Day 5 of my experiment to see how much Spanish I can learn for free in 33 days.  A Sunday, normally a day of rest, but today for me in the middle of my experiment - a day of rest.  Mmmmm yesterday I was harping on about how I was going to use the time to get ahead of the game, especially as I am off to Amsterdam tomorrow for the day on business, and yet today has been pretty much a day of rest.

Last night I went to my next door neighbours' birthday party (happy birthday Tim) with my girlfriend.  We didn't have a late night, I don't drink so I certainly wasn't hung over, but we decided to have a lie in this morning.  Got up had a leisurely breakfast, took the dog for a walk, came back had a leisurely brunch and then snoozed on the sofa for an hour and all of a sudden it is 4.00pm!

Now I didn't ignore my Spanish during that time because whilst I was cooking breakfast (hey I am a modern kind of guy and a great cook even if I do say so myself ) I had my ipod on listening once more to the great podcasts from Jade and Carla.  Then during our walk I had my girlfriend test me on what I had learnt.  Not only that, during quiet moments I went over some of the dialogues from the BBC in my head.  I also promised my girlfriend that I would try some husky Spanish pillow talk (she thinks the Spanish accent is sexy) but asking to see her passport and checking what her favourite drink at lunchtime is seemed to lessen any potential seductive effects!

So today has not been a complete waste of time.  The enforced break from the learning will be good for me - it will keep me fresh and it will give time for my brain to integrate and sort what it has learnt so far.

Whilst we were out walking I started getting a little philosphical about language learning (me being an expert of course after just 5 days of Spanish!) and was trying to explain to my girlfriend one of those lightening strikes of intellectual brilliance that we all get occasionally.  The point I was trying to make was about the approach to learning a language.  I am taking quite a piecemeal and a bit of a scatter gun approach by cherry picking free websites and resources from the internet.  So the language learning is not structured, certainly not in the conventional language learning sense anyway.

If you compare what I am doing to a structured program in an evening class or paid for audio series then I am all over the place.  However the distinction that I made in my moment of inspiration is that I am discovering the language through need and experience instead of taking a logical, academic step by step approach.  I tried to convince my girlfriend with an analogy of building a house.  An academic approach might build the house brick by brick, maybe starting at one corner and then building up stage by stage.  I felt what I was doing was building the same house but starting by putting in a scaffolding and that I might build separate bits at different times.  We would both end up in the same place (finished house) but my route was more interesting and enjoyable

I might for example start with the chimney and then do the floor of the upper bedroom, maybe followed by the door frame to the garage.  Ever logical my lovely girlfriend pointed out that it was a stupid way to build a house and that you would not start with the chimney.  My analogy fell flat there!  I think I will just stick to learning as much as I can and then wax lyrical when I have a bit more experience under my belt!

So after I packed my girlfriend off back to her house I started to have a look at learning how to count in Spanish.  A very important part of the language because knowledge of the numbers will help with dates, the time and prices.  I also think that it is a great place to start with a new language because it is quite easy to quickly become fluent in that area.  Most of us understand how numbers work in our own language and so all we are doing is learning to express what we already know slightly differently.  Then once we learn the numbers and start picking them out from the tirade of relatively unintelligible sounds when we engage with a native speaker, the fog that is the barrier to understanding what is being said starts to lift ever so slightly.

So I had a quick look around the internet to see what was there and found these sites.  First of all take a look at his one that ends up with a proud rendition of the Costa Rican nattional anthem.  You will get to learn the numbers from 1-20 and discover what every patriotic Costa Rican knows by heart.

There were many other sites to choose from and there was no single site that seemed to give everything that you need (audio, visual, interaction and completeness) and so you will need to use a few sites.  Here are the best of the bunch.

1.  To get a good overview of the cardinal numbers (1,2,3 4 etc) in Spanish then visit the relevant pages at for Spanish numbers at About.com.  To find out about the ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd, 3rd etc) then visit their Spanish Ordinal Numbers Page.  The information on these pages is just written but it is very comprehensive and will be a good reference piece when you are using the more interactive sites.

2.   You tube is a wonderful place for learning and so you can do a search for "counting in Spanish" and see what comes up.  I particularly liked the video on how to count in spanish from Professor Jason.  I liked that he put the numbers up on the screen as he taked about them.

3.  And finally this next site gives an interactive flash lesson on how to count in Spanish.  It is promoting someones CDROM program but it is not too in your face and you do get this great interactive resource for free.  You get the numbers 1-100, how they are pronounced together with the number combinations to allow you to use numbers up to a million.  Easy scrolling back and forth will have you fluent in numbers in no time.

So hopefully you will get some value from those great resources and pretty soon you'll be counting backwards in 3s from 18436 in Spanish with your eyes closed (not while driving though!)

Come back for some more tips on how to learn Spanish for free tomorrow.