This post was originally posted on Babelhut.
Spanish has been a back and forth battle for me for years. A better analogy would be a series of small border conflicts, as most of the time nothing is going on, but when I do decide to learn Spanish, I charge into it and I’m soon pushed back away, and nothing more happens for a while. I’ve finally had enough, and I’ve declared war! I will learn Spanish, and I intend to at least be able to hold a conversation, watch television in Spanish, and read a Spanish newspaper or book with ease.
My weapons in this engagement include Spanish Step-by-Step by Charles Berlitz, a Spanish-English Dictionary, and Mnemosyne. As I progress I expect I will bring in additional tools, especially audio like the excellent Pimsleur audiobooks, which I have used before.
Although I’ve already gone through an equal number of lessons for Greek and Spanish, I feel as though I’ve been getting more out of the Greek so far. I think that while I don’t really know the material I’m studying, it feels almost familiar because of my previous exposure to Spanish. This makes it feel more like review, even though it really is not.
As I learn Spanish, real-world study material will be easy to come by. There are two free Spanish-language newspapers published locally by the major English-language papers here. There are two or three Spanish television channels. There are a few people at my work who speak Spanish that I would be comfortable with speaking to in Spanish.
Overall, I think my chances of gaining a decent command of Spanish is good as long as I stick with it.