Well, spanish lesson numero uno went much better than I expected. Having studied (and passed) 'O' level spanish in 1974 and not using the language since, I had been brushing up on words by using the Spanish training program on my Nintendo DS, bashing gophers on the head that happened to hold the plaque with the correct word and doing word searches in spanish. But, since living here it has been apparent how little I could put together to form a sentence and I anticipated serious problems getting back into reading and constructing full sentences. Having sat down with my book - Present Day Spanish - Volume 1, the chosen book of my tutor, well - I was pleasantly surprised.
Having explained my (limited and somewhat aging) level of spanish language knowledge, we decided to get straight into reading a short paragraph to see how much I could understand.......and success. In the main I could understand the general gist of most of it. While I have a long way to go, at least what I did in school all those years back was actually worth it.
So, in one lesson we got through 2 chapters and I now know that the family in the book live in a village by the sea, have a son and daughter and a beer drinking friend.
Sounds pretty close to our life here (if you replace the 2 children with our 2 pups).
I have done my homework for the week, ( I was always a goody goody at school), will do a quick refresher before my lesson next week and look forward to not feeling quite so scared (or stupid) as I reach for the doorbell at my tutors house.
I don't envy anyone starting from scratch, having to get their head round why tables are feminine and boats are masculine, (just because they are, ok?).
All I have to do is work out how to decided whether something is a definite or indefinite article! Doh!
Oh, and 'una aldea a orillas del mar? - a village by the sea!
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