Taking a step back ...

Over the weekend, I realized that I think I might have jumped into the challenge a tad hastily. Please note that I'm not conceeding defeat, but having a realization that I didn't fully realize all the affects this would have on my life.

While I still fully believe its possible to learn a language in 90 days (or less!), there is a major sacrifice in doing so; specifically one may find that the hours spent study are isolating, and to be frank, lonely. One may make new friends through language exchange (I have), but becoming a recluse who studies Spanish for hours on end at a computer is considerably more difficult than most would belief.

Perhaps I was studying too hard; I dunno, but I haven't found the right balance between studying, social life, and work, and this has just been compounded by the fact that my work requires to get me on the road, and other personal issues that have been plaguing me.


I will not go into details on this message, but I need to find a way to approach studying Spanish that doesn't take away from my life in Oregon. In four months, I'm heading south along the Pan-American Highway, and part of me wonders if I would simply be better off waiting until I finish leaving this life behind, and start on my next one before taking this challenge.

As of right now, I'm already being chaft on the amount of preperation I'm working on for said Pan-American trip, such as replacing my truck with one that is likely to survive the drive, settling things with my roommate and long-time friends in Oregon, and so forth.

I didn't come to decision to postpone my challenge easily, and I'm not going to pull the final trigger on doing so until the end of the week (if at the end of this coming week, I'm going to reset to day 1).

Day 7: When you finally start moving forward again ...

The past few days have been up and down to say the least. Between sleep and real life issues, my progress in Spanish simply wasn't really going too far; hell even on Duolingo, I had failed to progress in any topic I unlocked.

However, it sometimes just takes just one really good day to keep moving. Today I managed to get through my outstanding LWT texts, and run through the ~200 words I had added through its database, knowing about half of what I added. While my retention for vocabulary still requires some work, that's not bad.

Furthermore, I've managed more progress on Duolingo, and find I have a greater mastery of Spanish grammar, even managing to conjugate several times correctly without having to think about it. This led up to almost two hours of written Spanish conversations with Sarah.

Now I note, I'm not magically fluent, and I was running to SpanishDict and Google Translate to look up individual vocabulary fairly constantly, but I never managled myself so badly that I was always understandable. I truly feel there is a light at the end of the tunnel here on learning Spanish ...

I suppose you'll get to judge soon, which brings me to my next topic ...

As week one comes to a close, I remember that I promised a YouTube video for today, but due to various circumstances, I'm going to push it back one day as it may be a more interesting treat for you showing me having an actual conversation.

Day 6: Slow slow progress ...

Life been making my progress slow and painful. While I had a brief conversation yesterday, I managed to do no speaking of the el español today, which is quite frustating. Furthermore, I find myself struggling a lot more than I did when I first started.

I don't know if its because due to the fatigue I've had over the last two days (my sleep at best had been poor), or other factors involved. Tomorrow is the end of the first week, and at the point where I need to make a video update. I get the feeling I'm going to be cramming tomorrow to successfully string together a sentence, and hopefully not look too much like an idiot on camera :-/

Day 5: Learning with Texts

So it turns out I did get some things done today. Physically I feel still like someone left me out to dry, and I've had days where I'm more mentally stable, but it was really up and down again. I attempted to have a conversation with Sarah and it wasn't very productive.

That being said, I did setup Learning with Texts, and slowly began articles, starting with the WIkipedia article on Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, and some news articles from RTVE. Furthermore, LWT gives a good interface for creating new words (aka Terms) in its database which I did multiple times on the short call with Sarah when I had to look up a word.

Let us see where we are in two days when my next video update goes up.

Day 4.5: Game called on account of insomina ...

So, I was hoping this won't be a factor (or at least not a big one), but due to the upheaval of a day I had yesterday, I haven't been able to sleep since, as my body decides that day is night and via verus.

I'm effectively a walking zombie, barely functioning, so I'm not counting today, and Day 5 will happen whenever I successfully have eight or more hours of sleep.

Day 4: That Lovely Sound When Nothing Happens ...

Today has been rough to say the least. Between a long, and tiring day, and a few personal events that left me rather emotional (and will not dive into on this blog), I did force myself to do some more Spanish, both on Duolingo, and with a new language partner.

I've noticed immediately I was struggling considerably, even with the most basic words (a rather notable instance is I mentally blocked on "español", a rather grating thing since "No español" was something I said a LOT in previous trips through Spanish speaking countries). I think a large thing about being able to speak is emotional state; when I spoke with my partner tonight, I was recovering from the emotional roller coaster that was today. Just as booze can make it easier to speak, personal issues don't.

That being said, I'm not calling today a loss by any stretch of the imagination. While I didn't make much progress on the skill tree, what Spanish I could manage WAS understandable by a native speaker whom I never had a voice conversation with before, and on three occasions, I paused to look up a word, and managed to pronouce it correctly on the first go. I think that's rather excellent for four days of progress.

That's a victory, no matter how you slice it. In addition, with discussions with some my language partners, I realized I need to redefine how I am going to do things.

One of the first things I do when I meet a new language partner is I point them to this blog, and the videos on YouTube, explaining my motivation and my insanity. Late yesterday, Sarah mentioned my mini-goals I listed on Day 1; I had completely forgotten about them.

In hindsight, it isn't very surprising. At the best of times, I'm an organized mess. For instance, in Ubuntu, one of the things we did was have whiteboard with work items for a blueprint. The blueprint would have the overarching goal, with work items (in theory) being how to accomplish it step by step.

Almost every time I wrote a blueprint and work items, I'd rewrite the work items on a near-daily basis, changing the waypoints towards success, but making steady progress towards my goal. It's who I am, and I'm not going to succeed unless I take into account how I work into this. I think its a part of why I find Duolingo so attractive; its organized into a nice skill tree, which I can just follow the prompts, but I just can do it at my leasure.

In a lot of ways, this is both a good and bad thing. For good, I can be extremely flexible in my work, and get around just about any problem issue that may come up. The downsides of course have always been obvious is that I can always miss the obvious.

I've been making a point to try and use the vocabulary and grammar it gives me in every call I have. For instance, Mi/Su/etc. started appearing in my conversations the moment I finished the Possessives lesson.

Duolingo itself may be flawed in several ways, but its excellent for someone like me who has issues staying on a specific track, and needs a framework to bounce around in, but the freedom to get to their goals via one of multiple different tracks.

As such, I need to redefine my goals as I go. Mentally, I'm thinking of them more as benchmarks, to see where I am and what to improve on. That is to say at the end of the week, when I look at this blog post, I can see if I've achieved them, and on some level, they'll be in the back of my mind pushing me onwards.

I'm reminded of a quotation I once read (quite possibly on Benny's blog). Paraphrased, it goes something like this:

When driving at night, all you can see is the end of your headlights. You are never sure where you are or where you been, but you can drive the entire way home like that.

Its a philosophy that I'm going to take to heart with language learning. I may not know where I am, I may not be sure where I was, but I'm damn sure I'm making progress towards fluent Spanish.

In light of this, from now on, when I look up a work during a conversation, I'm going to build an Anki deck out of it. I hope by doing so I can generate an excellent list of flashcards to expand my vocabulary.
So Day 4 comes to an end, 86 days remain ...

Day 3: More Duolingo, More Conversation

Ugh, I'm exhausted, so this will be a quick update.


I've gotten to the point of possessives in Duolingo, and managed to use them in some of my conversations in Spanish, both written and spoken. I find I'm using SpanishDict and wordreference a lot to look up words as I'm speaking, but I am speaking, at least an hour or so a day.

Today a large part of it was describing the emparedado I ate in Subway, and going through the various ingredients of said tasty delight, followed by discussion metrication in the United States. Tomorrow, I suspect I'm only going to manage a little Spanish, but I knew there were days were I was going to be tied up at work fully, and took that into account.

Still, only 87 days remain ...

Day 2: New trials, new friends ...

So here's my unexpected video update for Day 2 :

 So, after signing off last night, I found I'd received a message on the FI3M forums, from a woman called Sarah offering to join me in language exchange. She isn't a native Spanish speaker, but I'm willing to accept any and all help in this insane mission of mine.

Here's the first bit of conversation that we had in Skype:

Sarah: hola!
Sarah: estoy bien, gracias
Sarah: y tu?
me: bien. Yo enseña espanol a dulingo
Sarah: si, uso duolingo tambien
me: (I suspect I butchered that; the fact that I managed the first two sentences kinda suprises me :-))
Sarah: si, me gusta duolingo porque aprendo muchas palabras nuevas y practico verbos que aprende ya
Sarah: and
Sarah: all of it was good except for ensena
Sarah: ensenar is to teach
me: d'oh
me: I learned it by doing anki on my phrasebook, and not the actual definition. I was feeling route memorization of phrases *might* backfire
me: (I kinda intend to make an anki deck with works and pictures, and no english, but not quite there yet)

First off, meeting a language partner is not a scary thing, and as Benny always says, there are plenty of people who are willing to talk to you in Spanish and at least when starting out, a native speaker isn't a necessity; in many ways, working with Sarah was easier, as she could understand the mistakes I was making, and help me to correct them. A large part of this comes down to how I think we learn languages; with English, from an infant, we learned from watching our parents and our environment, and making sounds that mimic it until we can eventually start forming sentences, but we don't really think about how those sentences come together.

With both my partners, we had an extended conversation in English to break the ice before doing some work in Spanish, and even as we continued in Spanish. 

For example, I bring/I brought. When I was in elementary school, I remember my teacher giving an entire lecture on why "brang" wasn't a word, and the correct one to use was brought. We don't ever think about tenses in our native language; we just use the right one.

While I'll still continue working with native language speakers, working with Sarah (and other people who learned Spanish as a second language, even if they aren't fully fluent in it) was an excellent experience, and one that is considerably less nerve wracking and required *much* less nerve to get going.

During this language exchange, Sarah had watched my last video, and noted that my pronunciation was rather horrible, and thus a large part of the time we talked was working on helping making various vowel sounds, and a bit on rolling the rs.

I'm already beginning to see some progress and results; the conversation and what I wrote was stuff I managed without looking anything up, and I find myself following the rhythm and flow of Spanish more, even if I'm struggling in other places. I'm going to start looking for a Spanish grammar book in the near future

While I like to criticize Duolingo, I've found that its lessons, and timed practice are really good at at least getting basics down. I do find in some ways its rather pedantic, but I'm far better off using it for basic study then not. I've managed to get through Basics 1/2, Phrases, and Food. Each has been a challenge, and I'm sure I'm going to forget stuff, but I can only solder on and try and make the most of it.

Day 1: It begins ...

So after an entire week of building up to this, we've officially started the 90 day challenge. In some ways, I feel like I've signed my own death warrant, but as the saying goes, once you hit bottom, you've got nothing to do but go up, and I intend to survive this challenge!

As today is Friday (and also Day 1), I uploaded a video on my channel that goes into some detail on my

Working with a language partner was mentally stressful, and tiring. I tried to begin with what little Spanish I knew, and ran into a wall as I struggled to understand replies, and even form ideas. I went into what I did today, how I'm an engineer for a living, if I'm good at math, etc. It was mostly small talk, but small talk done in a mix of Spanish, English, and Spaniglish (Enspanish?). As you can even see when I recount phrases in my video, I would pause, or "um" for a second as I force myself through each bit. I had my partner write much of what he was saying in chat, and I proceeded to sound it out, and say it. I'm going to take those conversation pieces and add those to my phrase deck so I can tried and build up from some of the concepts and ideas we started with.

Neither one of us have a set schedule, so I suspect we're going to operate mostly on drive-by conversations, and I'll be looking for additional partners to work with as time goes on, but I think I make some progress; I did have a conversation in Spanish (that was, if I was completely honest, interspliced with plenty of English, but still mostly Spanish).

As Day 1 comes to an end, and the weekend dons upon us, I feel that I need to continue working with my flashcards a lot, to learn phrases.

As it stands, I also have "Harry Potter y la piedra filosofal" sitting on my desk. My current gameplan with it is to start reading it, and make flashcards out of the words I don't understand. This is similar to how Learning with Texts and LingQ work, and I may end up retyping passages from the boot in my local copy of LWT.

I've found LWT difficult to use though (mostly due to interface lag), and entering words to be a slow and annoying process, hence why I think a more passive response with just a spreadsheet and Anki may be more successful.

I'll post an update what I decide and whatever happens ...

Prelude: Defining my goals for week one

As I'm now less than 24 hours from the beginning of the 90 day Spanish challenge, I needed to break down what my goals for the first week look like. While its nice to say that I have my overarching goal (specifically to get through a conversation with my grandmother at the end of 90 days and "be fluent"), I need to have shorter term objectives to get through it.


I've continued to try and play memory games with myself to retain my Spanish, and I've managed to retain works that I read on roadsigns while driving such as "carril", and "cuota". I've also continued with my Duolingo lessons, though I need to be careful not to fall into the trap of that replacing having conversations


As such, as we enter week one, I've set myself the following TODOs:

• Find some Spanish language partners
• I have an account on italki which I've used before to try and find partners, and I just bought a new headset for Skype as my old one has unfortunately stopped work (I could probably fix it with a sodering iron, but its pretty DOA at this point ...
• I need to find or buy a webcam as well, but Walmart didn't have one, so either got to get one of Amazon or at Frys
• Begin studying my Spanish phrasebook, specifically the "Social" section.
• I have one of the Lonely Planet guidebooks. My plan is to use Anki to turn parts of the "social" section into flashcards
• Memorize some of the conversation connectors from the language hacking guide
• Goes with above, going to use the same technique as well

  My goals for the end of the week, one large, and some mini-goals:

• Muddle through a conversation mostly in Spanish (it may be cookie cutter Spanish; aka, ask a question, give an answer, etc), but it will be good enough
• Learn to count to 100
• Learn the days of the week

Building up to the 5th ...

As we slowly approach July 5th, I'm getting more excited for my official go-date. As I continue to drive across the country towards my home in Portland, OR, I find myself trying to play mental games to remember what Spanish I picked in previous lessons, and while traveling through Mexico.

As it stands, I've done some more lessons on Duolingo, and have started downloading podcasts to my phone which I'll start listening to as I drive (I hope; I've had some issues with trying this in the past).

I realize this isn't much of a status update, but its mostly to keep me on track and excited towards actually learning Spanish.