Gringos

Monday July 18, 2005 - 8:19PM EDT

There is nothing better to build your confidence in a language than hanging out with a bunch of gringos of whom the majority's spanish is worse than yours. That is what I did today, hang out with some exchange students from the school I am taking classes at on a day trip to a national park. It is not a crack of anything on them, but when most of the time I've been around native speakers and my language is pathetic garbage compared to theirs it is a little different to meet people who suck as much as you do.

You know what else is funny. I am starting to remeber Japanese that I thought I had forgotten. I feel as if I could at least answer simple questions and describe simple things almost perfectly in Japanese without thinking about. It probably has something to do with the part of the brain that controls language. Probably been stimulated and has activated pathways that related to my knowledge of Japanese. The same thing can be said of my Chinese although I didn't study that as much as I did Japanese.

As for Spanish. I feel I am so close to at least being able to speak and understand with fludity. My accent is freaking horrible and some words because I don't put emphasis on the wrong letters are often not understood by who I am talking to. But if you just listen to how a native speaker pronounces it enough them you pick up the the right pronunciation pretty fast. I still have trouble rolling the r's on various words, but am better at others. Watching TV and listening to music helps a lot with getting the right pronunciation of things. Problem is rolling the r quickly. I can do it slowly, but stumble when trying to work it into fluid speech.