Aprendiendo

Many years ago, I spent a good amount of time working on my Spanish language skills with the Duolingo app. I got far enough on it that I was able to converse fairly well with my Spanish speaking grandmother the last time I was able to visit her. I even made a joke in Spanish about my dad being old. Very proud of myself for that one. 

I reached the end of the lessons, and I even took a language placement test and tested into Spanish 201, which I took in 2016. I didn't continue with university classes, because I didn't like the experience of the class. The instructor tried to take a hard line of not speaking English, but they caved quickly under the pressure of a silent classroom. I guess I also felt like I was done with taking classes for the time being. 

I had only taken the class because I ran out of Duolingo. What I didn't realize was that while I was ignoring it, they were adding more lessons. I came back to it earlier this year and realized that there were a whole lot more units than there used to be. I got to work. It would be great to be able to understand when my dad and his siblings broke into Spanish during our family Zooms. 

I found a rhythm for myself, moving forward to more interesting lessons, and cycling back to the easier lessons to level them up. Stories, which were a new feature to me, every now and then. 

And then they completely changed the interface! I could no longer navigate back and forth between easier and harder lessons, oh no. I'm on a single path, and I have to follow it. I'm not super fond of this change. I liked being able to change topics if my brain was just refusing to get a grammar concept. Or if I wanted to rack up quick XP and rise on the leaderboard. 

I'm determined to keep going on it. There are now far more units than I think I could possibly finish, but I've wanted to learn Spanish for a very long time. Some things are starting to click in my brain, and I'm hoping that will continue. I have a 75 day streak as of today, and I'm happy to keep learning. 

Living Languages Are Hard

Much to the disappointment of my mother, in high school I took Latin and Ancient Greek. She wanted me to learn Spanish, which makes sense because my dad and his side of the family speaks Spanish. I wanted to learn Latin, because I liked the idea of learning a foundational language. Theoretically, learning Latin would help me learn any Romance language, including Spanish, more efficiently.

But now I'm taking Spanish (my mom has forgotten most of hers), and I'm starting to have some difficulty. I tested into Spanish 201 by using the Duolingo app, so I don't have as much of a grounding in the basics of some verb forms as I'd like. And I've never taken a college level Spanish class before so I don't know if my class is typical or not. We don't use the (expensive, online only) textbook very much at all, and though the class is supposed to be conducted solely in Spanish, the instructor breaks down multiple times a class into English either because she doesn't know the Spanish or the class is looking at her with baffled incomprehension on our faces.

Also, and I write this knowing I have a history of being annoyed by the verbal tics of instructors, she uses the English word, "kay" a lot (short for okay), which confuses the heck out of me because it sounds just like the Spanish word, "que."

I do well enough on the tests and homework assignments, but I cannot seem to have a conversation with anyone in Spanish without stammering, hesitating, and losing track of what we're talking about. I hear one unfamiliar word and lose everything after. Or I can't understand someone's accent, or I just don't know the words that I want to use, or how to express what I want to express.

I have to translate what I'm saying before I say it. I have to translate what others are saying before I understand it. And I don't know how to get past that.

The present subjunctive wasn't too hard to learn, but the imperfect subjunctive is formed using the third person plural of the preterite. And I've never, ever learned the preterite. I've barely even heard of it.

So I'm simultaneously frustrated and excited by class at this point. There's so much that I don't know and it bothers me. But as I continue to work with Duolingo, I can see what I've learned by rote using the app starting to make sense with what I learned in class. If all I had to do was translate, like with Latin, then I'd be doing fine.

But Spanish is a living language, and I'm being evaluated not only on how well I can write or read it, but also on how well I can speak and listen to it. I'm trying to find that switch in my brain to start myself thinking in Spanish, but I don't know where it is or how to flip it.

A Review of Duolingo

According to Duolingo, I'm 52% fluent in Spanish, after about 75 days of hard work. I wasn't starting from zero with Spanish. In fifth through eighth grades, my school provided language classes. We took some Spanish, some German and some French, but mostly Spanish. Unfortunately, we could never hold onto a teacher, so we started over every year.

My dad grew up speaking Spanish in Peru, but it was not something that he passed on to my brother and me. There are times that I wish he had, but I do have a good grasp of the English language, so I shouldn't complain.

I started using Duolingo knowing some very basic Spanish and a few phrases useful for greeting and communicating with my relatives. I think that got me past the very first lessons on Duolingo, maybe six of them. I had next to no grammar and a vocabulary that would have prevented me from reading a Spanish version of Dr. Seuss.

My goal was to learn enough Spanish by the time I went to visit my grandmother, who does not speak much English, that I could communicate with her. And, by the time I left, I had attained level 13, with 5700 XP. I'd made it past the irregular future construction and the past and present perfect, both of which turned out to be very helpful, grammatically speaking. I found out, during that visit, that present tense is not very helpful in conversation.

And, I mean, I probably knew that, but until you are trying to communicate with someone while using a limited word and grammar arsenal, it doesn't really hit home. I can rattle off English without even thinking about what tense I'm using, but in Spanish, I found myself struggling to construct a proper sentence. Still, the 52% seemed like a decent assessment. I could communicate most of what I wanted to say, resorting to pointing and pantomime only a few times.

And I could understand the gist of what my grandmother, and other relatives, including my dad, were saying better than I could speak. I might not have known the precise tense they were using, but I could catch the roots of the words and fill in the blanks using context clues. For the most part.

I don't think I'm ready to go and live in a Spanish speaking country, but I think I could navigate through one, though not gracefully. And I feel more confident, having spent some time living with the language, rather than just studying it. I'm satisfied with what Duolingo has done for my Spanish skills, and in a short amount of time. My only complaint is that I'm learning Spain-Spanish and the section on Countries didn't even mention Peru. I guess I'll have to rely on my relatives to catch on to Peruvian slang.