My sister and I decided, independently of one another, to study Spanish this Summer. She bought some tapes, I bought some books, we've shared.
It's already gotten a bit competitive and she's in the lead. She started speaking Spanish to me on the phone and I didn't understand and was frozen, zombie-like, unable to answer in Spanish. Deja vu, franciais. No comprendo Espagnol!
Today, I decided to apply myself to this long-term task. Earphones and iPHONE in hand, I listened and repeated Spanish phrases for 45 minutes and some of it stuck.
The pronunciation is really hard for me. I've had to compare the pronunciation with French in order to remember. For example, in French, "pardon" is the same as Spanish, "pardon" (not sure of the Spanish spelling since it was on a tape). In French, it's pronounced, "pahr-don". In Spanish, it's "perrr-dohn". I can't roll the r's either. In order to remember the pronunciation, I have to compare it to the French.
There's a problem with this method. Speed. We're now learning and putting together short sentences. Because I've been comparing the words to French, I have to translate the English into French (remembering the pronunciation) and then translate the French into Spanish. I don't know why I'm doing it this way, I'll have to try to stop.
In a real-life situation, people don't ask me a question and count to 100 while I do a double-translation, check the pronunciation, smile and blather out some semi-coherent response.
I thought learning another language would be fairly easy for me. Au contraire!
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