My Rewarding--and Humbling--Spanish-learning Journey

For the past nine months (más o menos), I have been learning Spanish.

Let’s take a step back for a moment. Like most Anglophones, I took core French in school. I stopped after Grade 10, which I regret. I have always wanted to speak a second language. I have long felt that since French and English are both official languages all Canadians should, you know, kind of speak them both. I still do. In fact, I put my son in French Immersion. The sins of the father…

Thus, I’ve always thought I would find my way back to French at some point.

However, for several reasons, including the fact that my mom speaks Spanish, I finally decided to get off my butt and learn Spanish.

I wanted to share some random thoughts on my journey:

1.????? I work on a bit of Spanish every day. I have discovered short podcasts in Spanish I listen to every time I get in the car. I have study guides. I watch Spanish television with English subtitles on an app called Lingopie. I do lessons on a learning app called Babbel every day. I read sports on ESPNDeportes. All told, I sprinkle in 30 to 60 minutes of Spanish per day. Given that I don’t live in a Spanish speaking country, that’s about as immersed as I can get.

2.????? Learning Spanish is hard. The grammar is different. There are these things called reflexive verbs, which are baffling. It is often unclear to me who the subject of a sentence is. The number of words you must learn to fluently speak past, present and future tense verbs is staggering. Yet, bit by bit, it’s becoming clearer. The more I immerse myself, the more I see the same patterns over and over, the more I get “a-ha” moments. It’s super gratifying. But, still, very difficult…

3.????? …which leads me to, we take for granted how easy and natural it is to speak our native tongue. We automatically find the right words and structure our sentences with proper grammar. Since beginning my Spanish journey, I better appreciate how amazing language fluency is, how easy it is to order Starbucks or call for help or discuss esoteric topics. On the other hand, it is humbling and sometimes embarrassing to communicate in a new language…

4.????? ….which leads me to, if you’re easily embarrassed, it will be difficult for you to learn another language. The old saying, you have to break some eggs to make an omelette applies. I try to speak Spanish to everyone I meet who speaks it. The amount of times someone has stared back at me and then, went, “oh, you mean”…which means, I either said the wrong word or I butchered the pronunciation. I’m, for better or worse, not easily embarrassed. I want to learn Spanish and I know that I’m going to suck to start. It’s part of the journey. Tengo que romper algunos huevos para mejorar (I have to break some eggs to get better). Mmmm…huevos.

5.????? Another interesting thing about Spanish, like French, is sliding back into the concept of masculine and feminine nouns. In a world that is very gender sensitive it’s really interesting to learn a language that differentiates. I haven’t even gotten into how today’s Spanish deals with they/them. That’s for another day.

6.????? If you want to learn Spanish, there are a million dialects. Every Spanish-speaking country speaks it differently. Argentinians speak different than Cubans who speak different than Salvadorans. The slang…the dropping of letters…sometimes I listen to someone speaking very slangy Spanish and I have no clue. So, if you want to learn Spanish I would concentrate on learning, for lack of a better term, high Spanish to start. Find clear speakers who avoid slang. As you get better, it becomes easier to understand muddier Spanish. You pick up just enough words to get the gist.

7.????? I do want share something that is easy about Spanish. Cough, tough, bough, all pronounced differently in English. Seriously, WTF? Whose brainchild was that? I have spoken to Latino friends for whom English is a second language and this inconsistency in pronunciation is one of the toughest things they face in learning English. In Spanish, each letter is essentially pronounced the same in every word, which means once you learn the letter sounds you can mostly sound out every word accurately. Makes a whole lot more sense than cough, tough, bough, right? Also, revisiting the bit about fluency, isn’t it remarkable our English-speaking brain just naturally says cough, tough and bough correctly? It baffles me how easy it is...as long as English is your first language.

8.????? When I started this journey in March, I challenged myself to work on Spanish every day for a year. That was my goal. Not to be X fluent or to be able to pass a university-level Spanish course. Just to grind out a bit of Spanish every day for a year and see where I get to. That year will end in this coming March, but I know my journey won’t end there because…

9.????? …learning Spanish has been one of the most humbling, rewarding things I’ve done. It’s amazing that nine months ago I could barely say, hola, and now I can listen to a simple podcast and understand most of it. I can write and speak simple sentences. It’s still very difficult—did I mention past, present and future verbs are maddening? Still, I feel I have made real progress along my journey.

10.? So, where do I go from here? I want to be reasonably fluent. In March, when my initial year is up, I will take stock and decide what I need to do to continue my journey to fluency. I want to get to the point where I get the grammar right almost every time, where I don’t have to conjugate verbs in my head before speaking and I don’t hear an English translation in my head after listening to something in Spanish. Ultimately, I want to dream in Spanish. That’s sort of my goal. To be so fluent, my brain doesn’t care what language it dreams in.

11.? Last thing, if you’ve been thinking about learning a new language—Spanish or whatever—get going. That language won’t learn itself. Download Babbel. Get some study guides. Find some podcasts. There is tons out there for pretty much every language. The brain is designed to communicate. There are hundreds of thousands of years of evolution honing your brain into a computer that can rewire itself to communicate in a different language if you give it the programming. You will be amazed with just a little consistency how quickly you pick up a new language. Good luck. Have fun. Rompes algunos huevos.