That's right. I'm learning Spanish. Our library has a contract with Mango Languages** to get free 100-lesson language courses. There are lessons in Greek, German, Italian, Portugese, Mandarin, Spanish, and lots more and a few ESL programs. They're all for learning to converse rather than learning a lot of vocabulary and grammar. So far, I can give greetings formally and informally, order you a glass of water or a cup of wine, and tell you about Mango Languages. Seriously. Lesson 4, "A friendly conversation continued" taught me that exact sentence above. I'm sure that is going to come in handy.Snarkiness aside, I'm really enjoying it and seem to be picking it up quickly. The grammar is a lot like French (and the grammar is about all I remember of my French) and so many people I know speak Spanish that a lot of the vocabulary is pretty familiar. I ask Sam when I have questions about anything and he's helping me learn more of the rules than Mango Languages wants to teach me.
It also feels nice to be working towards my long-long-long-term goal of really learning Spanish-- without having to be gone from the house two or three evenings a week to attend a class. (Maybe classes will come later).
So the next time we see each other, I'll just say, "Que gusto verte! Que te gusteria beber?"
*I don't know how to put accents on my letters. I'd be happy to learn that new skill as well.
** This is one of the reasons they give for learning a new language: "...There's plenty of fish in the sea, but plenty more when you can speak another language." Sounds like pretty sage dating advice to me.
5 comments:
Buen hecha, Heather! Pronto hablarás como una nativa!
Try this for typing in Spanish in Windows: http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/international/accents/codeint.html
Smart girl.
For 35 years I've known I would regret not learning to speak Spanish. But has that motivated me to do it? Of course not.
Ah, well.
That's awesome! I'll have to check it out...I'm going to have to keep up with Ella this year.And I love the quote about the fish in the sea...hilarious :-).
I like the ambition! As far as typing the accents, the easiest way I found to do it is to set up your computer so that you can type with the Spanish Keyboard. Then you have a shortcut like Alt+Shift to change the keyboard into a Spanish keyboard. Once it is a Spanish keyboard press the left bracket before the vowel you want to accentuate. The semicolon becomes the tilde.
To setup your computer go to the control panel and then to regional and language settings. Then you have to install the Spanish keyboard and identify the shortcut.
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