Hablas Espanol?
Daily Duolingo?
Well I have begun the slow & what for me is likely to be a painful process of trying to learn Spanish. Despite being articulate in my mother tongue I still find it extremely difficult to annunciate Spanish words. My brain just seems to be incapable of co-ordinating my tongue to get the correct sounds to form. However it was great to realise that I can now recognise & understand a wide range of written words. Perhaps this will help when reading menus or shopping in Spain. However I still need to work on basic spoken conversation to be able to order a meal or pay at a checkout.
Still with a popular language training app on my phone I have been chipping way at the basics for some months now & even went on a weekend trip (pre lockdown) to Seville. My friend has also been studying Spanish convinced me to go to Seville for a long weekend. It was a great place to explore while trying to inflict our conversation on unsuspecting Spanish people. I really hope to organise another visit & next time hopefully to Barcelona where I can visit my nephew.
This link takes you to my blog page that describes our Spanish adventure in more detail:
https://wtfimu2n.co.uk/2024/07/22/sipping-sangria-in-seville/
Progress Report
I have been plodding along with my attempt to learn Spanish. The language app Duolingo is on my phone so that I can access it easily every day. Currently I only use the free version as I am not convinced I would spend enough time on it to justify the expense of the paid version. There seems to be controversy over the benefit of apps versus in person classes. I suspect the face to face class is probably better but more time consuming & expensive. So for now the app is the tool I intend to continue to use.
2023 Updates
The journey continues as I now have reached a continuous streak of 1087 days. Finding the time to complete the daily lessons is not always easy & my concentration is not as good if its late in the evening. I have found a note book useful especially for grammatical notes. My vocabulary is growing as I am now able to understand considerably more written Spanish.
I found myself reading the instructions to a new gadget recently & I actually understood them. However the spoken word might be another issue all together. There are several members of the family whose Spanish is much more fluent & I think they would groan if they heard me speak. Not even sure if they would understand me either.
2024 Updates
Organising another trip to Spain is still on my ‘to do’ list however I haven’t yet been able to. I am hoping to squeeze in a visit in 2025 if I can. Will publish progress soon.
I have come to realise that learning a language is for me a very slow burn & could take me a life time. It’s certainly one of the enduring challenges that actually has held my interest & I actually want to continue improving.
