I have set many goals for myself this year in terms of continuing my education (just because I am out of college, it does not mean I should stop learning!). One of them is to start learning Spanish. It's practical in this day and age (and for our location). And seeing as how I'm racially ambiguous anyway, it's only fitting that I at least learn the language that so many other people assume I understand (tan skin does not always equal Latina, come on!). Seriously, I get at least a few people EACH WEEK who think I'm Hispanic. Yesterday I got a new one, the plumber fixing our kitchen sink thought I was Arabic! Ha ha, oh the things people come up with :)
So to assist in my learning, I have called on the wonderful program called Rosetta Stone to help me. A friend is currently using it to learn French through the military, so I thought I would see how it works for Spanish.
The program itself is pretty amazing. It doesn't use any English, only pictures. So you figure things out as you go. It's a refreshing way of teaching a language. I was a student of French from my freshman year of high school to my junior year of college, so I have had many teachers. The old-school way of teaching is by books and reading. But it's by immersion that people learn the most effectively, and that's how we all learned English. And that's what makes this program cool.
My main challenge thus far is switching gears from learning French to Spanish. It's so hard to change my pronunciation! When I see Rs I want to do the throaty French pronunciation (think hairball), but now I have to roll them, so confusing! And in French there are so many things NOT pronounced, like the endings for most verbs, but in Spanish everything is pronounced as-is (which is actually easier).
Spanish is a very useful language and it's also very beautiful. I'm excited to start learning!
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