Oi vey!

Ooohps, that's not Spanish!!

My mother is taking a Spanish course this semester and I thought it would be fun for us to learn it together.  So, I found a free online tutorial and started.  It does have an audio feature, which is great, but I learn the most from talking with my mom on the phone.

She goes over her notes, I type.  It seems to work well.  But eeek!!

I didn't realize how rough it would be to get back into this learning groove.  I never took Spanish.  But I do have a rudimentary understanding of how to go about learning most western languages.

When I was a freshman in high-school, oh a couple decades ago (eeek!), I took French and Latin.  Lucky for me, I had the same teacher for both.  So if I answered in French during my Latin class, she gave me another chance to get on the same page.

German is one of my majors for my Bachelor's.  I don't speak fluently, because it's difficult to retain a language that you don't use daily, weekly, monthly, oh hell, even yearly.  However, I do have all my books including a kick-ass dictionary!

And as some of you know, there is another language with which I have a more than nodding acquaintance.  Sign is coming back to me as I review the grammar, syntax, semantics, and vocab.  I need to get into contact with the Deaf community here.

Oh, well, and sometimes Americanized English seems to be natural enough for me.  Then there are those times that I can't spell, I start saying one thing and end with another, and when I totally mispronounce what I am saying.  And there are those joyous times in which I simply forget my vocabulary altogether.  That happens more often now than it did say, 5 years ago.  But it happens less than say, 2 years ago.