I see that our copy of Breaking Out of Beginner’s Spanish, by Joseph J. Keenan, is beginning to show signs of age. We’ve had it for several years, and recently Kelly and I had a friendly squabble over whose bookshelf it should be on. I won, but only because I wanted to do this review… We both refer to it at times, and I like to pick it up when I have a spare moment.
You can tell if it is for you very simply…
Just read this short example, from a chapter called “Cranking Up Your Spanish,” where he gives us a couple dozen words and phrases we can use to start sentences. Does it make you want the book?
Así Que
Generally, this is the phrase you need to translate “so” at the start of a sentence. “So you wanna be a rock ‘n’ roll star?” would be expressed as ¿Así que quieres ser una estrella de rock? “So you’re really leaving me?” would be ¿Así que de verdad me vas a dejar? And so on. Note that así que does not, however, mean “So what?” For that, use ¿Y qué ?
This is typical of the many entries.
What’s so great about this book? Keenan’s writing combined with his knowledge! He writes as one who has been through all the agonies of starting to learn a language. Here is a bit from the introduction, which he admits a few pages later was more or less his own experience:
You’re on a bus, heading south. You’ve crossed the U.S. border and entered Latin America. English is behind you; a continent of Spanish lies ahead. Your pocket-size Spanish-English dictionary sits on your lap within easy reach. For practice, you look up the Spanish words for everything you see or think of: “bush,” “barbed wire,” “roadrunner,” “driver.”
You made yourself understood at the ticket counter and double-checked the bus’s destination with a matronly passenger, but you had some trouble telling the driver you wanted to keep your bag with you instead of sticking it in the vehicle’s luggage compartment.
You’ve held a brief conversation with the young man next to you, who asked your name, your travel plans, and (you think) your favorite major-league team. You sit back and close your eyes.
Already you’re a little tired. How many weeks or months of speaking like a small, semiliterate child can I stand? you wonder.
The chapters are written in sections, so you can learn a bit at a time. In fact, part of the reason Kelly and I haggled over who would keep the book was that we are both putting some of the expressions into our flashcard programs.
I could tell you about the chapter on ten ways to avoid being taken for a gringo, or the one called “the twilight zone” about the subjunctive, but I think I’ve made a pretty good case for this book. It’s at Amazon… click on the image to go there:
