relearn spanish

I used to have a pretty good grasp of Spanish (good enough to take Spanish lit classes entirely in Spanish when I was in college), but it has atrophied down to nothing after 15 years of not using the language.

I have a lot of people telling me all the time that I should brush up on my Spanish, that it would be easy and useful. I am not very interested in Spanish anymore, but I feel like I should at least give it a go.

Lately, I’ve been listening to alot of Shakira. I bought her Grandes Exitos CD that has all of her Spanish hits on it. Well, I’m starting to remember a lot of vocabulary that I’ve forgotten.

I’ll hear her say something and I’ll think” Oh! That means ‘worse’, and that means ‘tears’” so obviously I haven’t lost my Spanish, I just forgot a lot of it. It’s such a relief to know that I haven’t completely lost it. It’s coming back!

I just need to keep listening to music and reading the books I have. I don’t think I need to go spend money on disks or anything since I’ve taken Spanish most of my life.

This has been a surprisingly difficult goal for me, especially since I had a good foundation after my 2 years of high school Spanish. I just can’t seem to stay with it. One distraction I’ve faced is the voice that says, “Arabic would be much more enjoyable,” or “If you learned German, you’d be able to practice with a couple of friends,” etc.

I need to commit. This SHOULD be a fun goal to pursue.

I was always afraid that I had complete forgotten my Spanish and would never be able to relearn it. Well I am happy to say I was wrong. At my current job, I work with children with autism. This past week I worked with a boy, who’s name only speaks Spanish. The first day my Spanish was quite terrible. But by the end of the week the nanny stated that my Spanish had greatly improved! I was also complemented on my Spanish by another person! I don’t remember the last time someone complemented by Spanish! I was so excited. If only one week of practice did that, there is still hope for me!

Right now, I’m trying to do so many other things, I don’t have time to sit and re-study Spanish. So for now, I atleast try to listen to Spanish music because in High School I used to do that alot and it helped. Maybe my subconscious will start re-learning for now.

In high school, my best friend and I would constantly speak to each other in Spanish to keep learning it. And then we graduated, went to college and focused on our main interests and stopped doing that. And I forgot it all!!

I love Spanish, it’s so pretty, I really wanna learn it (again) and keep it this time. If I can’t find anyone to constantly speak it with, I’ll just start writing in Spanish =D

I grew up speaking Spanish. My nanny only spoke Spanish. Now, while I could get by with my Spanish, I am definitely not a fluent Spanish speaker. I was thinking about taking a Spanish class but don’t think they would help me much. I did help with conversational Spanish. I am pretty good at understanding Spanish, just not speaking it. I haven’t seen any class that I think would help.

For Christmas, I got a bookstore gift card, and used it to buy a Spanish language series. This has 40 lessons, so if I can complete them all, I should be moving the right direction.

i bought a book of useful spanish phrashes for travelers the other day. i wanna find an old text book somewhere and maybe a dictionary to keep up with vocab. i hate conjugating.

it kind of sucks to realize that i know less of my first language than i do of my most recent language learned. i want to start brushing up on my spanish and actually be able to express myself as i would in english.