Spanish

I grew up in Northern Michigan, where the closest thing we had to a foreign language was properly spoken English. I took French in high school, but due to lack of interest in foreign language, the senior French and Spanish classes were combined, with half the period being alotted to each. As the future creator of multilingua.info, I listened well and soon was irritating the Spanish students with my ability to remember vocabulary they had forgotten. But most of it was close enough to either French or Latin that it came easily to someone for whom the words were parts of families, not discrete items to be learned.

When I went to college, I majored in French and took one year of Spanish. But so many people took - never mind already spoke - Spanish that it lost a lot of its exoticism.

Now I live in California. Spanish is a lot of things out here - useful, widely spoken, more widely understood - but it is not exotic. This has made it hard for me to study. In the same way that French became just another part of my life and so lost its exotic appeal, Spanish isn't something I would think of learning. It's just something I speak every day with co-workers, friends, servers at restaurants and so on.

Right now, I'm reading through the coursebook for Living Language Spanish. I've tried Pimsleur, tried the FSI course from Barrons, tried a million other things, including lessons from a teacher at the school where I work. But mostly, I learn by listening and by asking what to say when I get stuck, because I can't get worked up about serious study.

As a result, I communicate well enough, but my grammar is lousy and my vocabulary is odd. But, it's coming.