Spanish Step by Step

by Charles Berlitz

Read it, speak it, understand it! This contemporary approach enables students of all ages to learn conversational Spanish without frustration.

Genres: Language, Spanish Literature

352 pages, Paperback

First published May 26, 1980

About the author

Born in NYC, Berlitz was the grandson of Maximilien Berlitz, who founded the Berlitz Language Schools. As a child, Charles was raised in a household in which (by father's orders) every relative & servant spoke to Charles in a different language. He reached adolescence speaking eight languages fluently. In adulthood, he recalled having had the delusion that every human spoke a different language, & wondering why he didn't have his own like everyone else. His father spoke to him in German, his grandfather in Russian, his nanny in Spanish.
He began working for the family's Berlitz School of Languages, during college breaks. The publishing house, of which he was vice president, sold, among other things, tourist phrase books & pocket dictionaries, several of which he authored. He also played a key role in developing record & tape language courses. He left the company in the late 1960s, not long after he sold the company to publishing firm Crowell, Collier & Macmillan. He graduated magna cum laude from Yale Univ.
Berlitz was a writer on anomalous phenomena. He wrote a number of books on Atlantis. In his book The Mystery of Atlantis, he used evidence from geophysics, psychic studies, classical literature, tribal lore, archeology & mysteries & concluded that Atlantis was real. Berlitz also attempted to link the Bermuda Triangle to Atlantis. He claimed to have located Atlantis undersea in the area of the Bermuda Triangle. He was also an ancient astronaut proponent who believed that extraterrestrials had visited earth.
Berlitz spent 13 years on active duty in the US Army, mostly in intelligence. In 1950, he married Valerie Seary, with whom he had a daughter, Lynn. He died in 2003 at the age of 89 at University Hospital in Tamarac, FL.

Reviews

[Russell]

This is a good book to peruse through to bolster your other spanish studies.

It basically is just transcripts of basic spanish conversations , their phonetic pronunciations, and their english translations.

It doesn't even go formally into grammar rules at all.

[Vincent Lombardo]

An excellent introduction to Spanish! Very easy to read. I still use it as reference book and go back to it daily!

[Vanessa Santos]

This book is a great tool for conversational spanish.
I basically use it as a reference guide.
"Aprendo muchas palabras nuevas."

[Bob Bellamy]

An excellent primer on the Spanish language.

[Jamey]

Excellent book for learning Spanish. If you actually study the lessons in here, and practice them, you will be well on your way to understanding and speaking the language.

[Rozalyn Leslie]

Good