Isn't it Romantic? SCMT learns Spanish and French

[SCMT]

I don't feel like I've had a particularly active week studying Spanish, but sometimes I don't know until I write my log, so let's see:

I had a first pass at Casa de las Flores episode 6. I still feel like my understanding without subtitles should be better than it is, and I'm struggling a little to figure out how to make noticeable progress. I watch the show, or really any show, and follow without problem with subs, and then I turn them off and they start talking fast and turning their heads and talking over each other, and I'm lost. I also watched Spanish language news a couple of times and spent some quality time with a video from BBCmundo about how being bilingual changes your brain. Those videos are the best things I have found so far, on interesting topics, of manageable lengths, with the ability to slow down if needed. The Castillian accent is tough, but tough probably isn't all that bad.

I'm working through Club Dumas, and I can already read it faster and more comfortably. I think I just finished chapter 3, about 15% through the book according to kindle. There's a dead body, a sexy widow, and a small, closed subset of society that revolves around rare and old books, and so far it seems to be a fairly formulaic mystery, which is fine with me. I have also read news, mainly in BBCmundo, pretty much every day.

I finished Heisig's Hiragana book, I have practiced writing them 5 or 6 times each while thinking about their keywords and mnemonics, and I've downloaded an anki deck that I ahven't opened yet to my phone. So...maybe I'm ready to start learning something? The goal is to get enough foundation to be able to learn vocabulary or work my way through a beginners' course.

[SCMT]

I missed a week of updates, but it was for good reason. I actually spent last week working in the Spanish speaking world. There was a lot of English, but it was about as close to an immersive environment as I'm going to find. There weren't many surprises, although I did find some holes in my vocabulary and there are plenty of tenses that are not automatic. Overall, expressing myself wasn't really a big problem. Understanding everything that was said, however, was more difficult, compounded by masks which muffle sounds and remove any lip reading feedback. Also, I found the Spanish dubbing on the ever present English language TV shows to be generally terrible and hard to follow. Overall, my communication skills in Spanish are much better than my last trip south of the border.

I continue reading Spanish news, and Club Dumas got a lot of attention in airports and on planes. I also had a session with my tutor where we mainly discussed my trip for conversation practice.

[Decidida]

I think masks affect our hearing, because they lie on the bones in our head. I don't think it is just that others are muffled and hidden. I don't think we hear as well. I have not done it often, but I have yanked off my mask so I can HEAR better.

I also lose some peripheral vision when the mask rides up. I have some mild heart damage that left my blood pressure very very low and I need all the freaking oxygen that I can get.

My anxiety and disorientation gets worse and worse the longer that I have a mask on.

I was in a store with a relative and just felt so disoriented and cried out, "Why does it feel like I can't HEAR?" He is the one that told me that my mask was pressing on the bones that affect my hearing. I don't know if he is dead wrong and just planted the idea in my head, but I really think my masks reduce my ability to hear.

[SCMT]

The last week had a good dose of Spanish, but most of it was difficult to measure for a good, solid log post.

I'm about 50% through Club Dumas according to Kindle, which isn't always truthful about such things. The writing is at about the right level, I think, with small amounts of vocabulary I don't know but not enough to interrupt the flow of reading. There is a whole lot of the grumpy book hunter talking to different people about books, though; the first half isn't exactly action packed. I'm also reading BBCmundo and ElPais regularly.

I did return to my El Explicador podcast with a little different strategy this weekend. Rather than trying to absorb every word of a 15 minute chunk by listening 2 or 3 times, I played an hour long episode beginning to end. I can't concentrate for that long, especially while driving, so I knew I was zoning in and out, but there are some positives to that method. I don't know if it is better or worse than the "small chunks repetitively"system, but I probably need to do a lot more of both. I haven't had much other listening since the last update. I need to return to CNN and my TV shows.

I've had lessons with both of my tutors, and I think they went well. I'm practicing a specific imperfect construction with one: Pablo dijo que se quedaba en casa. With the other, we discussed giving advice in Spanish in different ways:

Deberías comer.
Creo que deberías comer.
Te sugerio que comas.

So basically there are a lot of ways to screw up giving advice in Spanish, and I'm still trying to find some of them.

On a brighter note, I had a random encounter with a lady the other day who spoke no English. I was able to have a 5 minute or so conversation with her without actually having much difficulty other than asking her to repeat something once. The conversation was about simple stuff, but it was unscripted, unplanned Spanish as encountered in the wild with a stranger, and i did just fine. Need more.

[SCMT]

I've had little structured study over the past week. I continue to plow through Club Dumas. The novel just kind of drags. I will finish it, but I will be glad to move on to something else. I also watched Episode 7, Season 2 of House of Flowers with the intention of discussing it with my conversation tutor, but I had to cancel the lesson, so that will have to wait. I've also read news semi-daily.

I did have a very interesting conversation with a friend from Spain solely in Spanish the other night. We were at another friend's birthday party and spent an hour or so discussing the language and my progress in it. She works for a Spanish company and, in her spare time, works in a program that helps Central American immigrants learn English, so she brought an interesting perspective (and a few corrections!) to the discussion. She was also a bit snobby about Peninsular vs. Latin American Spanish, which I find amusing; she doesn't understand why I don't learn the "proper"language and grammar, and I don't understand why she doesn't realize that for every person I meet from Iberia, I will interact with 1,000 from Mexico!. I can't say we were the life of the party, sitting in the corner speaking a foreign language at a birthday party, but I had fun with the discussion and was a bit proud that I could carry my end as well, and for as long, as I did.

[SCMT]

There isn't a huge amount to update over the past week.

I had two sessions with different italki teachers. I discussed Casa de las Flores episode 7, and in the other i studied a brief biography of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo and spoke about it with my tutor. I do think that my conversational skills are better than they were a couple of months ago.

I listened to about an hour's worth of El Explicador podcast. I made a mistake and played an episode I had heard before, but I decided to let it play anyway. It was good review, and i think I must've only listened to the 1st 15 minutes the original time because some of the info was brand new to me. It's also possible I'm losing my memory, I guess.

I read a lot of news in Spanish. El Pais seems to give me 10 free articles per month now, although I don't think the "month" starts on the 1st, but anyway, I am using it and BBCmundo. I think i had one good long reading session in my Club Dumas novel, but that could have been before the last update.

So overall, that was a pretty light week. I hope to be able to incorporate more Spanish into my world going forward.

[SCMT]

Some times I feel like I'm faking it, and this is one of those times. It really isn't surprising; the log entries from the last two weeks have both included something like "this week was light on Spanish,"but that doesn't make it any less frustrating. Reading is difficult, I'm translating in my head a bunch, I'm making a bunch of stupid mistakes when I speak, and conversation is clumsy. When does this get easy?

Anyway, enough whining. I've had three italki lessons over the past week. With my main tutor, I practiced expressions with da, such as me da igual/miedo/verguenza, and then similar expressions like me pone/cuesta/preoccupa. With my conversation tutor we discussed the many threads of Casa de las Flores episode 8. I've watched episode 9 the first time but haven't discussed it yet.

I have read news in Spanish almost daily and have picked at my Club Dumas novel, but I'm having a hard time getting inspired to finish it.

So that's it, and it's no wonder I'm feeling rusty. It has been a little difficult to be motivated, but I just can't seem to gain any momentum. I'm really not going to fret too much over it, though. I can always kick my study into higher gear next week, or maybe the next week, or certainly during the week after that

[SCMT]

Why does it seem the time between weekly log posts keeps getting shorter? I'm still rusty, rusty, rusty, although hopefully I'm starting to get back on a better program.

I've had 2 italki lessons since the last update, which equates to an hour of speaking practice in a 7 day period. If the "10,000 hours of practice"rule were accurate, at that pace I would be an expert in Spanish conversation in about 192 years. I did have a video conference that I started in Spanish and switched to English after about 3 sentences because my brain just wasn't primed. I think everyone was relieved. But getting back to the lessons, I discussed the season finale of Casa de las Flores. I think my tutor is getting her soap opera fix through me, which is fine. With my other tutor, we discussed the 51st anniversary of the moon landing (which was yesterday.) Describing those events required some vocabulary that I didn't have, but the biggest problem is that with inactivity, all of the past tenses have become jumbled up into a semi-decipherable mess. I should probably go back to my grammar books and see if I can untie that knot.

I am still reading news, and I'm still plucking away at Club Dumas. Between seasons of Casa de las Flores, I have also started watching Y tu Mama Tambien. The biggest problem with it is that I have to stop watching anytime my children are in the house, so I''m only consuming it in 15 minute chunks. There is also a lot of slang and...um...adult subject matter, so even though I'm watching with subtitles, I'm probably going to have to go through it a second time. I am following the story, but I know there is a lot of detail and subtext I'm missing. I've also started back watching the news in Spanish in the mornings, and I will make an effort to play my podcast in the car. My Columbian news channels seem not to be available anymore, so it's CNNe for now.

Realistically, I'd like to increase that 1 hour of speaking and listening practice last week to at least 14 hours going forward, which means I will cut down that required timeline to reach 10,000 hour expert status to more like 14 years

[SCMT]

An update mainly because I think I'm supposed to update:

Finished Y tu mama tambien, discussed it with my conversation tutor.

Had a lesson discussing art with my regular tutor.

Read news, read a little of my novel.

Conversations went better, but I'm not exactly back on the Spanish train yet. I need to go back and practice tenses, especially preterite/imperfect and compound tenses in the past.

[Raconteur]

It's great to see all the progress you have made in slightly over one year. As I'm just starting out with a new language, this gives me a lot of motivation – to think, if I just stick it out, in the Summer of 2021 I may be where you are today (roughly speaking). Thanks for sharing!