¡ Bienvenido Compañeros!

Welcome to the blog for the Practical Spanish and Decolonizing language at the Hamilton Freeskool. Hopefully, this blog will be a forum for sharing information about languages, language learning and Spanish resources.

I said "Welcome compañeros" in the title, because we are fellow students, learning together about language, and about Spanish in particular. Compañero can be translated to 'comrade', but it has a broader range of meanings: coworker, fellow student, brother (in the general sense). "Amigos" meaning friends, has a stronger meaning in spanish, and is generally reserved for close friends, not facebook friends or acquaintances.(at least in Guatemala)

Hopefully this course will demystify some of the common misconceptions about languages: that they are impossible to learn, that it is natural to speak only one, and that some languages are 'better' than others. We will look at work on second languages acquisition and maintenance, at endangered languages, and the relationship between language and empire. And hopefully we will together acquire a toolkit to learn another language, specifically spanish.


Ideally, we learn like a baby learns the language. Here are some examples of how this process happens (don't worry about memorizing the spanish or anything, it's just an example:


First we listen and are not expected to speak, but are making sense of the sounds of a language and learning words, and structure, even before we say a word.

[Baby says "eeeeh" and makes grasping gesture towards glass of water.]

Then we speak single words:

¡Agua!
water

Then short phrases:
Quiero Agua!
i want water

Then ungrammatical but understandable sentences

Me quiero agua
i want myself water

and then more correct phrases:

Quiero una vaso de agua
i want a glass of water


then maybe polite/complicated phrases

Quisiero una vaso de agua pura, por favor.
Would it be possible to have a glass of plain water?


We can't skip any of these steps. It's not how our brains work. So we shouldn't feel bad if what we say is not perfect: it's never going to be. I myself make mistakes in english sometimes, I forget a word that I know perfectly well, or I'll say "i seen". It's going to happen, especially when you are learning.

The most important thing with learning another language is to feel comfortable, not to feel judged. Making mistakes is part of the process of language learning: it's impossible to open you mouth and spout grammatically perfect sentences. There is some research that suggests that older people learn language less easily than children not because of a difference in innate ability, but because people are comfortable with the lower language competence of children, where they are impatient with adults and expect too much too quickly. So hopefully we can create an nice atmosphere in the class, where people feel free to talk in their spanish, even if it is bad, or to listen to spanish and respond or ask questions in english, or just listen! My spanish is not perfect either.

I'd like everyone who is taking the course to introduce themselves here in the comment section below, and talk a little about their exposure, or lack thereof, to spanish and to learning any language, whether formally or informally.

The other thing to do is to watch this 4 min clip, it's on the n/u language in South Africa, and it's decline, related to racism and colonialism.

n/u language