Lenguajero Blog

My first experience with Spanish was in Ms. Rose’s high school class.  I believe that I actually sat through two years of that class. Somehow I managed to get through it all by using a newly available tool called “an internet translator” something my 65 year old on-the-verge-of-retirement teacher had never heard of before. I graduated without knowing how to say a single thing in Spanish, and promptly forgot all about the language, after all I was a red, white and blue blooded American, why would I ever want to speak another language, let alone Spanish?

Flash forward six years.  I am now a slightly less ignorant American, and want to spend some time traveling in Latin America. I decide that the year of Latin I took at university, and a few iPod learning lessons will get me up and speaking Spanish in no time.

Two months later I end up in Guatemala completely unable to say a word to anyone. I stare blankly at everyone who tries to talk to me. I am in awe of the British girl who takes pity on me and comes to the bank with me to ask them if they will exchange some of my US dollars. “Ustedes cambian dolares aqui?” seems like an amazing phrase, and surely anyone who can say such a thing must speak the language fluently.

I spent three months in Central America, took a couple of weeks of Spanish courses, and left still unable to actually speak the language, though I had some how convinced myself that because I knew about 250 words I spoke Spanish.

About six months later I got “serious” about improving my Spanish. At first this basically consisted of feeding a BBC Mundo news article into Google Translate once a day and pretending that I had read it.

Eventually I admitted to myself that I was completely unable to speak the language, and decided that I was for real going to learn Spanish once and for all.  Along the way I discovered a few things about learning Spanish that I think apply to learning languages in general.

1. Unlike other subjects you might study you can’t actually learn to speak a language from a book. You can learn grammar and vocabulary (obviously important), but you still will not be able to speak.
2. Speaking and listening to the language is the best way to improve your ability to speak and understand the language.
3. Don’t try to read The Old Man and The Sea in Spanish.  It is just as boring as in English, but harder to understand.
4. It’s easier to learn if you practice everyday. I had to move to Latin America to make that happen (remember Lenguajero didn’t exist in those days).

Now, about a year after I began in earnest to learn Spanish, I feel pretty comfortable speaking the language.  I still make lots of mistakes, but I get better all the time.  Along the way, I have discovered the pleasure of meeting new people and making life-long friends in my new language. (The picture above is Raxel – my first non-English speaking friend – and I walking along the Malecon.).

I have found several resources invaluable in my learning process.

1. Lenguajero – Unless you are living in Latin America or Spain (and even if you are) where else are you going to go to practice Spanish online with a native speaker?

2. Notes in Spanish – Ben and Marina are the best there is.  These fantastic learning Spanish podcasts at all levels cover everything from world events, to life in Spain, to internet fads, and pop culture. They sell the transcripts of each podcast for a reasonable price, and I would definitely recommend buying them, at least when you are first getting started. After having listened to just about every one of their podcasts I feel like they are the best friends I have never met…slightly creepy.

A couple of my favorites: Notes From Spain, Fuegos Artificiales, Heroes

3. BBCMundo – Aside from news articles there is a great blog about Cuba, videos and a 15 minute daily podcast.

4. Mnemosyne Flashcards – This was the only way that I was able to build my vocabulary. Mnemosyne is designed to be used everyday. It is a great way to put words and expressions into your long term memory. It shows you cards everyday based on how frequently you got those words or phrases correct, and how often it thinks you need to see them in order to memorize them.  There are prepackaged Spanish decks available (and a lot of others ones as well), and you can add your own cards. My vocabulary is probably about double what it would be if I hadn’t used this.

5. WordReference – A fantastic Spanish/English (and other languages) dictionary and forum. You can get pretty much any question you have answered here.

6. Harry Potter – It was fantastic in English, and when you read it in Spanish you feel way less guilty about how you are spending your time (it’s educational). So aside from being a great read, the language is at a pretty basic level, it has lots of action, and you don,t get bored, like with, say El Viejo y El Mar which is booooring.