November 10, 2019
I still do the Rocket Languages 1-2 times a week, stopped doing the tutor but am talking 50% of the time with my wife in Spanish. I still get frustrated but I can noticeably see my improvement. No huge updates, just that I notice.
Aug 11, 2019
I am going to stop my "how long I've been in Colombia" tracker and just focus on the updates.
The tutoring lessons from my mother-in-law stopped. It is a very different thing to teach a 30-year-old Spanish than 9-10-year-olds.
I hired a personal tutor who is excellent and specializes in foreigners. Still, I can only give a few hours a week based on our schedules. That inconsistency makes it difficult. Along with that, being intermediate is a very tough place to start learning. I have bad habits that I depend on that are hard to break. I get bored with the basics and show a propensity of high knowledge...but then mess up the basics. It's hard to learn something boring. I'm struggling with is staying interested in boring rules.
I paid for an app called Rocket Languages, and I really like it so far. It seems to be meeting me in the sweet spot where I am reinforcing, learning, and not studying a grammar table. Perhaps more importantly, it's keeping me consistent.
I feel like I have finally reached a point of letting go and genuinely not caring if someone realizes I'm learning the language. That "let it go" feeling is very freeing, and I feel I can absorb much more. For example, I can follow words now, even if I don't know what they mean. One listening skill I had did not know when one word started and another ended due to the different rhythms of how people talk.
June 16, 2019
Day 200 in Colombia
Here are a few things that happened since I last updated
My wife's mother is a Spanish teacher for 9-10-year-olds in Colombia. I came up with the idea that maybe she could help me learn faster, and she was very excited to help. As it turns out, teaching adults is much different than teaching children. Adults have a bizarre starting point in that we require more to keep our attention, so it's easier for us to get lost in more complex words and want to skip the basics. For example, I bought a book called Nacho Lee, which is basically every native Spanish speaker's first book, and I find it challenging to comprehend. I can now have a complex conversation but struggle with saying the alphabet and struggle with numbers. It's a pretty weird feeling being a near illiterate 30-year-old.
I made a trip to Bogota to see a buddy and was encouraged to see he wasn't fully fluent. It sounds weird to say that, but I needed to feel that I wasn't alone in not being perfect, and seeing other people fail alongside me allowed me to accept my learning curve more. The main hint I got from him is to stop trying to understand every word, and instead, try to get the message from the context clues and words you do know without thinking. This was HUGE for me.
There is an episode in the kid's show Arthur where the rabbit named Buster Baxter refuses to read a book. It turns out, he just wasn't interested in the subject and needed something more challenging. I got a business book called Originales by Adam Grant (it's a book translated to Spanish from English), and I am now on page 46. I am putting into practice not reading each word and translating but rather full paragraphs, then translating. The levels of meaning can vary so much. In English, I don't define every word then try to put those definitions together to make a sentence. Instead, I will read 2-3 sentences and see if I get a general idea and move on. Applying this same principle to reading and listening has greatly helped me be more fluid.
April 22, 2019
Day 124 in Colombia
A difficult thing I’ve been wrestling with is how there is not always a 1:1 translation in language. Words are important to me. When I write something, there needs to be a certain feeling and order behind each one, so I feel understood. I am finding that I can make someone aware of the general idea in Spanish, but cannot portray emotion and feelings when I communicate because I’m so prone to have a 1:1 translation and look at Spanish through the lens I already know in English/
An example of where I’m struggling with this 1:1 translation Spanish is reflexive verbs. The English meaning of reflexive is primarily to do to oneself, which I understand. Reflexive verbs in Spanish somewhat follow that logic, but not always. Here is an example of what I mean:
To eat is the verb comer. To say I eat is yo como.
To feel is the reflexive verb sentirse
The se at the end is saying who it’s happening to, making it reflexive. I feel is Yo me siento.
Why is “to feel” reflexive and “to eat” is not? Not all verbs are like this, but it seems like some verbs are categorized as reflexive when they don’t need to be, and others are not reflexive when they can be. What further complicates this is a 1:1 translation of Yo me siento, is literally “I feel myself”… which is a totally different meaning in English.
All in all, I have to learn to not see things so much through my English rules glasses, but learning to forget patterns I know is proving harder than learning something new.
April 20, 2019
The purpose of this blog is to document my progress as a Spanish speaker. I will be keeping more detailed blogs on lessons learned, reflections, venting, and more.
I’m married to a beautiful Colombiana, and we are waiting in Medellin for her US visa to get approved. Growing up near the southeast side of Chicago, as well as having a mother with Mexican heritage, has always given me the itch to connect with the Latino culture. I want to learn the language, and marrying a Latina has taken my desire to a new level.
All in all, I have been in Colombia for 144 days (and counting)
March 27-April 19, 2017 (23 days)
May 6 – May 25, 2017 (19 days)
Sept 30 – Oct 8, 2017 (8 days)
Jan 20 – Jan 28, 2018 (8 days)
Jan 24, 2019 – present (86 days and counting)
I have been surrounded by the Spanish language growing up, and it helped. I took courses in Rosetta Stone, and it helped. I have taken four years of Spanish in high school, and it’s helped. I have taken Spanish lessons during my time in Colombia, and it’s helped. I am using the $10/mo DuoLingo course (currently on day 59), and it’s helped. I speak Spanish as much as I can with my wife, and it’s helped. We go to language exchanges, and it’s helped.
I say all this because the journey from basics to intermediate hasn’t been too bad for me because I had a better starting point than most. Navigating the intermediate is proving to be a tremendous emotional challenge. I still feel like I’m an outsider looking into the Spanish language. There is always that back and forth feeling confident that I know a lot, but then having shame wash over when someone asks me a question, and I don’t understand a single word.
Currently, I can:
Have conversations about almost anything, but know the words I use aren’t entirely correct and usually am catching only 40-60% of what they say depending on the accent they have
Attain basic necessities as well as have fundamental relationships.
Read and understand ~50% of a book like “The Alchemist.”
Write ~60% accurately (The accents screw me up)
What I want to do:
Be able to go to unfamiliar areas and depend on locals for directions, ideas of places to explore, etc.
Read books in Spanish that I don’t only comprehend but feel and experience
Write blogs and professional emails in Spanish
Feel a deeper connection with friends and my wife’s family (who doesn’t know English)
Expand my career to involve Spanish speaking projects
The weird feeling is how close it feels to have the skills that I want, but how slow the progress is to get there. It’s like being able to see and smell the food on the grill 30 feet away, but I am only allowed to move an inch an hour.
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