Learning Spanish - The Hard Way (only because there is no easy way)

Have you ever tried to learn another language – other than in high school?

I think I remember doing a bit of German because I can recall all the words to “Wooden Heart” or “Muss I Den” by Elvis Presley. At the moment though (and on and off for the last 10 years!!!) I’ve been attempting to learn Spanish.

I have to say from the outset, that I’m not as committed as I should be to the amount of practice learning Spanish entails, because basically I’m lazy, but I do love the idea of knowing how to speak another language. I’ve had private lessons, listened to podcasts, watched the odd movie in Spanish (with subtitles), and also viewed many YouTube videos, and still the only Spanish I can almost understand is when another Aussie speaks very slowly to me.   H o l a,  c o m o   e s t a s? 

At least I can almost manage to read a menu and order beer and wine – so that’s a good start, but when I was in Spain in 2016 and needed to buy tampons (sorry guys) and had to resort to doing charades to communicate what I needed, let’s just say it was pretty awkward. (That was probably more information than you needed to know).

My theory is though, that it is hard for us Aussies to learn Spanish, because when I was in school, which was a few years – okay, decades ago, I can only remember learning about nouns, verbs and adjectives. 

No such luck in Spanish – you have to know how to “conjugate” verbs in their present tense, two future tenses and at least 5 past tenses that I know of so far.  I didn’t even know what conjugate meant. I thought it was something you did when you got married.  Have I lost you yet?  I’m getting confused just trying to explain it, let alone trying to learn it. 

When you make it past the first few words of Spanish, they start talking to you about the sex of words – yes that’s right – all Spanish nouns are either masculine or feminine and the word ‘the’ in Spanish can be written at least 4 ways, that I know of.

One thing that is easier in Spanish though is phonetics – all letters make the same sound in every word – so if you are reading you can sound out the words easily. Of course there are exceptions to this as well,  B in Spanish sounds more like V and vice versa.  You don’t pronounce the H at the beginning of words and J sounds like H and double L like Y and my personal favourite some C’s and Z’s sound like TH. 

When I tell people I am learning Spanish, the reactions range from “Cool” to “What the hell would you do that for? People speak English all over Spain”.  Firstly, people don’t speak English all over Spain, and secondly, I just love it, and it is the second most spoken language in the world, after Chinese.  I know it’s good for my brain and I enjoy every bit of time I spend listening, reading, trying to speak and learning Spanish.  I have made some great friends as well, from other Spanish students to my Spanish teachers. It’s a hobby I love and as confusing as it is, I am determined to keep learning and hopefully one day be able to have a conversation (probably only a short one) with a native Spanish speaker.

Lyle and I are about to take off to Spain for 8 weeks, so I am really hoping that I am brave enough to try speaking Spanish and that I learn a little more about the language while we are away.  I’ll let you know how I go!  Hasta Luego mis amigos!