re: Best way to learn Spanish in your spare time

Spanish is actually surprisingly easy -- while they have a wide variety of conjugations to mark the subject, tense and the verb they're missing a lot of things that English has that makes it harder.

For one: No comparatives/superlatives. "The best in the world" is "El mejor en el mundo". It's always just whatever thing you're talking about and "mas". So there's no faster, stronger, slower, fastest, strongest, slowest.

For two: Not as many synonyms. "Fast" is Proto-Germanic. "Quick" is Nordic. "Haste" is Gothic. "Rapid" is Latin. If you know the word is Latin, the chances of it being very similar in Spanish is much higher. (Observation, Observación)

Thirdly: Not many pesky suffixes and prefixes. English has over 1,200 of them, Spanish is around 200. So you take a word like: Law -- Outlaw, Inlaw, Bylaw. Outlawed, Lawless, Lawlessness, Lawlessly, Lawful, Lawfully, Unlawful, Unlawfully -- they don't really have this problem.

So now that we got the difficult shite about English out of the way, you want to learn Spanish quick:

Learn the verbs basic (unconjugated) forms. As long as the verb is correct, you'll probably be understood. For instance, if I say: "I go to the store in the future", even if it's wrong you understand it to be "I will go (am going) to the store".

So you get "Voy a la tienda en el futuro". It sounds brutish and stupid, but she'll understand.

Always build your vocabulary, learn your verbs and conjugations and you'll be strangling her because she's batshit crazy Latina in no time.

I actually did start using duolingo because of the suggestions in this thread.

Very good app. If HS Spanish class was like that I might have passed