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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| HermonMunster Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4636 days ago 119 posts - 211 votes  Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 154 17 May 2012 at 4:02am | IP Logged | ||
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Hello everyone,
This is my first entry. I stumbled upon this site while googling how to learn Spanish. I'm so happy that I found this community. I have learned so much and it has been a great experience to peer into the lives of others who have done and are trying what I want to do. Alittle about me. I'm 32 years old, married, and currently work as a design engineer at a major truck manufacturer. I actually work for a supplier and my company's parts are all assembled in Mexico. I talk to my Mexican co-workers all day on instant messenger and several times throughout the day. I have to travel to Mexico 2-5 times a year. I've been to Guaymas, Hermosillo, Monterrey, and Durango. I took 4 years of Spanish in highschool but I kind of got lost after Spanish 2 and didn't learn too much. After college I did the whole Europe backpack thing and had all of my ID stolen while in Barcelona. I went to the police and said, "Mi cosas nunca," which more of less means "My things never." :-( Fortunately there was a cool French guy at the police station who had also been bergeled and he helped me fill out the police forms. My newest motivation for learning Spanish came when I was in Durango, MX in Feb and got a bloody nose b/c the air is so dry. I went in to Walmart and stood in the nose aisle for about 10minutes before anyone came to help me. The ladies tried to help me out but I had a tough time communicating. I said, "Mi nariz esta triste porque el sol es muy fuerte." "My nose is sad because the sun is so strong." After a total of 3 ladies helped me we finally found what I needed. That situation was the straw that broke the camel's back. I had to start learning. I began my serious studies in late Feb 2012. Since then I figured that I have logged about 170 hrs of study. I have completed Pimsluer I, II, and III and am currently on Lesson 11 of Platiquemos. Like many others on this site, I felt accomplished when I finished Pimsluer only to realize that I just ate the first cracker in an appetizer. Platiquemos seems like just what I need to get a good base under me. I'm the type of person who doesn't want to do things half way and wants to go one step at a time. I also attend a bi-weekly meetup that's a Spanish-English exchange. I love doing it because I get to meet new people, practice speaking, and can get 1 on 1 instruction from the organizers. They have both commented on my rapid progress in just under 3 months. I also am watching Destinos, completed episode 19 tonight. My goal is to finish Platiquemos by the end of November and to log about 600hrs studying for the year. Ohh yea, my major accomplishment so far has been going to a party last weekend with some Columbians and being able to talk to them and explain the plot of a telenovela that I just started. Mas Sabe El Diablo. Next week I'm going to Hermosillo, MX for a week long business trip so it should be a great opportunity to practice and learn. I'm bringing my wife with me, her first time in Mexico, so it should be fun. Okedokie, that's it for this first post. I will probably only post bi-tri weekly as not too much progress can be made in a day. Peace Edited by HermonMunster on 17 May 2012 at 12:44pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| HermonMunster Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4636 days ago 119 posts - 211 votes Studies: Spanish | Message 2 of 154 05 June 2012 at 7:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hello everyone I'm back. My trip to Mexico with my wife and co-workers was great. I felt bad for her because she had to spent most of her days in the hotel (Hermosillo is safe, but not safe enough for a pretty woman that doesn't know Spanish) I tried to push myself to speak as much as possible. I checked into the hotel in Spanish and tried to order all food in Spanish. I also asked for directions and conducted basic business in the lanuage. My proudest moment was being able to tell the staff at the swimming pool bar that I lost some clothes and gave a description about them. I also made a couple of jokes that made people laugh.
I'm glad I was able to talk my wife to San Carlos to have some fun in the sun. On the drive over she got to see the real Mexico. We like to see/experience how the common folks live in an area. If you ever get a chance to go down to San Carlos, you should do it. Very beautiful and the people are great. Overall I'm very pleased with my progress. I am currently on unit 14 of platiquemos. So far nothing has completely confused me. I'm having some trouble with saying "the women are waiting for us" and things like that. "Las mujeres nos están esperando." Direct translation would be, "the women we are waiting." It's kind of like Yoda talk to me so I just need to practice to get it straight. Update on how I'm studying Platiquemos. I listen to the full audio once then read the full text (taking notes adding vocab when needed). Then I listen to the full audio one more time. If I don't have any uneasiness I move on. So far I've only had to listen to a few lessons 3 times. To date I have put in 233hrs into studying in the form of reading, tv, listening, talking, and flash cards. I'm starting to be able to say many more things in my mind. It's very exciting. Hopefully I can do better than what I've heard and become "fluent" in 2.5 years. It would be great to be 35 and be able to do my job totally in Spanish. Not really that important though, I know I'm getting better everyday. I've been working hard and it shows. Some of the guys in Mexico have been stuck at the same level of English speaking/writing for years. Not the kid, I'm going to knock everyones socks off next time I do down there. Peace P.S. Funny thing is that wife = esposa and handcuffs = esposas. Also my buddies in mexico call wives/girlfriends la ley "the law" :-D P.P.S some may wonder why I want to improve so quickly. At the end of the year we will start trying to make a baby. I have a friend who just had one and I see that he has zero time for anything outside of work and baby. I want to make sure that I have a great base before I need to cut down on my study time. I know you learn by doing, but I'm the type that likes to at least have the basics down first before I make strangers struggle to understand me. Edited by HermonMunster on 05 June 2012 at 7:48pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| caam_imt Triglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 4865 days ago 232 posts - 357 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2, Finnish Studies: German, Swedish | Message 3 of 154 05 June 2012 at 8:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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Glad to know you had a pleasant time in Mexico! it's cool you are so interested in the
language. All the best in your studies! I think I can help in case you have any questions. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| HermonMunster Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4636 days ago 119 posts - 211 votes Studies: Spanish | Message 4 of 154 06 June 2012 at 9:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for my first reply. I will be contacting via PM. I enjoy Mexico very much. It's a very interesting plae with alot of history and culture.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| HermonMunster Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4636 days ago 119 posts - 211 votes Studies: Spanish | Message 5 of 154 27 June 2012 at 6:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hello,
It's been a while since I've posted but I'm still plugging along. Lesson 15 was really hard for me so I repeated the audio 5-7 times. I have still been typing IMs and emails to my co-workers. I'm getting 5-10 words per day just by trying to live in Spanish. I review my words in Anki on my droid phone. Currently I'm lesson 18 which is the first of Level 3. This particular lesson deals with the imperfect tense. Not that easy to get down. I'm on my third listen and first time though the written portion. I will probably end up listening 4 times. Fortunately, I have a meetup group in Spanish conversation. I was able to ask alot of questions yesterday and I feel that I have the jist of it. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but basically he hablado = I have spoken. hablaba = I used to speak. Makes more sense with correr. he corrido. I have run corría = I used to run or había corriendo - I was running This will definitely take lots more practice but I'm getting it. Many people have been commenting on how much better I'm getting. I'm excited about the improvments. I'm studying about 2-2.5 hours a day. 30mins in the car each way, 30min at lunch and 30min throughout the day (emails and such) and 30min reviewing flash cards. As of right now I've logged 277.5 hrs studying since late Feb and some sentences are starting to flow out of me. Also a strange thing is happening. I can't tell if I'm reading or not. Sometimes I feel that I don't understand an email but somehow I know what to do. I'm starting to think that this is a good step because it may mean that I'm not translating as much in my head. In Sept my speaking practice will increase because my wife will be starting graduate school and while she's at night classes I will be trying to meet people for skype calls. I think that 3 or 4 hours a week of speaking would be fantastic. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| HermonMunster Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4636 days ago 119 posts - 211 votes Studies: Spanish | Message 6 of 154 12 July 2012 at 3:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hello,
It's been 3 weeks since my last post. I've still been hitting the Spanish hard. I'm now on unit 22 of Platiquemos. It's pretty easy, I think I will only listen to it twice and go through the readings once. I had some difficulty with units 20-21. I had to listen to them about 5 times each. It's just hard for me to get the past tense conjugations down well enough to complete the response drills. Slowly but surely I'm getting it though. I'm continuing to suprise myself with the sentences I can say. Sometimes I'll think, "Wow that was a complex sentence... Good Job!!" (Funny how you have to be your own cheerleader when self studying) At my meet up I explained the difference between mucho gusto (when meeting someone) as opposed to encontado. I got one of the Spanish speaking waitresses to act it out with me. "Hola mucho gusto en conocerte" "Igualmente" (we shake hands). Then "Econtado (in sexy deep voice while rubbing her right hand with my left) "Ayyyye!!" she said. lol everyone burst out laughing but I think it got the point across. Knowing a little bit of a language can land a person in some pretty sticky situations. I need to continue working on my pronunciation. I'm not sure if ti's the beer at the meet ups or I'm just slipping out of character, but the words para was coming out like pair-ah. Speaking of character, does anyone else kind of feel like they are another person when they are speaking another language? It's weird I almost feel as though I'm acting when I speak Spanish. Hopefully that will go away. I've been putting more time into my "Easy Spanish Reader" book and reading out loud. It's pretty easy for me but saying the words is helping alot. One of the things I really like about Platiquemos are the bits of history sprinkled in. I did some research on Malinche (Think Pokehontas (sp) but for Cortes) She is currently viewed as a traitor in Mexico, but it's much more complicated than that. I'm interested to ask some of the Mexican women in my meet up how they feel about her. In my meet up I had an interesting conversation about drugs and how stupid our (I live in USA) laws are. Smoking a plant will get you put in a cage, but drinking the most destructive drug in all of humanity (alcohol) is legal and promoted. Picked up alot of new vocab during this convo. The leader of the meet up said that I need to spend more time listening to native speakers so I will try to find some audio files with transcripts so I can get a better ear for the language. I will probably start moving slower in Platiquemos because I can only fit in about 2hrs of study per day. So far I'm up to 318 hrs of study and I'm hoping to reach 600 by the end of the year. I'm really looking at Spanish as a part of my retirement plan. My wife and I don't believe in "traditional" retirement in that you just stop working one day and watch Dukes of Hazzard reruns for the rest of your life. Somehow I will use the language to stay active and make some $$ on the sideline. I met an interesting guy in San Carlos and he owns a gold mine. Perhaps I could get a part time gig there in the future doing some consulting or something. Bottom line, there's a special bond that develops when you just try to learn someone else's language. It's nice to see peoples' faces light up when you hit em up with lil español. I'm glad I'm doing this. Ohh yea, I'm on episode 27 of Destinos and Episode 3 of Diablo Mas Sabe. Diablo is really too advanced for me but it has English subtitles, beautiful women, and a story line I can follow pretty easily. I don't know how much I'm learning by watching it, but I'm still counting it in my study time :-p Edited by HermonMunster on 12 July 2012 at 4:04pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ajackso3 Newbie United States Joined 4556 days ago 29 posts - 52 votes Speaks: Spanish | Message 7 of 154 12 July 2012 at 9:28pm | IP Logged | ||
Hi Hermon- I just wanted to add that some more "passive" listening could be beneficial as well. I spent A LOT of time listening to music in Spanish (not very actively...I rarely, if every followed along with they lyrics or anything like that) and it really helped my pronunciation. As you are already spending quite a bit of time actively studying, this could give you a way to listen to more native speakers without exhausting yourself with too much study. Perhaps you could fit something like this in while you are cooking dinner or switching out any time you listen to music in English for music in Spanish. Good luck! It sounds like you are making a lot of progress! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| HermonMunster Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4636 days ago 119 posts - 211 votes Studies: Spanish | Message 8 of 154 13 July 2012 at 3:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the suggestion. I think you're right. Sometimes actively studying kind of hurts the soul in a strange way. After hitting a few hard lessons in a row I feel a touch of dred when continuing my studies. I'll never quit, but I think when I feel like this I'll just turn on some music. I downloaded the Univsion radio app on my phone and I'm jamming as I write this post. Really like the energy of Latin music. Makes we want to dance.
It's funny how almost every song has "mi corazon." I was joking with a mexican coworker. "Is there a genetic heart defect in Mexico? Everyone is always having heart problems" haha Edited by HermonMunster on 19 August 2012 at 2:26pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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