Spanish is the most popular of the world’s Romance languages, which are languages that have their origins directly from Latin. The other Romance languages, by the way, are French, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian. Spanish is one of the most popular languages to learn because it is spoken in so many parts of the world and it is the official language of areas like Spain, Mexico, Central America, and most of South America. If you consider the number of speakers of the language, it is the fourth most spoken language out of the hundreds of languages spoken today. It is by far the most popular language studied as a foreign language in American universities. If you want to learn Spanish, you’ll have many people to practice with, whether they are native speakers or language learners like you.

Here are a few main ideas to help you get started learning Spanish. Spanish follows subject-verb-object sentence structure and word order, just like English. For example, in English and in Spanish you’d say “I study Spanish,” rather than “Spanish I study” or “Study I Spanish.” Its letters have their one and only sound (except for just a few of them), so spelling and pronunciation are easier than a lot of other languages. Spanish audio lessons, therefore, will be an excellent way to learn Spanish because generally if you can hear it, you can spell it, and if you can spell it, then you can say it. Since Spanish is spoken in different parts of the world, some accents are different for different areas. They are not so different that you wouldn’t be able to understand each other though. With a little practice, you’ll be able to tell who is from Spain, who’s from Mexico, who’s from Chile, etc. Keep an ear open, and you’ll learn to speak Spanish.