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I love Spanish! / ¡Me encanta español! | ||
Tags: Living abroad | Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Principiante Senior Member United States lucasgentry.com Joined 6259 days ago 130 posts - 138 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 3 28 September 2013 at 3:00am | IP Logged |
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Below is a fun entry from my blog today that I thought was neat. Some background: my
wife and I have been studying Spanish with an online tutor once a week for the last few months, and 9 days ago, we left for Costa Rica. We're volunteering down here for a year, but the first three months' main goal is to get us up to speed in Spanish, so we can have an effective volunteering time. In a couple weeks, we're going to start teaching English here. ---------------------------------- So today, I decided that I love Spanish. Not because of some artful reason, but because it's really starting to become something that I can use to communicate with people. I remember a while ago when Spanish was just this secret code that a swath of other people knew that I didn't know, but the more we practice and the more we learn, the more Spanish becomes just real speaking. Back then, it was like trying to decipher a secret script with a decoder ring, but now, it's more like someone just gives you a list of words that you already know and says that you can only use these 500 words or something and you have to find a way to get your message across only using those words. And the only way that you can use more words is if you get special permission from people that you talk to. They will give you more words that you can add to your list. The more words in your collection, the less-limited your speaking is. But the thing is, Spanish isn't foreign any more. I just haven't met all the words yet. I speak Spanish. I'm not amazing, but I can generally get my point across using the words in my collection. When we go to Spanish class, my collection gets bigger, when I talk to people in the office, my collection gets bigger. Every day, my collection gets bigger, and now I can see a day in the future when my collection will be big enough that they'll say that I'm done with classes, but I'll still be growing my collection. I think that today hit a turning point because I was able to help people today by using my Spanish I started organizing the video conference equipment room, and a few times, I had to go out into the lobby and ask (the secretary? I don't know) the lady at the front desk for a couple things. Each time, the words were either in my collection, or I was able to point to something to get my words across. She taught me the word for rubber band in Spanish. One more word to put in my collection. (Rubber bands in Costa Rica is "ligas", in case you wanted to know. In other countries, the word is "hule", which is just the generic word for rubber.) But in the middle of organizing things, someone asked me for help with their computer. They were trying to make their new (Widows 8) computer play a DVD. For those of you who haven't used Windows 8, it was built to be easy to use, but it's pretty confusing to most of the people I've talked to, myself included. Anyway, by using my Spanish, I was able to understand the problem and help them to figure out how to fix it. We were even able to troubleshoot some issues with a projector. For the first time in this whole trip, I wasn't the dependent one. I wasn't someone that people had to work around because of my deficiency in language. Instead, I got to be someone who was helping. And that made a world of difference to me. ------------------------------------------ The bolded parts are the parts that I think make the most interesting thing. As long as I felt like I was dependent because of not knowing all the words, I felt like Spanish wasn't mine, but today, since I got to use it to help solve someone else's problems, it seems like it all the sudden became so much more mine. After that, I had three or four solid conversations in Spanish with people, and it was as easy as speaking English, just with a more limited vocabulary. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5376 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 2 of 3 28 September 2013 at 1:19pm | IP Logged |
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Well said. Great way to think about the language learning process. It is very rewarding to have those moments when your language studies really "pay off." In my opinion, it gets better and better. You are very lucky to be living in a place where you can use the language with natives every day. Good luck.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4145 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 3 of 3 28 September 2013 at 4:02pm | IP Logged |
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Congratulations! I'm all about learning a language to actually use it. I know that a lot of language learners enjoy the
process of learning a language for its own sake. While I do love the process, I wouldn't do it if I couldn't use it! Love the insight of making a language yours through helping someone else. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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