Learning Spanish… in Less Than 2 Weeks?!
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A few days ago that my wife said to me: “How would you feel about working under a palm tree instead?”.
I’m always up for an adventure and to travel so I naturally responded:
“Sure!”
It’s quite dark and cold during this time in northern Finland where we live, so it would be very nice to go somewhere warmer for a while.
We looked at different locations and we wanted to leave pretty much ASAP (my wife is currently 5 months pregnant so we wanted to go before it gets closer to the birth).
We decided on Spain. I mean it’s warm and sunny. An interesting culture. Good food. What’s not to like?
We booked one-way tickets to Spain and we were very excited.
And since we were gonna probably be there for at least a couple of weeks, I knew I wanted to learn the language - Spanish.
There were only 2 problems:
1.) We were leaving in less than 2 weeks. Learning a new language in that time period is crazy.
2. My commitment to my other languages. I was reluctant to let go of my Finnish and Cantonese since I’m very much committed to take both of those languages to a high level. I knew I would have to pause them to take on this new intensive language project.
I’m not saying it’s realistic to learn a new language fluently in less than 2 weeks. There’s just no way to be able to learn enough vocabulary in that time frame.
But I was curious to find out exactly how much I could learn in less than 2 weeks.
Could I learn enough to be able to converse with people on the streets of Spain?
Once I wrestled with the idea for a few days I felt it would be a fun and meaninful language learning project for a few reasons:
It’s a fun and fresh challenge for myself.
It would give a window into what learning a new language looks like and give people useful methods and mindsets to learn a language.
It’s a completely different experience traveling to a place when you’re able to speak to the locals in their own language.
I decided to get started. Without even having a plan for how to do it.
I right away set a goal to take an iTalki (link to get $10 free credits) conversational practice lesson on day 7 of learning Spanish (which is tomorrow already. Yikes!).
That definitely put a fire under me to learn as much as I could as quickly as possible.
What I’ve done so far
Knowing that I didn’t have much time I knew I was gonna have to be very intentional with what learning materials I used.
There are certain types of vocabulary that tends to turn up in conversations, so I wanted to focus on that, while also getting a foundation for my Spanish.
So far, I’ve been using a combination of Pimsleur and Language Transfer to get a foundation for pronunciation and how the language operates.
I’ve also used some LingQ for listening practice to hear the language in context.
I’ve been writing down specific vocabulary that I know I need with the help of Google Translate.
We’ll see tomorrow during my iTalki lesson how well my methods have worked.
This lesson will be recorded and it’s highly likely parts of it will end up in a future YouTube video very soon.
It’s not about the language, it’s about the culture
This is definitely me getting out of my comfort zone. I generally like to stick with things and not stray too much off course.
But sometimes you just gotta go with the flow and jump on a new adventure.
Many times those decisions end up being defining moments of our lives.
I was very close to not go to Hong Kong years ago, and if I wouldn’t have I wouldn’t have learned Cantonese, or be writing this blog post right now.
The reason for learning languages is not to get good at the skill of speaking languages.
To impress people and be able to say: “I speak 357,578 languages”.
That has very little value for me.
I mean it’s ok if that’s a little bit of the motivation, as most of us like to get good at things and get positive feedback from it.
That’s fine. I’m like that too.
But the main reason for learning a language has to go deeper than that.
The real value in learning a language lies in being able to connect with people from different cultures.
And here I have the opportunity to connect with a new culture that I haven’t before.
The thought of learning Spanish was honestly a bit two-fold at first. It felt really exciting, but at the same time my commitment Finnish and Cantonese made me hesitate. I knew that starting to learn a language would put a pause on my progress in those.
But on the other hand it’s not like those languages are going anywhere. They are forever in my heart and they can wait a few weeks, a month or even longer.
They are like lifelong friends of mine.
We’re going to Spain now, so the opportunity to learn Spanish is now.
And I’m grabbing it.
“The real value in learning a language lies in being able to connect with people from different cultures.”
Redeeming my Spanish learning FAIL
Those who read my blog post: The 9 Languages I’ve Tried to Learn - (Some I Failed) know that I have a bit of a history with Spanish.
I have actually already failed learning it once.
I did Duolingo for about 15 mins a day for a year, but yet was never able to string words together to form sentences. To be able to speak it with people.
So now is my chance to redeem myself and finally learn it.
And since I’ve learned a few other languages successfully since then, I knew I would take a completely different approach to it this time.
I’m currently six days in and I’m seriously having so much fun with Spanish!
To be honest it has also been a bit stressful. At least for the first few days. Because I’m not just doing this for myself, but also sharing my progress with you guys.
I’m putting myself out there with the possibility of failing. Again.
Tomorrow I will be testing my conversational skills on Skype with my iTalki tutor.
I’m a bit nervous, but very excited at the same time.
When you need to learn it FAST…
My intention for doing this is to give a bit of an insight into what it looks like to start a new language. Especially for those of you who want to or need to learn a language FAST.
Or if you just want some inspiration of how to approach learning a new language and get some “hacks” for how to do it more effectively and efficiently.
When I was learning Cantonese I used some tricks to be able to enter into conversations with people, even when I hadn’t been learning it for very long.
I’m using some of those same techniques for Spanish.
I’ll share more about this in future posts…
I can’t wait to enjoy and experience what life in Spain is like and I’m looking forward to speak to people on the streets (and enjoy some nice tapas - ooh lala. Deliciosa!)
In the mean time you can check out my latest YouTube video that I made on Day 1 of me learning Spanish:
Expect more posts from me very soon regarding my Spanish learning journey.
Adiós por ahora // bye for now.
