Dec 15

S-DOC: Spanish Classes in New York City

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J-DOC, C-DOC, S-DOC, A-DOC and K-DOC are recurring features written by Friend Of JET, Jon Hills, who maintains the blog for Hills Learning (www.hillslearning.com). Hills Learning is a NY-based language learning center that offers group and private Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Thai, Arabic and Spanish classes.

Spanish Class listing can be found at: Spanish Classes NYC

Congratulations on choosing to learn the Spanish language! In New York City, there’s a variety of Spanish classes offered from a variety of institutions. What this article does is discuss learning Spanish, and some similarities that Spanish has with Japanese (Assuming most people on this website have been exposed to Japanese).

First of all, why learn Spanish? If you live in New York, there’s an honest answer: a very large amount of people speak it. It’s estimated that about 25% of New Yorkers have Spanish as their native language (and you can multiply that by whatever population estimate for New York you prefer).

Now to approach Spanish from a Japanese perspective. Surprisingly enough the vowel sounds in Japanese can also be found in Spanish, in fact they’re identical. AIUEO all have identical matches in Spanish, so those years you’ve been speaking and using Japanese have gotten you prepared to use some of the vowel sounds in Spanish.

I know what you’re thinking, Japanese is such a different language than Spanish, why would I bother with learning this language? Well keep in mind because you’re reading this article you speak English so the grammar patterns will be similar. Also probably as most of you have experienced the resources for keeping up with Japanese when you live in New York are limited, versus Spanish has public tv stations, radio, and many other facets.

The most important thing I’ll end with is that surprisingly enough, when you develop your ability to speak one language, it actually enables you to speak another language easier. I think the confidence that you develop when you find a voice in a second language adds to your confidence to continue to build on this with a third language. I wish all of you the best of luck in your language pursuits! Please feel free to ask any questions.