I spent over a full day of my life this past year learning Spanish! About 28.5 hours…
I am not fluent. Not close. What I am is “connected” to those who Speak Spanish in a way that I would not be if I didn’t hear it and read it every day for a few minutes. I am getting the “gist” of tweets by the president of El Salvador and other people I know through Twitter without always having to click translate.
I’m also perhaps at the earliest stage of understanding how certain expressions of courageous conviction like “Seguimos” – We Continue, Persist.
There’s a subtle thing, too. Practicing Spanish also seems to have increased the variety of words I use in English! (At least according to Grammarly).
Anyway, wanted to share.
And remind myself:
When I started Duolingo I had NOTHING I could point to where I was consistent on something ‘not easy’ for me. Over two years later, the part of my identity that used to be ‘Rick can’t be consistent’ has been utterly replaced with 'Rick can absolutely be consistent when he knows why it matters.'
Today will be day 725 of the Morning Mile, too. Duo came first, and for that I am quite grateful!
In highschool I had a girlfriend who was fluent in Spanish…she had lived in Mexico for a year as an exchange student. I was also taking a Spanish class at the same time (grade 11 and 12). As well she had friends come from Mexico a few times who were native speakers of Spanish. So, I had some small degree of immersion along with the classroom study. I got to a fairly reasonable level of fluency as a result. I could speak without first having to translate in my head a lot of the time. I still remember a lot of it and can understand more than I speak. I get a bit of a thrill hearing someone speak Spanish on TV and I can understand most of what they are saying. It’s a beautiful language.
If I had known I would still feel so awkward with Spanish after 1000 days, I might not have started. Yeah, I’m like that. As much as I do embrace awkward beginnings, there’s a part of me that just feels like after 1000 days not being able to have even a pretty simple social conversation feels… well… confusing.
THAT SAID, if I hadn’t started DuoLingo back then, I’d not have had the consistency that I built on for my Morning Mile. THAT would have been tragic.
And the intangibles of practicing something new, even if for 5 minutes a day, has exercised my brain in ways it was craving.
Feeling closer to those in Latin America, too, feels so good to me. I listen to Nayibe Bukele of El Salvador and while I do need English subtitles, I FEEL the language and its essence differently. The emotional content isn’t “lost” in mental confusion anymore. Applies when I listen to Latin songs I don’t “understand” yet the sounds and essences are more alive in me.
I’m feeling a need for an AI “tutor” to chat with soon. I’ve been experimenting with that, and I can tell that it would be super helpful to just talk back and forth, even if I type Spanglish.
We’ll see. I do feel like this milestone means I am going to switch off of Duolingo being my “streak counter” and do that manually, like I do with the Morning Mile, so I feel more free to do things like read stories or news in Spanish rather than do Duo’s exercises. While it might be exercise, today’s lesson with the Cows cooking dinner and the cats cleaning up was silly in a way I might enjoy again someday… but I’m feeling like in 1000 more days I’d like to spend time in a Latin country with the family – and be a lot more savvy about conversation by that point.
Thanks for listening, your support, and being witness to the first thing (other than coffee) I’ve done as an activity every day for 1000 days… I feel the stick-to-it-ness benefits in my core.
Doing your Duolingo like you have been, is something to feel “proud” of yourself for. I have a feeling you know more than you think you do and when it comes time to visit that Latin country you may be amazed at how much your 1000 days learning has helped you.
Indeed. I’ve been chatting with ChatGPT in Spanish. While I don’t understand a lot of the reply, I do get the sense pretty well. I suspect in person it would be similar. I did another app today that is more conversation oriented, and it feels like a good adjunct until I get ChatGPT or another tool more tuned to help me. They say Duolingo is working on that, too, but they are not (yet) offering it to me.
