I have decided I am going to spend the next few months trying to learn Spanish prior to heading to Arizona in December, and was wondering if any of you wanted to do it with me. I’m researching free online courses and would love recommendations should any of you have some, but the other thing I think might be fun is if there are others who want to learn with me, we could have weekly or bi-weekly zooms where we talk together. I’m sure there are also some multilingual folks who might want to join us. Just a thought.
FYI- when I was talking to Watergirl about this, I mentioned the zooms and the potential of multilingual commenters joining and she quipped “to do what, point and laugh” and I got a good belly laugh out of that.
As to the makeup of the courses, what is the best way to learn a language? I think I would benefit most from a blending of audio, video, and text. I don’t know how other people’s minds work but I see words in my head and think it would be best for me to be able to associate the written form of the word with the spoken form as well as how people’s lips and mouths move when they say it. I don’t know if I am weird that way (and yes, I know I am weird in many ways), but when I meet someone if they tell me their name is Katherine, I need to know if it is spelled Katherine or Kathryn or Catherine or Katharine or you get the point. Because then when I think about them from that time on I will see the spelling, my mental image of them, and the essence of that person all at once, if that makes sense.
So what say you all? You want to do this?
On another note, I would like to once again thank you all for the peace of mind your donations this weekend have provided. On the other hand, I fully recognize that I did in fact say “If you ever you were inclined to have the thought ‘hey, I think I will send John Cole millions so he can spend it on hookers and blow,’” I must admit that I did not anticipate opening my email this morning and realizing that you all would in fact put “HOOKERS AND BLOW” in the note/memo portion of the paypal/venmo thingamabob. That’s gonna be fun explaining to the accountant, you fuckers.