Gads, I just looked at the clock. I’ve been studying Spanish for eight solid hours! I ought to be fluent by now, wouldn’t you think, after two years of it in high school (close to 60 years ago) and several bouts of protracted study before I even got on the plane to fly down here to Costa Rica?!   No?

(Ok, maybe not. Studying it — alone, mostly — is no substitute for immersion!!!)

 

But there’s the thing. Not being a masochist (in the least, not even remotely!), you know I’m loving every minute of my self-imposed lessons.

 

And that’s only partly because I have an adorable encourager close at hand:

 

 

It’s because I love this country, the people, and their language and I can’t wait to get so proficient at it that I can talk to anyone I meet without worrying that I’m mangling their language six ways from Sunday.

 

As a wordsmith, it drives me batty that I can’t confidently palaver with anyone I meet here who sends a kind glance my way, you know?  I want to have the right word on the tip of my tongue all the time, and I don’t (reliably) yet.  So, I’m on a mission: get Spanish under my belt with all deliberate speed.

 

I’m going through the book again and doing every exercise. Even the ones that take hours at a time. Like the one I finished just in time to get a post out to you before I make dinner and then crash for the night.

 

The exercise is to take all the verbs the author lists and write sentences or phrases that are in present, past, future, present perfect and present progressive tenses. Do you know how freaking many verbs there are in any given language?  And the ones in Spanish end in “AR, “ER or “IR” and each of those has rules to write/speak by. So, for instance, I’ll show you several pages so you get the idea:

 

For these exercises we are required to use ALL CAPS in some places as a mental reminder until the “rule”  is teaches is firmly entrenched in the mind. And boy howdy does it work!

 

I LOVE the book I’m taking my lessons from. Check yesterday’s blog post for a link to it. It’s called MADRIGAL’S MAGIC KEY TO SPANISH. The subtitle is A Creative and Proven Approach.