It’s a small place with a big welcome. My name is Joaquín Santiponce. Below is the English-Spanish Grammar Book for which I created this website, by which I promised to give continuous support to all those who buy and use the book.

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Welcome to Iberian Spanish, the website, a continuation of Iberian Spanish, the book. If you have reached here through the link in the grammar book, thank you for the patronage; And to all those who have used this book, your honest review will be highly appreciated.

Please avail yourself of anything useful herein and use the ASK-JOAQUIN page to ask me any questions about the Spanish you’re learning. Like I promised in the book, I will be glad to continue here what I teach in the book.

I have also written some other books you might be interested in. Please go to the Shop to have a look

I repeat what I wrote at the beginning of the grammar book:

The first and most important thing you must have to learn a language effectively is PASSION – passion in your heart and passion in your soul; passion for the language you are about to learn. Do I mean interest? That’s right! That’s what I mean. Do I mean enthusiasm? That’s right! That’s what I mean.

In other words, you must be very interested in that language before you begin. You must be very hungry for that language before you begin, hungry enough to devour that language like a hungry lion devours its meat.

The next thing you need to successfully learn a language is the language learning materials, most importantly, a teach-yourself grammar book and a dictionary. I have seen a great number of grammar books in my time, and I disagree with the teaching methods in quite a number of them. A grammar book must begin with the foundation of the linguistic edifice – the alphabet, from where the course expands. The student must have a full Iberian Spanish knowledge of the building blocks of words before bringing those words together to form phrases and sentences. Then you need a good dictionary to learn the meaning and etymology of words. Give me these two things and let me live among a people that speak that language, preferably the natives, and I will speak that language well in a few weeks. In this scenario, I do not need a teacher. A teacher is necessary only when you live among people that do not speak the language or when you study the language in a formal institution like a University for the purpose of some paper qualification.

The next thing you need to learn a language successfully and fast is perseverance, insistence, continuous learning. In other words, read the grammar book over and over again, practice what it teaches, refer to the dictionary to learn vocabulary. Be inquisitive. Desire to know how to say everything you see in the new language you are learning. Do not be lazy. Try to beat what I call the dictionary fatigue. You open a dictionary and learn the meaning of a word and, in a few minutes, you have forgotten the meaning of the word. You want to look it over again but you feel lazy about it and you forget it, telling yourself you’ll do it next time. That is dictionary fatigue. Experience says the chances of you remembering to look up that word again are almost zero, and that is why I say you need passion in your heart and passion in your soul, the passion that kills dictionary fatigue and gives you the strength to open the dictionary a million times a day, unfailingly whenever it is necessary, whenever you see something around you or in a book and you want to know how to say it in the new language.

Possess all these qualities and you will speak any language fairly well in two weeks. I say so because, with these same qualities, I spoke a number of languages fairly well each in two weeks. That was a long time ago. Then you need the rest of your life to perfect your language.

In the world of languages, experts generally agree that a period of three months is enough for any language learner to speak the language fairly well. But I will quote myself, “with passion in your heart and passion in your soul, with a good grammar book and a good dictionary, and living among a people that speak the language, or with a good teacher, you will speak a language fairly well in two weeks.”

Three months? That’s what you need to get your first degree in the language.

Like I mentioned in the book, I hope you’re using it with a pocket English-Spanish-English dictionary. I even forgot to mention the online dictionary. You have it in your laptop and you have it in your smart phone. It will be of immense help. It will accelerate your mastering of the language.