get the bonuses as well.

It is not recommended for people who just wants to learn travel Spanish or a few phrases for a holiday. This is because it is more difficult than most courses and it focuses more on how to use think and create sentences with conjugated verbs and possesive pronouns like mine, ours, yours, his, etc, rather than learning by focusing on phrases. It is recommend for serious learners.

Rocket Spanish is a course developed by Rocket Languages which claims to be able to teach you to Speak Spanish confidently and naturally within eight weeks.

I saw that there was a lot of interest online for Rocket Languages learn Spanish course, so I decided to give it a try. Here is what I found.

What’s included

Rocket Spanish has two separate levels that can be bought as a combo or separately, the premium course (level 1) and the plus course (level 2). Rocket Spanish teaches standard Spanish that can be understood whether you are in Spain or Latin America.

The premium course comes with 32 interactive audio that average 25 mins each, the MegaSpanish software program, lifetime access to the members only forum, 10 bonus audio tracks and 31 illustrated grammar and culture lessons.

The level 2 ‘plus’ course comes with 28 audio tracks with transcripts plus 28 illustrated grammar and cultural lessons.

The Audio Lessons

The audio tracks usually focus on a situation or theme that you are likely to encounter when traveling in a Spanish speaking country. For example one track you learn a conversation where you ask someone if you can take their photo and if they can take your photo. Learning these conversations will help you learn the ‘building block’ words of Spanish rather than focusing on memorizing nouns.

I found the audio tracks to be very good quality. The speakers in the course, Amy and Mauricio were very easy to listen to. They also have a personality which is different from some other courses which keeps it entertaining as well as preventing it from being boring.

MegaSpanish Software

Rocket Spanish comes with a program called MegaSpanish which includes three learning games. These are MegaVocab, MegaAudio and MegaVerbs. These were a great addition to the audio tracks for building vocabulary and helping to remember the words taught in the audio tracks.

Grammar and Culture lessons

Rocket Spanish also includes grammar and cultural lessons that come in a pdf. There are also audio lessons that go along with what is inside the ebook. Mauricio explains the grammar in english then says it in Spanish so you know how it is pronounced.

This is a great addition that teaches important aspects of Spanish grammar. It is best to go through the main part of the course before this grammar section though. This is because you will naturally pickup a lot of grammar in the conversations of the main course.

Value

I found this course included a lot of value for its price. Rocket Spanish is less than half the price of Pimsleur level one and has roughly the same length of content in the main audio course. However with Rocket Spanish, you also get the ten bonus tracks, the grammar and culture lessons and the MegaSpanish software. You also get life time access to the download area, members lounge and forum.

Recommended for

Rocket Spanish is ideal for learners at a beginner or intermediate stage who don’t know a lot of Spanish. It makes an excellent first Spanish course or if you only plan on getting one course then this is highly recommended.

The Spanish language traces its history back to its roots in vulgar Latin, a variety of Latin that was influenced by indigenous languages of the Iberian Peninsula where it evolved. The Iberian Peninsula consists of modern day Portugal and Spain.

While the Iberian Peninsula was under Roman Rule in the 19 BC, its became known as Hispania by the Romans. The Iberians began to learn Latin from the Roman traders and settlers that came to trade and settle in the area. When the Roman’s classical Latin mixed with the indigenous languages of the Iberians, a language called Vulgar Latin emerged. Vulgar Latin was still very similar to classical Latin but added words from the indigenous languages of Iberian Peninsula.

Latin remained the official language of Hispania until around 711 AD when Arabic-Speaking Islamic groups from North Africa called ‘Moors’ conquered the region beginning from the southern peninsula. The Moors had almost entirely conquered the Iberian Peninsula by 718 AD when the Reconquista began.

The Reconquista (a Spanish and Portuguese word for Reconquest) was a period of 800 years in the middle ages that began in the immediate aftermath of the Moorish conquest of the Iberian Peninsula in 718 AD. The Reconquista was made up of several Christian Kingdoms originally from the Iberian Peninsula that succeeded in retaking (and repopulating) the peninsula from the Arabic-speaking Moors, concluding in 1492.

As the Reconquista moved from North to South, the Christian Kingdoms brought their Latin Dialects with them, including a particular variety that had originated in the north called Castilian. Castilian almost completely absorbed and replaced other provincial dialects as it was spread to southern and eastern regions. At the same time it borrowed hugely from Moorish Arabic and today there is an estimated 4000 arabic words in modern spanish.

The first step to standardizing modern Spanish based on the Castilian dialect, was in the 13th century by King Alfonso X of Castile. He assembled scribes at his court and supervised their writing, in Castilian. They wrote original works and also transcribed extensive works on history, astronomy, law and other fields of knowledge.

The Castilian dialect of Spanish gained wider acceptance during the reign of the Catholic monarchs Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon, who completed the Reconquista of Spain in 1492 by pushing the Moors from their last stronghold in the southern city of Granada. Isabella and Ferdinand made Castilian the official dialect in their kingdom.

The same year the Moors were defeated in 1492, a Spanish scholar named Antonio de Nebrija wrote a a book entitled Gramática de la lengua castellana. It is credited with being the first ever book to study and attempt to define, the grammar and rules of any Romance language including Spanish.

The Spanish Royal Academy was founded in 1713, largely with the purpose of preserving the “purity” of the language. The Academy published its first dictionary in six volumes over a period from 1726–1739, and its first grammar in 1771, and it continues to produce new editions of both from time to time. Today, each of the Spanish-speaking countries has an analogous language academy, and an Association of Spanish Language Academies was created in 1951.