Traveling around the globe is one of the most enjoyable activities for us (the other part of us). If I look back through the past few years most of my memories are somehow related to our journeys. Probably I’ll consider myself rich when I have the freedom to travel year round. It’d be wonderful if we manage to make our income location independent some day, but that’s another story.
So the biggest journey we are planning for this year is three weeks in Spain. We still haven’t decided whether it will be a pure cultural and sightseeing tour of the big cities or maybe smaller cities plus rural Spain plus south coast… Probably something in between.
One of the best ways to learn a foreign language is to practice it. And the best opportunity for this is while you are visiting a country in which the language in question is spoken. I’ve considered the idea of learning at least some basic Greek or other language and to practice it during our vacations. But eventually I was abandoning it every time because it was important to improve my English first. Now when I feel that my English is on a quite acceptable level* it’s about time to try another language. Yep, Spanish. My aims aren’t too high though. I’m not even considering proper grammar for now. My immediate intentions are to learn 200 words till 15 September and to be able to get the general (be it very broad) meaning from Spanish news, maps, signs, restaurant menus.
Some facts about Spanish that I find particularly interesting:
- Everything has gender in Spanish. Some of the gender information is kept even in plural.
- There are two different “to be” verbs: ser y estar. Although they can often be translated the same way, ser and estar are distinct verbs with distinct meanings and are seldom synonymous.
- Spanish verb conjugation is much trickier than that of English verb conjugation because endings change for virtually each pronoun for each tense.
As a matter of fact Bulgarian verb conjugation is quite complex as well. But it’s my native language so I didn’t have any particular difficulties learning it 🙂
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*Although I don’t have the slightest idea where to put commas in English texts. Except probably in non-defining clauses.
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