Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent!, September 8, 2007
All of the Baby's First Words CDs by Living Language (formerly under the title of Baby's First Steps) are wonderful. Adult native speakers sing songs that are part of the culture from which each language derives and native children say rhymes that are familiar to native children of each language. If you are interested in more than one language, you can buy each different language CD without having any same songs or rhymes repeated because each is unique to the language. We have the Spanish, French, and Italian Cds and love all of them. Each one has 50 tracks that include songs, rhymes, and sayings that are appropriate for any child learning another language. The Spanish one has familiar Spanish songs such as De Colores and Las Mananitas. The French one has songs such as Frere Jacques and A la claire au fontaine. As stated before, only native speakers are on these CDs so the accents are authentic. However, on this Spanish CD, there is no person from Spain that I can hear (I speak Spanish). These are definitely Latin American accents, none from Spain, but the pronunciations are very precise and clear. Everything is annunciated well and the rhymes are spoken more slowly in order for babies and children to learn them well.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best Spanish CD for babies/children, January 25, 2008
I speak Spanish fluently, but not being raised speaking Spanish, I did not know any songs to share with my son when he was born. I found this CD, and it has been fantastic! We speak Spanish about 20% of the time at home, but in spite of hearing more English, this is the first CD my son had any interest in at all. He loves De Colores, and the song about the Elefantes especially well.
I am uncertain what another reviewer meant about the CD and the booklet being out of sync, unless that was true in an older version. In ours, the tracks on the CD and in the booklet are both arranged according to age/developmental level. The booklet is extremely helpful because it includes the full lyrics to all the songs, so if there are some parts of the song you don't understand (or if you don't speak Spanish but are prepared to imitate the songs), the lyrics are right there for you to study.
I have about 15 CDs and/or DVDs of songs/rhymes in Spanish, and this is hands down my favorite!
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very pleased with this CD so far!, September 11, 2008
I just purchased this CD and so far am extremely pleased with it. The songs are very pleasant and fun to listen to and are sung by native-speaking female and male singers.
Also, with an entire booklet of Spanish and English translations, there are rhymes and spoken verses in children's voices as well as other sounds to enhance the songs such as babies laughing, etc.
The booklet is broken down into ages which seems helpful but I play the CD all the way through for myself and my son, who is 4 months old, because the songs and rhymes are so enjoyable to listen to!
The booklet also noted "Spain" and/or "Latin America" next to the songs however, as the reviewer below said and I am fluent in Spanish as well, I could not detect a difference in Spanish speakers to reflect this linguistical difference. So, I think that when they noted "Spain" and/or "Latin America" (and "Mexico" for one listing), it was probably to inform us where the song is popular, rather than the origin of the singer. That's my guess, anyway.
I haven't read all of it yet but there's a parents' guide (that seems pretty comprehensive) that is an introduction to the idea of bi/multilingualism, showing you how to help your baby/child speak more than one language, your child's linguistic milestones, how to make the most of the CD, basic Spanish for adults and resources for parents including websites.
I am more than pleased with this purchase and feel it is very much worth the money.
The only other thing I would have added on top of all of this is a variety of dialects, which vary greatly from country to country, for example, Spanish from Spain vs from Puerto Rico vs from Venezuela, etc but this really would have been over and above my expectations so I didn't deduct a star from my rating for it.
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