Best book to learn survival Spanish

I know everyone writes that everyone in Panama talks English, but in reality outside tourist services very few people speak it well. If you are popping on a plane in a few weeks time, you might want to pick up one of the two below. It all depends on your manner of learning.

If you like to sit down and read about it like I do. Madrigal’s Magic Key to Spanish is fantastic. It is a bit dated, but it really doesn’t matter. I know many expats in Panama who have learnt all their Spanish through a combination of this book and using it on the street. What makes it so different? It simplifies the Spanish incredibly. After one chapter you can already have simple conversations.

An example of simplification: She rightly so noticed that the tense you use most when talking to people is past tense. So for the first few chapters she ignores present tense.

Also in Panamanian Spanish (like in much of Latin America) you mainly talk in Usted, which is a polite way of saying you. The neat thing about this is that verbs bend the same for Usted as they do for 3rd party. So you only really need to learn Yo and Usted/El/Ella, which immediately cuts the learning curve.

She also spends a lot of time on building vocabulary based on similarities in Spanish and English, with lots of little handy rules.

Buy it and read the first few chapters before you arrive in Panama, then keep it next to the bed side table at your hotel and read a bit before going to bed or going out in the morning. You will do just fine.

Many people have recommended to me the Pimsleur series as being fantastic. I haven’t tried them myself, but people do tend to get fanatical about them. These come on CD’s and you simply listen to them in your car. There is no book that comes with it, which makes them unique and also I guess perfectly suitable for learning while commuting.

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