The Travel Chica

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School’s Out

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Yesterday was my last day of Spanish class, so I figured it was time to write about what it has been like to learn the language.

Learning another language is really hard when you’re an adult, especially if you’ve never learned another language before.  I wish it was customary in the US like it is in pretty much every other first-world country (and others) for children to learn two, maybe three languages when they are young and it comes much easier.

And I don’t just mean taking some classes in high school because it’s not the same.  I’ve met a lot of students at my school who are already fluent in 2 or 3 languages.

I’ve been taking Spanish classes for 3 weeks, and I have my good days and bad days.  Sometimes I feel like I don’t remember anything I learned the week before or even the DAY before.  Other days, I feel confident and can carry on a conversation without getting frustrated.

Learning and practicing Spanish for four hours a day, five days a week is very aggressive.  In the first two weeks, I re-learned everything from three years of high school Spanish and then some (present tense, past tense, reflexive verbs, pronouns, prepositions, adverbs, etc.).

Then the third week, we started learning new things (gerunds, imperfect tense, imperative tense, future simple, subjunctive, conditional), and I pretty much had a meltdown.  I think there must be 50 different verb tenses in Spanish.  If I had it to do over again, I would probably only take 3 hours of class 3 days a week.  That leaves enough time to actually study what you learn and internalize it and also have some free time.  I have been so exhausted from class that I didn’t want to do much outside the classroom or take any trips on the weekends.

The School

The school I attended is called Yanapuma, and it has far exceeded my expectations.  The school exists to support the Yanapuma Foundation, which is a non-profit that works to alleviate poverty and implement sustainable development.

The facilities are great.  The Spanish school is organized and runs very well, and the staff are incredibly helpful.

They often organize extra activities.  Weekly there is a food demonstration/ tasting.  Usually on Friday evenings, they make drinks at the school in the evening.  During the week, there are trips to museums or other sites only for the cost of transportation or entry fee.  And on the weekends, they plan larger trips such as Cotopaxi and Otavalo.

In addition, the quality of the teachers is impressive.  They can adapt to different learning styles, and they promote learning through practicing conversation.

I’ve learned that “studying Spanish” doesn’t really matter if you don’t actually speak Spanish.  You have to just try.  Strike up a conversation with the people you’re sitting with at lunch.  Even if you know someone can speak English, try to speak to them in Spanish.  Ask the waiter at the restaurant or the woman sitting next to you on the bus about the best sights and activities.

After my second week of class, I decided that I would only speak in the present tense… forever.  Now I’m getting over it and trying to use the past tense correctly.  Maybe one day I’ll embrace the imperative and conditional as well.

My Progress

There are some people I can understand very well.  A woman I met that lives here in Quito speaks at a reasonable pace, enunciates her words, and uses vocabulary that I am familiar with.  Just the other night, we had a 15-minute conversation about which countries she has visited in Latin America and what she liked and disliked about each of them, and I understood about 85%.  I can understand the Spanish teachers at my school and the tour guide who took me to Cotopaxi for the same reasons.  I could even understand a lot of the PMI presentation I went to a couple of weeks ago although a lot of the vocabulary was new to me.

Then there are a lot of people that I cannot understand at all, mainly if they speak very quickly and slur their words together or if they speak very softly, which is common here.  But I imagine non-native English speakers have the same complaints.

When I met with the President of PMI Ecuador a couple of weeks ago, he shared some brilliant insight with me on the language.  The reason he likes English is because it is a very scientific language.  It’s to the point, specific.

Spanish, on the other hand, is a romantic language.  It is about expressing emotion, and you need more words to express emotion.  This helps answer the question I had about why there seem to be 5 different words for everything in Spanish.  He pointed out that a textbook is much thicker in Spanish than the English version.

So far, I’ve noticed two side effects of learning Spanish.

1.  When I am speaking English to non-native speakers, I enunciate and speak in simpler sentences.  Just like how I want a Spanish-speaker to talk to me.

2.  I am forgetting English words.  Seriously, it’s as if my brain is too full and some things just have to go.  And it’s not like I know the Spanish word for what I’m trying to say.  I cannot remember the word in any language.

After one bad day in class, I was humbled while helping a man that works at my hostel with his English homework.  He works 6 days a week, has a 2-hour round-trip commute to work, and goes to an English class once a week.  He is much earlier in his learning than I was when I got here, still learning the basic pronunciation of words and simple vocabulary.  I thought, “How lucky am I that I am not working full-time and can devote the majority of my day to learning Spanish.”

Yesterday was my last day of Spanish class, at least for now.

Hoping today and the rest are good days.

Comments

    • The school exists to fund the foundation. They also charge volunteers, so I’m assuming that helps fund the foundation. Other than that, I’m not sure what their other sources are. There are 3 or 4 people that started the organization in a small room and have grown it over the years.

  6. If there will be a chance, I will surely try to study and learn how to speak Spanish. I know that if I really want it I can get and it easily learn it at the same time.
    Julie Hayes recently posted..mark nason

  8. Ooph – I hear you. It’s so much more work than people who haven’t done it realise! I lost count of the number of times people said “oh, you’ll just pick it up” and perhaps you will but without study it will take a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong time. Think how long it took you to learn your first language?! Buen suerte!
    Abi recently posted..Photos of Sofia – Second Stop on the Iron Route

  10. I can totally relate to what you’re saying in this post. I’ve been based in Korea for several years and it is VERY hard to learn a second language in your adult years. Regardless, best wishes and if you stick with it and use it often as you can I think you’ll be surprised at how much you can achieve over time.
    Nomadic Samuel recently posted..Thanks A Million!

  11. Next year when I go to Spain, I fully intend to take the time to learn Spanish again. I picked up a bit when I was there in 2010, but not nearly enough. I remember in HS when I took Spanish. The past tenses ruined me!!! I barely passed and am pretty sure even trying to learn them made me shed a good tear or two. Hopefully next go it will be easier, but it doesn’t seem like it!!
    dtravelsround recently posted..An inside look at Elephant Nature Park

  13. Great post on your experience learning this language. I have loved learning Spanish, and it has made me keen to learn more languages. The biggest challenge I had to overcome is directly translating from English and keeping it simple. There are still people I can’t understand, but as long as I can get the just of what they are talking about we can at least communicate.

    We just got back to Spain, so I am excited to put the language to use again.
    Pete recently posted..Hockey Night in Slovenia

    • Oh, Spain!! I just met a man from Barcelona, and I had so much trouble understanding him.

      Yeah, the directly translating from English thing is still a challenge for me. When I hear a Spanish phrase that I find amusing (because of how I directly translate it to English), it does help me remember the correct phrase. For example, “to take sun.”
      The Travel Chica recently posted..Am I A Digital Nomad Now?

  14. I think a big problem with learning Spanish is, like you mentioned, the various tenses and the fact that we aren’t often even taught the meaning of such tenses in our own native languages. I love Spanish, though, and really want to get back into taking some classes myself.
    Camels & Chocolate recently posted..What Semester at Sea Taught Me

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