From Latin to Spanish – and Beyond
Posted on January 20, 2009
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After a year of Latin in high school, my parents and I moved to a new town for us, Seminole, Texas – about as far West Texas as you can get, without being in New Mexico. Since I enjoyed Latin, I signed-up for Spanish, since that was the only language offerred. We had a great teacher, and I took Spanish my sophomore through senior years.
My high school Spanish seemed to “stick”, even though I’m always talking to people who have totally forgotten whatever language they learned in school. Perhaps they didn’t have a true love for language, or perhaps they just never made opportunities to continue their studies.
I worked at a Dairy Queen and a janitorial company in high school. In both jobs, I had plenty of opportunities to work with Latinos. I even picked quite a colorful vocabulary.
At the end of my junior year in high-school, I went on the Spanish Club’s trip to Mexico. Travelling to a Spanish-speaking country is obviously a great way to boost your skills. I created an audio-scrapbook for the trip, and got 3 hours of transferrable college credit from a junior college.
When I went to college, I took CLEP tests – advanced placement tests for Spanish. They actually awarded me 14 college credits from my test results. Wow – that saved me one entire semester in college.
In college, I didn’t major in Spanish, but almost got a minor. If I remember correctly, I had one class in conversational Spanish, and two classes in Spanish literature. I was also involved with Spanish Clubs and Honor Society on campus.
Then, back in the early 1980s, I tried some French, Portuguese, and Hebrew, using the Pimsleur system. After trying other courses that didn’t work, I was very impressed with how easy Pimsleur was. I made two trips to Brazil, in which I was able to “convert” my Spanish into Portuguese by learning a few additional words.
In 1995, I was a consultant and got a job offer in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Being single and living by yourself is not the optimal way to learn more Spanish. But on the job, I was able to put a lot of Spanish to use, even though it wasn’t a requirement.
So after trying dozens and dozens of language books, courses, tapes, CD, and software programs, I became sort of an expert at what works and what doesn’t. I created a software program to teach the Hebrew alphabet, and now I’m focusing again on Spanish. We have just created an online Spanish learning center, have brought in some great talent to build lessons and answer questions in the forums.
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