Reply #5: just a tip if you don't already know some spanish:

[NoodleBoy]

Something my teachers didn't get around to explaining to me is that written and spoken Spanish are much closer than written and spoken English-- ie, there are no useless groups of letters no one's pronounced in five hundred years (light, night, height, knife), so pronouncing Spanish words you've only seen written and never heard spoken isn't hard at all once you know the basic sounds in Spanish.

Kind of nerdy, but useful. It's so pervasive that if you ask a native Spanish speaker how to spell something they'll most likely just say it a little slower (pin-tu-ra instead of P-I-N-T-U-R-A).

hope that made sense.