spanish comics Archives - Learn Spanish with Andrew

Learn Spanish from Garfield! Spanish Garfield Comics Now Available as E-book and Paperback

Andrew — Wed, 07 Sep 2016 03:20:17 +0000

I was contacted some months ago by the publisher of this, Amp Comics (check out their site there, they have other similar stuff if you like this), who had seen my post about learning Spanish from comics and knew I was a Garfield fan (have been since I was about 7 or 8, easily my favorite comic), and wanted to send me a couple copies for review. I said “sure, go ahead” and have been meaning to write something up for a few months now because it’s something I know a lot of people would like, it’s very much “what you see is what you get” (it’s just…Garfield comics in Spanish, that’s it), and it’s quite affordable (about $7 on Amazon for either the paperback or e-book).

Now, as I mentioned in that post of mine above that I linked to, you can read tons of (Spanish and English) Garfield comics online for free at GoComics.com, but I really like having a physical paperback version of most books and this is definitely one of them. First of all, comics don’t work well in an e-book format for numerous reasons: differing screen sizes and resolutions means they’ll display properly on some people’s devices and not others, the comics in this book are all in color and many e-readers are black-and-white only, and it’s just nice to have a physical copy to hold in your hands many times. Some books are actually better as e-books, however this is not one of them (to be fair, I haven’t viewed the e-book version so I don’t know how good/bad it is but I know it won’t look as nice on my black-and-white Kindle as it does in color hard copy in front of me).

So far I’m perfectly happy with my copy in terms of the physical quality of it: color, pictures, alignment, paper weight, durability, etc. are all very good. I’ve been reading it for several months and it’s held up just fine (no pages falling out, no spine failure, etc.).

As I noted in my post about using comics in general, they’re typically great for beginners (or those of us more advanced but who don’t want to exert a lot of effort e.g. at bedtime) because they use very simple language, are short, and funny. Plus, there are several pictures per comic which act as visual memory aids with which you’ll associate any new words you learn – Spanish in the context of a funny comic (or movie or TV show, which is why I wrote a book about how to learn Spanish using such things) is much more likely to be remembered than Spanish in the context of a textbook or mere flashcard or something. Context matters.

Anyway, I just thought I’d quickly share this with you as it’s something I thought some of you would like and it’s very cheap if you want it. Let me know what you think! Also… If you thought the above was at all useful and you want to learn (or are learning) Spanish, please give me a chance and read what I have to say about my book below! Thank you so much for checking out my blog and I hope you’ve enjoyed my writing.

I learned to speak conversational Spanish in six months using TV shows, movies, and even comics: I then wrote a book on how you can, too

I have a whole method and a book I wrote about it called The Telenovela Method where I teach you how to learn Spanish from popular media like TV shows, movies, music, books, etc. that you can all find online for free. It was the #1 new release in the Spanish Language Instruction section on Amazon for nearly a month after it came out and currently has 17 reviews there with a 4.9/5 stars average. It’s available for $7.99-$9.99 for the e-book version depending on who you buy it from (Kindle version on Amazon is now $7.99) and $16.99 for the paperback (occasionally a bit cheaper, again, depending on who you buy it from).

It’s currently available in both e-book and paperback from:

Cheers,
Andrew

The post Learn Spanish from Garfield! Spanish Garfield Comics Now Available as E-book and Paperback appeared first on Learn Spanish with Andrew.

Learn Spanish with comics! Do you like Garfield, Calvin & Hobbes, Cathy, Foxtrot, Marmaduke, etc.? I’ve got something for you!

Andrew — Sun, 20 May 2012 03:03:18 +0000

I just love this so much, it’s so much fun and to me that is by far the most important factor when learning a language: it must be fun! If it’s not fun then you, regardless of how determined you initially were, eventually get bored, lose focus, and give up. And what could be more fun than some goofy comics like Garfield (my favorite) or Calvin and Hobbes or something like that, right? Hmmm, can you find Spanish versions of these comics? You can. Online? Yes. It…costs money, doesn’t it? …..Nope! That’s the best part: online and free, so you’re just all out of excuses now aren’t you? Ok, here’s where to find them:

My favorite site, by far, is GoComics.com. They have 33 major comic strips in Spanish, including some serious heavy hitters such as: Garfield (my favorite!), Calvin and Hobbes (very close second place to Garfield), FoxTrot, Cathy, Heathcliff, Ziggy, and many more.

Additionally, there’s this very cool online comic series that I particularly like because it’s designed for language-learners and clicking the speech bubble gives you the English translation, very nifty.

How to use it

Simple, just read along, look up what you don’t know, note it (on flashcards or in a SRS such as Anki), then reread from start to finish making sure you can understand it all. I also recommend you speak what you’re reading out loud–if you have any questions about how to pronounce something, just go to Forvo where you can hear a native speaker (usually multiple native speakers) pronounce a word for you. I recommend you have SpanishDict and Google Translate pulled up along with Anki, or have your flashcards and a Spanish/English dictionary at hand as you’re reading.

If you run into anything that you still can’t make sense of using those two tools, try just Googling the term itself (as in, “what does [phrase/word] mean?”), check with Urban Dictionary for any slang, or post a question on the WordReference forums if all else fails. Again: speak. Seriously, once you’ve deciphered the whole sentence and can understand it, read it out loud. I also like to go back and do this with each comic once I’ve deciphered the whole thing and can understand it (whether you want to be this fastidious or not is up to you, but definitely do at least read aloud each sentence).

That’s it. I really hope you have fun and learn a ton of Spanish with this, and please let me know what you think in the comments, if you have any questions, or if there’s anything I can help you with, also… If you thought the above was at all useful and you want to learn (or are learning) Spanish, please give me a chance and read what I have to say about my book below! Thank you so much for checking out my blog and I hope you’ve enjoyed my writing.

I learned to speak conversational Spanish in six months using TV shows, movies, and even comics: I then wrote a book on how you can, too

It’s currently available in both e-book and paperback from:

Cheers,
Andrew

The post Learn Spanish with comics! Do you like Garfield, Calvin & Hobbes, Cathy, Foxtrot, Marmaduke, etc.? I’ve got something for you! appeared first on Learn Spanish with Andrew.

Learning Spanish with Comics

Andrew — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 23:12:48 +0000

I’ve got a short guest post here from someone whose site I’ve recommended before (I put it under my recommended links section in the sidebar), I’ll let him explain what they do:

At eLanguageSchool.net we are teaching people how to learn Spanish with
Comics. You can read the comic in Spanish, then click the speech
bubbles to reveal the English translation. So far we have gotten very
positive feedback that it is a useful tool to practice reading
Spanish.

The entire project is a Creative Commons project, and we are looking
for volunteers to help translate and make the comics interactive. Here
are the steps involved to make what you see.

Step 1: Someone translates the comics from English, into Spanish (and
other languages). The translators simply write the translation on a
text document with one line per speech bubble, and a line between
pages.

Step 2: Someone opens up the comic book pages in an image editor, and
cuts out the speech bubbles and whites out the text. That way they are
just blank speech bubbles.

Step 3: Someone takes the translation, and fits them into the speech
bubbles, again in a text editor.

Step 4: Someone takes the translated speech bubbles, and overlays them
with the the original comic book page. This involves finding the exact
horizontal and vertical position to perfectly overlap the speech
bubbles.

You can see the finished result on the website. So far, we have
translated the first chapter of the comic into Spanish and French. If you would
like to volunteer in any of those steps, please email me, James, at
JDDunn9 – at – gmail.com.

I learned to speak conversational Spanish in six months using TV shows, movies, and even comics: I then wrote a book on how you can, too

I have a whole method and a book I wrote about it called The Telenovela Method where I teach you how to learn Spanish from popular media like TV shows, movies, music, books, etc. that you can all find online for free. It was the #1 new release in the Spanish Language Instruction section on Amazon for nearly a month after it came out and currently has 17 reviews there with a 4.9/5 stars average. It's available for $7.99-$9.99 for the e-book version depending on who you buy it from (Kindle version on Amazon is now $7.99) and $16.99 for the paperback (occasionally a bit cheaper, again, depending on who you buy it from).

It's currently available in both e-book and paperback from:

Cheers,
Andrew

The post Learning Spanish with Comics appeared first on Learn Spanish with Andrew.