Learning Spanish

The first time I learned Spanish I was a teenager. It was during my freshman and sophomore years of high school. In those years, I learned the alphabet, sentence structures, vocabulary, and verb conjugations for regular and irregular verbs.  What I didn’t learn was conversational skills. So I could read a newspaper headline, but I couldn’t talk to someone about it. I found that incredibly frustrating at the time. I’m still a little annoyed by it. I’d much rather prioritize speaking and listening, than grammar/writing.

Since then I’ve tried a couple of times to learn Spanish again. However, it never quite stuck. I think it’s time to try again. I recently discovered a new website called Duolingo.  There are currently 15 languages you can learn. Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, and Thai are not among the courses available. I have no idea why, but it’s an interesting thing to notice. Perhaps it’s because those characters are hard to type on English keyboards. Anyway, I signed up yesterday. They ask if you want to invite your Facebook friends. While I’m sure Duolingo would love to have more users sign up, I have a different question. Does it make sense for me, the user, to invite a friend  to sign up, if they are not also learning Spanish?

It’s conventional wisdom that the best way to learn a language is to move to a country that speaks it. This idea is called immersion. I like the idea of immersion, but moving isn’t feasible. I need a different way to immerse myself.  I had a twitter conversation this morning with a few people. Other suggestions were listen to Spanish music, and watch Spanish television, movies, or YouTube videos. I like these ideas – particularly TV shows.  TV shows have longer story arcs across multiple episodes, and the visual aspect can help you learn vocabulary based on the situation. Not all TV shows are equally useful. A show like Bones or CSI is less useful for a beginning learner, and more useful for people that want to learn more specialized topics. In the case of CSI – that’s forensic science and law enforcement. Dramas and sit-coms I think would be the most useful. Shows like Friends, Pretty Little Liars, and Gossip Girl would be the best examples. The problem is I have no idea what the Spanish culture equivalents would be. Maybe I could just watch those shows in SAP mode.  I’ve never tried before. I’ll have to see if I can try this with Netflix and Hulu, since those are the TV programming I have access to.

Another way I’m considering to learn Spanish is creating and maintaining a Spanish version of my blog. This would help me learn vocabulary and better grammar, but it doesn’t really help with the speaking/listening experience I’m currently craving. I do, however, want to learn how to convey web development and WordPress ideas in Spanish. It’d be great to be able to do public speaking in Spanish one day. I’m rambling now. Fortunately, It’ll be hard to ramble in Spanish, since I currently lack proficiency. Maybe one day I’ll get to have a great ramble in Spanish.