Learning a second language . . . easy as (tongue) tie

The U.S. is arguably the greatest nation on earth. However, there is at least one area where we fall dramatically short of other countries’ residents–our knowledge of languages. Years ago, I had two delightful exchange students from Sweden in my university courses. Time and time again, the two women would apologize for the poor English they were speaking. In truth, their English was superior to that spoken by a typical U.S. high school student. Later, as they became more comfortable conversing with me, I queried them about the languages they were comfortable speaking. Their response nearly floored me. Aside from Swedish and English, they were fluent in German, Greek, Norwegian, and several Romance languages. Since that time, I’ve witnessed similar stories time and again. Always our exchange students apologize for their “poor” English, then prove to be fluent in a minimum of several other languages.

As the husband of a retired Spanish teacher, I have watched my wife move smoothly through Puerto Rico and Mexico, and must confess to being a bit envious. Earlier this year, largely owing to Marla’s comfort with Spanish, we were fortunate to strengthen a number of wonderful friendships with Puerto Rican and South American citizens. With few exceptions, these people are fluent in two or more languages. This April, as we prepared to leave Puerto Rico, one of our friends, a delightful woman from Colombia, informed Marla that she was going to learn English over the next eight months (in truth, she informed both of us, but I didn’t understand a word she was saying). Upon learning this, Marla and our friends challenged me to meet Maricel’s challenge, by learning Spanish. Never one to back away from a contest, I promised to be speaking passable Spanish by the time we return in January.

There is only one problem with this, the language simply won’t stick in my head. I’ve engaged Duolingo (on-line) and promptly sailed through lessons one and two. However, when I started lesson three, I couldn’t remember a bloody thing. After retaking lesson three two more times (both utter failures), I did what any red-blooded U.S. citizen would do–I quit. Now, before you order cream pies to throw en mi cara, I’ve devised a plan that actually may work. Stay tuned . . .  in the meantime, I’d love to hear about your trials and tribulation and successes, as you’ve attempted to learn a new language.