In my never-ending quest to improve myself, I recently began taking Spanish lessons. Not with, you know, someone who actually speaks Spanish, but with my computer. My parents might be slightly confused to hear this, recollecting that I took five years of Spanish in high school. Haven't I learned it by now? I'm thinking of these lessons as more of a refresher course, brushing up on skills that I'm now too old to remember having learned in the first place. I wanted to learn Swedish, figuring I could do something no one I know can do and maybe even better understand those Scandinavian mysteries I've been reading, but then I realized this meant I'd be speaking Swedish to myself, and I do that enough in English.
I loved learning Spanish in school, and I was really pretty good at it. My parents even bought me a nightgown that called out in big, bold letters "¡Hola!" I practiced on anyone who would listen to me, including the dog, the kids I babysat, and occasionally the unsuspecting customers on the other end of the line at the answering service for which I worked after school. The 7-12th grade school I was in for 7th and 8th grades allowed me to take first year Spanish in the 8th grade, so I was already a year ahead by the time I got to high school. Probably it's what made all the cool kids want to hang out with me. I even got a chance to use it in real life during a cruise down the Mexican coast. My aunt and uncle, having spent a lot of time in a wide-variety of Spanish speaking countries, held many phone conversations with me in Spanish, so I was lucky to have multiple opportunities for annoying others with my evolving language skills.
But if you don't use it, you lose it, or so they say, and so, while I still recognize a lot, I couldn't possibly speak it so easily anymore. Yet, recently, I've found myself wishing I could, either because it would be useful in communicating with a Spanish speaker or because it would allow me to visit Spanish-speaking countries I'd like to see or just because it broadens my awareness of other countries. Also, it's fun to say "pantalones." Spanish is spoken as a native language by more people in the world than any language but Mandarin, more than 400 million people. Right here in the United States, Spanish is spoken as a first or second language by almost 50 million people. It can only be a good thing for me to know how to hold at least minimal conversation. Not that any conversation of which I'm a part is minimal.
So when the library at which I work acquired a new online database for learning foreign languages, I decided it was time to renew my Spanish language skills. Imagine! I could read, write, and converse in Spanish with native speakers all without leaving my couch. Add food, and it's my idea of Heaven. There are several such databases out there, some designed for consumers (like Rosetta Stone) and some for libraries (like Mango). The one we're using is called Transparent Language from Recorded Books, the folks who have provided us with audio books for many years. With just my library card number, I was logged on and ready to start Unit 1.
So far, it seems a little on the easy side, but maybe I've retained more than I thought. The first unit focuses on easy words and phrases, the kind of thing you would use immediately upon visiting a Spanish speaking country. "Buenos Dias!" the program exclaims. The exercises run through recognizing words (which can be hard for me in English on a good day), pronunciation, and putting words together into short sentences. I can do this! I like clicking on words and having them pleasantly repeated for me (funny how the voice never gets annoyed at me for asking so many times). One of the exercises is sort of a hybrid between hangman and Wheel of Fortune, where letters appear one at a time and you try to guess what they're saying. I'm not entirely sure how buying a vowel increases my foreign language skills, nor have I won any money for getting it right, but it's more practice. I have begun conversing with Sasha in Spanish, and so far, she doesn't seem to notice the difference. I recently began Unit 2, which covers terms needed while traveling in Spanish speaking countries. I don't plan to do so anytime soon, but can it ever be bad to know how to say "Take me to the hospital?"
I plan to continue this adventure for, well, as long as it interests me. The program covers a slew of languages--perhaps next I can learn Farsi.
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