I started my Spanish classes a few weeks ago and they’re going well. At first I was by myself with the instructor, but I switched to an earlier time so now I have 3 other students with me. Having one on one instruction was good I suppose, but the class is very conversation focused, so it’s nice to have other people to talk with. I have been pleasantly surprised by some of my vocabulary coming back from what I learned in college.
My brain is still having trouble with the speaking part, though. The problem is not my pronounciation, for example if you ask me to read something, I don’t really sound like a gringo. This mystified my instructor until she found out my Dad’s first language is Spanish. However, I have a lot of difficulty putting those words together and getting them out on the fly. I have a lot of sympathy for stroke victims because that’s exactly what it must be like. My brain is going a mile a minute in English but it won’t put those words in Spanish. Well, not quickly anyway.
My dh asked me this morning if I could please type something out for him in Spanish. I’m normally a very quick typist, so I didn’t think much of it. You can set Word these days so it will even add in accentos for you and everything. Easy peasy. Right up until I started typing and suddently realized that when I type I read the words. And instead of my brain telling my fingers which letters to push by what’s on the page, it works by the sounds the letters would make. That might not make sense to you, and maybe it’s just my freaky brain, but here’s why I think so: When I read the word in spanish for foot, “pie”, which sounds like “pee-ay”, my brain tries to tell me to type in “P-E-A-Y” or some such nonsense.
My brain is so confused, no wonder it takes bilingual kids longer to learn to talk. At this rate it’s going to take me 30 more years to learn to speak Spanish. I wish I had a Spanish/English switch.
