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.