The Real Reason I'm Learning Spanish

What is the real reason I'm learning Spanish?

A lot of people think I started learning Spanish when I met my boyfriend, Luis. I have to say

it does help quite a bit being able to communicate with his family, and I love having

conversations with his mom, but nope, my Spanish-learning started longgg before him.

The first words I learned in Spanish were probably numbers 1-10 and the colors in 4th grade. I always remembered azul, verde, rosa, rojo, blanco y negro. Not sure why, but those ones stuck. I still feel unsure about what “purple” is sometimes… I also bought a children’s book once with many Spanish words in it, so I learned a couple random things like mesa and ropa.

Anyway, during college (yes, while I was completing a major in French), Borders (a bookstore) was having a 50% closing sale, so I bought a Learn Spanish in 3 months kit. Find it here. I figured I would want to learn Spanish at some time, and since it was half off, now might be the best time! I knew Spanish could help me because there are a lot of Spanish speakers in the US so it could help me not only in daily life but at work as well. The kit actually taught me way more than I thought it would. The only problem was… I didn’t know who to speak with to practice, and I only got up to week 9 or 10 I think. I did get a pretty good foundation though, so as I moved to Boston and started working at a restaurant where many awesome Colombianos worked, I finally got my chance to practice! But at this point, I was already rusty… I went back to my learning book for reference and started listening to more música and reading books, and I got to that level where I could have a couple glasses of wine and have a basic conversation with a friend. (Miss you Marcela!) Also tried a little dating in Spanish, and man, that was a challenge. I learned a lot that way though, always trying to googletranslate text messages and finding meanings that were not quite right.

Funny story about that actually… One day, I wanted to tell my friend that I was feeling lazy or I was lazy over the weekend or something. I looked it up on translate and the word they gave me was: holgazana. I said it to my friend and he was like “Uhhh… okk.” I later learned that it has a very negative connotation and in that context, can mean promiscuous… oyy, not the meaning I wanted to express about my weekend. One of those language-learning mistakes that is crucial to learning I think, but still pretty embarrassing.

After some time, I decided to move to another part of the country for work and I am horrible at keeping in touch with old friends, so I got out of practice with my Spanish.

This is where Luis comes in.

We started dating and I told him, “I know a bit of Spanish,” but when I started to talk…….. oh, was it bad. I realized I had forgotten so much already in less than a year! That’s when I went to look for my Learn Spanish book, but found it was missing! I must have lent it to someone. So this is when I started to find more language-learning resources, starting with Duolingo. I'll give you more information about what kind of resources I now like to use in later posts.

Long story short, I’ve done a lot of learning with Spanish the last four years; went to a couple conversation clubs, listened to audiobooks, watched a lot of telenovelas, read a lot of books, and I still am not where I want to be. I recently just bought an Advanced Spanish Grammar book from Amazon and I am hoping that will help me improve my level, because it is so hard to see big changes at this level of learning.

Please comment with any funny stories you have about trying out a new language. I’d love to hear them!