James Souttar

I’ve been trying to learn Spanish for the last four years – but halfheartedly. It’s something I need to do, and I have many Spanish speaking friends. But it’s not a language I ever wanted to learn.

Coming from this point of view, I have to recommend Michel Thomas’ courses (basic and advanced). I don’t know how he manages to pack so much in to them – or make learning quite so easy. But I’ve found acquiring Spanish grammar from him relatively painless. (If only learning vocabulary was so easy!).

Margharita Madrigal’s book – which follows a very similar approach – has also been a joy. I like her logic, as well – starting with the past tense, because that’s the one we need most when we make conversation (talking about our experience, telling stories, etc.)

I also came across this the other day on a friend’s blog. Haven’t had much chance to check it out yet, but pass it on for anyone who is interested.

“Among other sources, I’ve been learning Spanish from a cool podcast site, called Notes in Spanish. The site’s run by a husband and wife team (British husband, Spanish wife) who met as intercambios. The intercambio (exchange) method has apparently become quite popular in Spain and elsewhere in Europe. It consists of usually two people who meet regularly to help each other learn the other’s native language, spending half the time, say, speaking in Spanish and half the time speaking in English.

It sounded like a pretty cool idea. Yet, even though I have some acquaintances who speak Spanish, none were really excited about actually spending time to help me learn. An intercambio seemed out of reach for me even for Spanish, yet alone the other languages I want to study, Esperanto and Catalan!

Then I discovered MyLanguageExchange.com. This is a site used by a half-million people helping each other as penpals and intercambios through email, text and voice chat sessions. I just signed up for a year’s membership (a whopping $24—just two dollars a month). 115 languages are studied at MyLanguageExchange, and some of the less well-known ones are very well represented: (Currently 2045 Catalan speakers are available to help English speakers, and 2311 Esperantists want to practice.)

This is really cool! hoping to start learning more with an intercambio soon.”

When I first came across this as a ‘thing’, it resonated with what was happening in my life at the time. Since then, however, all sorts of people have mentioned to me – quite independently – that they had come to this realization.

It seems to me that we have a very deep seated belief – barely on the edges of consciounsess – that we need to effect a positive change in someone who had a big role in our own personal drama (for instance, a parent) before we can reach a resolution of the traumas this drama created. I guess we’ve all seen too many of those Hollywood movies where – usually at the end of their lives – a grumpy, ill-natured parent suddenly blossoms and apologises to their (usually middle-aged) child about everything. Or maybe it’s the case that – like so many other things – we make someone else responsible for something we need to do for ourselves. I don’t know.

What I do know is how healing it is to come to the realization that someone else is not going to be what you’ve always hoped they might one day be. It’s not something that you can just make happen by wanting it. The realization has to unfold in its own time.

This happened with me with my mother, and that has been a big positive. I’ve begun to see it happening with other people with whom I’ve had a problem over the years, but this is still a work in progress.

Maybe another way of formulating this ‘thing’ is to ‘accept others the way they are’. And there are so many barriers and resistances we put up to doing that – even if we clear away some of the more obvious ones, there are still subtle ways we want people to be different. But every time we push that acceptance that much further, we recover a little bit of the power that we allowed others to have over us. And – actually – begin to appreciate them for who they are, rather than for their role in our life drama.

In summary, this is a totally important and brilliant ‘thing’ to do!

I’m surprised that I’m still the only one to want to do this.

I learned Arabic Calligraphy in the Naskh style with Mustafa Ja’far who teaches for Birkbeck College at the British Museum. And I’d like to give a real plug for Mustafa’s courses (I did it twice, so good was it). He is a truly excellent teacher as well as being an extraordinary calligrapher (you can see some of his work on his website: http://www.arabigraphy.com). The way he combines practical learning with the reed pen with a tour through the history of the various styles and personages of Arabic Calligraphy makes these courses wonderfully inspiring.

I love the meditative attitude and pace of this kind of calligraphy, too. When you see it done well, it is as if the pen dances on the paper, leaving a fluid swirl of ink in the most exquisite shapes. (It doesn’t do that for me, of course – but I still find it very relaxing and enjoyable).

But making it happen, that’s the thing. And I guess it’s the same issue as most of my other 22/43 things: I want to do them, but I don’t make the effort to do them. Maybe I should add another entry along the lines of “achieve some of the other things”? ;-)