For the last few weeks I have been working on my Spanish. I took Spanish in college, when four semesters was required, and I did all right. I enjoyed it for the most part, but I also admit the years have drained most of what I learned from my memory.
I find I can actually read it fairly well, but as far as speaking and listening goes, almost all of it faded. So when the opportunity arose to use the Rosetta Stone software, I decided to give it a shot. We’ve all seen how the country is changing demographically, and it only makes sense to learn another language as the population evolves and the world becomes more global by the day. The idea that everyone “should just learn English” is as dated as a Yakov Smirnoff routine. Trying to resist other cultures’ influence is about as effective as it would have been to resist the Industrial Revolution, and makes just as little sense. We’d be doing today’s American kids a better service if they were learning both English and Spanish in school from the beginning anyway since that’s the time people are best able to absorb it.
Of course, most foreign language classes I had taken in school consisted of a lot of repetition, conjugation and memorization. In other words, they were as boring as watching paint dry, or watching grass grow, or watching an American League baseball game. Thankfully, Rosetta Stone has turned out to be quite different.
Instead of a lot of memorizing it’s laid out like a series of games. Kids learn their first language by hearing a word, associating it with something they see and picking it up from there, drawing from context. That’s the way this software works, as each word, phrase, action or concept is matched with a picture. You begin to form associations much faster than you did using the piles of index cards I carried around in high school and college. Of course back then I was far more interested in learning how to curse and say dirty stuff, so I won't lay all the blame on the teachers (that stuff sticks even after all these years. If I ever need to remind a Spaniard that his mother had relations with Franco's Army I can do it). Anyway, the software also blends different ideas well, teaching you colors and clothes for instance through matching words and pictures, then showing you a picture of a person walking, running or standing while it asks you which person is the one running in a red shirt. You pick up verbs, nouns and adjectives all at once, the way we do as kids.
Other programs also do this, so I know it isn’t only Rosetta Stone, but that’s the one I’m working with so that’s the one I’m writing about. It’s made learning Spanish fun rather than a time-consuming bore, and in fact I’ve picked up quite a bit in only a few weeks, putting in about three to four hours a week. Those hours go by fast as well. It never feels like a chore.
There’s no fear of falling behind in the class since you simply put on the headphones and go at your own pace. You speak into the headphones to work on pronunciation, you work on writing and reading too, and if you want to review something, you can without holding anyone else up.
Am I fluent in Spanish yet? No, of course not. That takes a lot more time, and more practice. As most people who learn another language know, often the toughest part is to listen to a native speaker talk and be able to keep up. The obstacle comes from having to translate what you hear into your own language, formulate your response, translate it into you second language, and then say it. When you have to do all that with a native speaker, you often fall behind. I can do fine in a Spanish class or with my software, but put on a Spanish language TV show and they seem to be speaking so quickly it’s all a blur. Of course, they have the same problem with English. It’s all a matter of practicing until you don’t need the extra translating steps. Some words, verbs and phrases are getting there for me, and it’s kind of a thrill to be able to pick up whole sentences when hearing people speaking. During the World Series I listened to a couple of innings on the mlb.com site in Spanish. I was pleasantly surprised how much I was able to follow after only about six weeks of classes. It’s exciting when that happens, as you realize there are around 400 million more people I can communicate with than I could a few months ago.
The word communicate is the key, of course. While fluency is still a long way away, I feel I can at least communicate. I won’t fool anyone into thinking I’ve spoken it all my life, but if I need to communicate on a basic level, I can do it. That itself is an accomplishment and feels pretty good. There are a lot of wonderful people in the world that speak languages other than English. There are good movies, songs and books as well, and I just hope to be able to absorb a little bit more of what the world has to offer.
Maybe this will turn into a new hobby. I’d love to pick up some Japanese too. Maybe in the future this will give me the confidence to go after a totally different alphabet and grammar system. I look forward to finding out.
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