Learning Español

I am working on the Spanish, about 2 - 4 hours/day. It is coming; at least I now have a few words and can do some simple sentences. The problem is that when I am confronted with a Spanish speaking person and a need to communicate, my mind goes more or less blank. However, today at the market, I was able to deal with numbers in prices better, especially because prices are so inexpensive that I only have to know the smaller numbers, like 1 - 10. Spanish is very similar to French; that is a benefit, but also some confusion. For example, ‘to live’ is ‘vivre’ in French and ‘vivir’ in Español; pronunciation, however, is very different. The similarities are not just in words, but also in grammar.

A big problem is that although I came to read French reasonably well, I never became very good at oral conversations. The same is true of Afrikaans (South African form of Dutch). Although I studied Xhosa, I did not even get far enough to read with any facility. I did 4 years of Latin in high school. My point is that I have never been good at oral or conversational use of any of the languages I have studied. I don’t want Spanish to be the same. However, this is the first time I have been so thoroughly emersed in a language. In South Africa, all Afrikaners could speak in English very well; thus, aside from greetings and small talk, I did not need to speak Afrikaans. While most of the shops here have people who speak some English, elsewhere people speak little English; then, you have to rely on gestures or never mind. We have found an FM radio station that plays classical music all day. It is great and I can begin to pick up some phrases, etc. from the announcers. However, the maid brought her own radio and was tuned in to a pop station with very fast talking and loud DJs. I couldn’t pick up anything of that; it was probably mostly slang and my Spanish language CDs don’t seem to do much of that. Anyway, it is an interesting and enjoyable challenge. Also, it will be a great benefit if I can master basic communication, even if my accent and grammar are not perfect.