Learning Spanish the Friendly Way

Fiorella is quite satisfied with the language-learning set-up she's put together. She watches a Spanish language soap opera five hours a week and thus observes the language in context. It also helps her pick up rhythm, accent, and cultural behaviors. Her telenovelas are backed up with a Spanish textbook, a "Spanish in Ten Minutes A Day" book, Google's "Translator," and crib notes in Spanish taped on everything in the house.  Most important, though, are friends and relatives who speak Spanish: Rachel Sonntag, Raquel Luna, Jane Perrine, Fernando Barriga, Patricia Carando, Anne Marie Valerio, and the many kind waiters, sales people, and strangers whom Fio has imposed on.

Linguistic training and a good ear have also helped. When one has learned bits and pieces of German, French, Russian, and Spanish as a child, then studied Latin for five years, then added a semester of German, two semesters of Hindi, two of Sanskrit, three years of Telugu, and passed a French reading exam after only six weeks of study, you can bet the mind involved has figured out how to learn languages.

Looking back, Fio doesn't think the standard classroom would have worked for her. On line programs certainly didn't--she found them repetitive, boring, and not at all related to her life--but the combination of telenovelas, textbooks, Translator, crib notes, and friends and relatives seems to be doing the trick.

Wish Fio well.