The Unconfident Spanish Learner's Blog

Spanish
#1

Looking through old posts on this forum and the Welsh one, it seems like a few people used to make learner blogs- it’s shame the forum seems so quiet now so as one of my New Year’s Resolutions was to learn a bit of Spanish, I am going to start one!

Please don’t anyone feel obliged to comment etc. (the staff have already helped me a lot, and with Welsh in the past) but I wondered if this would help me to enjoy learning a bit more. I tend to get frustrated easily and stressed and disheartened, especially by mistakes. I really want to change this too. Maybe there are other people who would find it helpful?

All I can say is this isn’t a blog by someone who is extremely confident and breezes through languages! …I’m the opposite!

Hopefully I can clarify my thoughts a bit here, as well as look back on progress

I’d like to write a bit soon about why I decided to learn Spanish, but for now here is my first entry:

Challenge 14

(I hope this isn’t too long- I really like writing!)

Challenge 13 (I realised I’ve been calling them ‘lessons’ but they’re actually definitely ‘challenges’) left me wanting to give up, but it also made me more determined to prove to myself I can do this, and I can do this without getting stressed or frustrated

I was aprehensive about attempting another hard challenge as I was at work for 11 hours today due to training, BUT I did have one small win which was hearing some visitors (I work at a tourist attraction) speaking Spanish and knowing from their accents that they were from Argentina! All the cooking videos of Paulina Cocina (highly recommend!) I have watched on YouTube have paid off!

I decided to do half the challenge, and set a timer for 16 minutes. And to play a low-stress video game while I did the challenge (I usually do housework or something while doing SSi).

The issues I came up against to start with were my mind going blank and for the first 5 minutes I only said the first half of all the prompts. I pretty much used el joven, la joven, el senor, la senora interchangeably here, not really able to remember who was doing what and to whom. (Note to self: install Spanish keyboard extension!).

Things improved, even with another form introduced of decir (already my least-favourite verb; doesn’t everyone have a least-favourite verb?). I got a very, very long sentence correct and more encouragingly said it before the narrator! I fins I can get most things right if I pause, but the time pressure causes some stress. I try not to pause though.

Me gustaria has become quisiera for some reason, and desde as in ‘for about a month’ is now dropped in favour of por. I have no idea why.

At this point I decided to carry on and do the full session, though I had to take a few 5-minute breaks to just ~breathe~ at times. I have to remember that learning doesn’t happened when stress and frustration are present!

diga and dijera caused a lot of grief. I guessed each time and had a 50% chance of getting it right. I paused a lot to write down the sentences they appeared in to look for a pattern. dijera might be for past tense, but I have no idea… it doesn’t even appear in the table of decir conjugations in a little grammar book I have!

I consistently forgot that lo goes on the end when it’s an infinitive too. I tried to put it at the beginning. Oh well.

So, that was Challenge 14! I feel pretty mixed about it, but writing this horribly long post has helped. In a way it dredges up some of my mistakes, but maybe it will also help decipher the grammar.

I will attempt Challenge 13 again next I think!

Hasta Luego! :japanese_ogre:

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#2

Hola
Myself and a friend have recently started learning Spanish. Unlike the kick-start we had with SSIW with zoom sessions and a huge Cymraeg interest, Spanish is taking slightly longer to embed. Even though i have a friend online and a Spanish class. But im interested in the blog you mentioned. Is that something you intend posting here?
Muchas gracias

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#3

Yes, I’m just going to update this post I think everytime.

I’m the same- who knew Welsh would feel easier than Spanish! :rofl:

After I wrote that wall of text I felt kind of embarrassed, but today I think some of the grammar I’ve been struggling with feels clearer already!

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#4

Sometimes putting your difficulties into words does help to clear them a little. Keep at it! You’re doing well!

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#5

Challenge 13 (again)

My plan must have started working already, because I had a rare positive observation about myself learning languages! …that I really enjoy the listening exercises. There were weeks when I was learning Welsh when I did nothing except the SSiW listening exercises- on one hand it’s because they’re only 5 minutes long, and also because they’re ‘passive’ -I don’t have to do anything- but I also get a real sense of satisfaction because I can ‘see’ myself actually improving.

Anyway, I flew in the face of advice and did Challenge 13 again… it was ‘OK’. It was so much easier than the last time, and I am managing to finish my sentences mostly before the first narrator, but I still feel, in general, that I’m resonding too slowly, with a lot of ‘Ummm’ pauses to think.

I am still apparently unable to remember that it is decirle instead of le decir, even though I know the reason why. It’s like the new ‘rule’ about le has replaced the first rule I learnt.

And!..it just shows how much being stressed stops you from learning: the difference in useage of diga(with present tense) vs. dijera(with past tense) was actually explained, and I musn’t have heard/registered it at all at the first listen! And I’m someone who uses the version of the challenges with the on-screen text, and pasues to take notes!

The only other thing I am wondering about is how/when to use -le. Originally I thought it was a pair with usted but ella quiere preguntarle a su hermana…so perhaps it’s with the third person (I have been thinking of usted of like Welsh chi so I was confused why they used the same verb conjugations, but apparently it isn’t exactly a pronoun. I looked online for an explanation, but regretted it because people were getting very technical with ‘indirect object’ and the like. I’ll try to leave it for now.

Overall, I suppose it went better than ‘OK’!

Hasta luego! :japanese_ogre:

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#6

Usted goes with third person pronouns, verbs, etc, even though it means ‘you’, because it comes from vuestra merced. Just as you don’t address the reigning monarch as ‘you’, but instead speak indirectly to his or her majesty, so in Spanish one addresses a person’s mercy, rather than the actual person. (Etymologically speaking, that’s where it comes from; pragmatically, usted just means ‘you’ - but the etymology explains the weird third-person-ness.)

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#7

Challenge 15!

I read this one would be easy compared to 13 and 14, but found it… ‘mixed’.

para ir tripped me up. I am dreading more of para/por as it brings back memories [read: trauma] of Welsh ar gyfer, i, am which I never ever got to grips with.

I can report that gustaría is back in town after a short break where quisiera took its place!

a in a él le gustaría bothered me a lot :confused:

I tried a new tactic which is starting to speak my answer before the narrator has finished saying the prompt, since I’m mostly getting things right but not fast. It’s feeling so unnatural- like I’m interrupting! :smile:

I continue to just take a stab in the dark when the choice is between lleva and estudio even though the first goes with usted and Co. and the latter with yo.

I paused to consider for what felt like an age about usted lo ha hecho muy bien but I DID get it right!

And the thing where you can drop pronouns has started, just when I was getting back into the pattern of NOT dropping usted because the narrators don’t. I’m not whether it’s a matter of choice or style or how knitpicky people are about this. It kind of sounds better to me without saying the pronouns all the time, but what do I know!? :wink:

Anyway! That was Challenge 15. I’m still focusing on trying to RELAX when I do challenges so that’s the main goal.

I have so many thoughts, feelings and opinions to vent about pronunciation next time!

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#8

I feel your pain! It seems a lot more difficult to retain than Cymraeg. I have the 5 prompts on a sticky note on my bathroom mirror and I struggle to come up with a sentence for each of them,
One thing I have noticed is that I am a lot more confident in my attempts to speak Spanish to first language Spanish speakers at this early stage of my learning that I was when I was at a similar stage in Cymraeg. I do get some smiles and laughs (and quite an aggressive response one time) but I have the “benefit” of being very hard of hearing and so misunderstanding people and asking them to repeat the same thing several times (and sometimes giving up and just nodding by way of a reply) has become second nature to me. I am persevering though, we are going back to Spain at the end of Feb and I can’t wait to share my new words with the locals.

I do hope the SSi Spanish contingent increases though, it would be great to have the Slack chats and Q&A’s and, maybe Noson Lawens (¿Noches Feliz?) one day.

regards

Tony

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#9

Challenge 16

Completely fed up with this now to be honest. Read on only if you’re comfy with honest negativity!

Today I remembered why language learning is not really something for people who work full time. I just don’t seem to have the time to do SSiS these days, even with playing a challenge in the background while I do essentials.

ese, esa, esta and este bothered me throughout this one and I got worse and worse at recalling them and more and more confused and muddled up.

a ella le gusta esa película. This a seems to come and go of its own accord and is a closely-guarded grammatical secret!

No mention of sobre before now, as far as I’m aware, then suddenly it was sprung on me out of the blue :confused:

Ended this challenge feeling rubbish and frustrated. Wish I could look forward to enjoying using Spanish but don’t seem to be able to find the time nowadays between cooking, work, housework, life admin and exercise.

#10

Finding time to learn languages - yes, I feel your pain on that one! If anyone ever asks me what I’m going to do when I retire “Spending all day, every day learning languages” is my answer!

But I can help with these though:

ese - “that” - ese perro - that dog (masc. thing)
este - “this” - este perro - this dog
esa - “that” - esa chica - that girl (fem. thing)
esta - “this” - esta chica - this girl

The structure used with gusta is more like saying “something is pleasing to me” rather than “I like something” and you can emphasise who is doing the liking with the “a”, e.g.

(a mi) me gusta hablar español - “(as for me) I like to speak Spanish”
(a él) le gusta bailar - “(as for him) he likes to dance”

Usually, it’s not necessary, but as le gusta can mean “he likes”, “she likes” or “you (polite) like”, it’s common to add the a él, a ella, or a usted on the front to show which it is.

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#11

Thank you, that’s very helpful! @Deborah-SSi

That should help me remember the le gusta sentences better too now I know how/why they’re constructed :slight_smile:

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#12

Challenge 17

I have been feeling completely exhausted lately and so I had to do Challenge 17 in two halves over two days.

I’m still getting that feeling of anxiety beforehand and during, and I think it boils down to not having faith (for the lack of a better word) that I will be able to do this challenge.

I have been making notes about what to write here while doing challenges, but in the interests of simplifying and getting it over with as quickly as possible I didn’t this time.

I remember feeling pretty frustrated that all the me le lo la do not stick. It’s such a mental effort to decide prior to speaking whether one is required, if so which one, where in the sentence or if it’s attached to another word. I honestly feel like I’ll never be able to produce these fluently. If I pause the recording and think then I can deduce the right one, but as usual if a time limit is involved I go to pieces, and so does my ability to produce coherent speech.

I have been focussing a lot on pronunciation and getting it right, but that also slows me down.

I wondered about giving myself a break and doing Duolingo only for a few days, or just going back to older lessons and trying to get things really memorised this time. I know we’re not supposed to but I think I need to build my confidence back up.

Anyway, that is it for thus update now. Feeling pretty despondent and blah

#13

Ah, but that’s great they you’re actually talking to native speakers! I’m the only person I know who’s never been to Spain, maybe I should make that my goal!

I resort to just nodding in English too, especially when talking to the general public I my workplace, which is a big echo-y building- the looks it get! :rofl:

Yep, it’s be great to see more people and make this forum as active as the Welsh one is.

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#14

A Brief Foray into the Tourist Course!

After feeling pretty disheartened about Challenge 17 and just in general with my learning, I decided to try the Tourist Course.

I love it! Rather than feeling I’m forcing myself to do one lesson a day, I could have (but for time constraints) done a couple or more of these! :slight_smile:

Now, am I enjoying these because they’re easier? Yes, that’s probably a big part of it! I feel like I’m making headway again and can hear myself improving, which has an important ‘positive snowball effect’ (it wouldn’t be a real language-learning blog without business management-style jargon!) on my enthusiasm.

I’m hoping I’ll feel like getting back into the main course some time next week, but for now I will stick to the Tourist Course.

¡Hasta Luego!

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#15

Do you think it helps that they are more topic-focused? So you have more of a feel for when you would use those phrases?

I’m just curious about the difference for you.

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#16

I am also using the tourist lessons. The app is just too.l messy and confusing. No way to tell where you are. Repetitive mistakes i.e sir/señor. To fast forward or rewind is a blind alley. There seemed to be quite a wait for this to be rolled out. I guess i expected it to be a lot more professional. A lot less bugs for customers to find. For me I’ll stick with the zoom sessions and the challenges until i hear more positiveness regarding the app.

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#17

Just read your reply to Snufkinsbf and I realised that I enjoy it more because it is topic-focused. I can imagine myself using the type of phrases and sentences in the course, and that helps them “stick” better too. The other course is too vague for me, I feel, so I find it difficult to retain the stuff that I have learned.

I am a distrustful of the learning course too, I identified some mistakes in the course, which I passed on to Kai and Rich, but some are still there ( Usted for “Sir” and Seńor for “You”) and that’s just what I have picked up on, also some of the Spanish examples seem to include extra words, as if the clip containing those words wasn’t edited correctly, and that (for me, anyway) makes it difficult to “trust the process”. I’m sure it’s only teething troubles and will get sorted but it does put me off using the course in it’s current form.

Tony

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#18

I would say so, yes. I know the SSi method is geared more towards people who maybe already know or work with speakers so they can talk with them about everyday topics, but I definitely think a unit or two focused on tourist needs is good.

Thinking out loud here to try and understand my own learning hurdles, but I think for me the difference has been that I can set myself more realistic, smaller goals such as ‘order a coffee
in Spanish’.

I also found there are fewer instances of ‘surprise’ grammar and vocab being introduced in an prompt without any formal introduction of them beforehand. For me, that’s the main stumbling block of the main course.

This isn’t a criticism of the SSi method at all as it clearly works for the majority (although I suppose if it didn’t work they wouldn’t have stuck around on the forum). I’m really interested in how I can get around this thing my brain does, that is to say, getting stressed and frustrated when I get things wrong. I think it’s something a lot of the ‘struggling leaners’ (me) can pinpoint exactly where it came from in childhood, but finding a solution is harder.

I think that’s the main reason I’m doing these little blogs! :slight_smile: to try and become like the successful language learners who can brush off mistakes, embarrassment so easily!

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#19

Update

Well, I ended up writing a lot on my reply to Deborah as I started to have some really interesting thoughts about my learning style and the particular challenges I have with language learning.

I have a feeling I’m one of those dreadful people who likes lists and tables of grammar! :rofl: I know back in my Dysgu Cymraeg evening course days I liked how we were presented with a list of the ‘endings’ for each person in a given tense at a time. I guess that’s just the way I am wired! On the other hand something that I know doesn’t work for me is flashcards. Lots of other learners love flashcards but they just have never clicked for me.

Anyway, the only real update is that I’ve just finished Session 6 of the Tourist Course. Session 6 was a LOT harder than the previous 5 and I definitely struggled with some of the llegar sentences, especially whether to use para and/or a with it. And I’m sure there was a sentence where I heard algo para llegar but I’m not sure, or why.

I was feeling a bit defeated by Session 6, but doing some stream-of-consciousness writing about it has helped!

¡Hasta Luego!

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#20

Well, I’m actually “one of those dreadful people” as well to a certain extent, and I also can’t relate to Flashcards at all, though I’m quite fond of Clozemaster. Have you tried it?