speak spanish

My aspiration to speak passable Spanish has taken on new urgency as I get closer to our planned honeymoon in Mexico in late August and early September. I do have a smattering of knowledge from middle school and high school, but I definitely need to learn more and re-learn things I’ve forgotten.

A post on Lifehacker led me to investigate Rosetta Stone. I played with their free on-line lessons and liked what I saw.

So last night I took the plunge and opted for an on-line subscription. They offer Levels 1 and 2 of their Spanish program on-line (there is also a Level 3, which includes much video content—perhaps they didn’t want that choking up their server bandwidth?). By my calculation, I’m already about 6% through Level 1. I’m sure the speed at which I’m going is thanks to what I still remember from school. Nevertheless, it’s proving to be a useful refresher course so far.

A large number of people think the goal “learn Spanish” is the same thing as this. I don’t. I specifically want to be able to have conversations with Spanish-speaking people, and preferably have them come away not thinking of me as a gringo (or at least not a typical gringo!).