Thursday, June 11, 2009

Spanish

While I'm on the subject of goals, I have started taking steps towards my stated goal of "Pick up a new skill". Specifically, I have decided to learn Spanish, and identified the most likely method - a ten week night course in Edinburgh.

(Naturally, ten weeks is only enough for beginner's Spanish - I spent five years at high school learning French, so wouldn't expect miracles. Especially since the brain becomes much less flexible as we age. Anyway, the long-term plan would be to continue with the language beyond this year, and gradually build up fluency. But the longest journey starts with a single step, as they say.)

There are two courses, one starting in July and the other in October. Sadly, while I think I would prefer the former, I will have to go for the latter. In mid-July I'm going away for a week in France, and it's probably not a good idea to miss one of ten lessons, not to mention the confusion that would come of trying to juggle three languages at the same time.

(Did I mention my theory that I'm not really bilingual, but rather monolingual in two different languages? My reasoning is that I speak French reasonably well, but I speak it best when I'm fully immersed in the French, don't have to speak in English as well, and can go so far as to think in French. Which does very little for my ability to interpret for others, of course.)

So, anyway, that's the plan. Expect lots of posts from me in October and November, complaining about how hard it is to pick up a new language after all these years.

1 comment:

Captain Ric said...

When we were in Paris, I fairly frequently asked Leigh questions in French while ordering dinner. I know Leigh doesn't speak French, hardly a word, but because I was immersed, and speaking to a waitress in French at the time (typically), it just came out in French.

Weird.