Hablo un poco de español.

About 7 years ago I decided I wanted to learn a little Spanish. I booked myself into a night class at the local university and spent about 4 months studying on a foundation course. I passed the course with an A grade; not conversational but enough of the basics to get by.

I wanted to learn Spanish when I was at school, as a GCSE. I wasn’t allowed to. The reason? I didn’t have any interest in learning French and so I was deemed not worth to learn Spanish. Basically, the genius head of languages department decreed you could only learn Spanish if you were prepared to learn French. What kind of nonsense logic is that?

The upshot of this is that I never did learn another language at school. I had absolutely no interest in learning French (my wife speaks French so between us we have that covered) and still don’t. I so; however, have a great love for Spain and so Spanish has always been a language I’ve wanted to learn; at least to a conversational level if for no other reason than to prevent this from every happening again!

Anyway, I am pleased to report that I am now back on the wagon. I’ve started using duolingo.com to practice (a great little site and the only one I found that is 100% free) and I’ve found myself a Spanish teacher who does 1-2-1 lessons for only £15 for 2 hours (bargain).

I read somewhere that if you are trying to learn a new language it is a good idea to learn Esperanto first. The idea being that it’s a simple language to learn and it gets you in the right frame of mind for learning. In fact, there is empirical evidence to suggest that this may very well be the case. Does anyone reading this have any thoughts or views on whether this might be worth considering? Please add comments if you do.

I’ll post regular updates on my progress in learning [more] Spanish and might even, at some point, have a go at blogging in Spanish.

Wish me luck!