Nothing is ready today, but everything is ready tomorrow..........

So here we are a week away from our trip to Spain to discover locations for our new life.  One of the key recommendations from everyone we speak to us LEARN THE LANGUAGE.  Now for me, this is a must.  As I have stated before I can speak reasonable French, above school level below work level is how I would describe it.  When ever we have travelled abroad I have always tried to learn a few basic words, Thank-you, please, hello, goodbye etc, these few words have held us in good esteem in Turkey, Egypt, Mauritius and a few other places, and I have always felt that it is nothing  more than good manners to try and converse with someone in their own language.

Language is not a genetic gift, it is a social gift.  Learning a new language is becoming a member of the club -the community of speakers of that language.”

‒Frank Smith

However learning a few basic words in a foreign language is not the same as learning a language, and it was not until I was studying Spanish that it occurred to me that I had actually forgotten the basics of grammar how to speak and write my own language, so how could I possibly learn a foreign language. I looked back at my school days and we did not have English Grammar and English Lit we had a joined  up class covering both.   So off to the book shop where I purchased a book on  English Grammar and reacquainted myself with the joys of verbs, adjectives, pronouns and conjugation. I am so glad I did it Spanish verbs so much easier.

So onto the language.  I did, a while ago, studying  with an O.U. course in Spanish - which although working through I find a bit like working through treacle, if I was honest I would say I have wasted my money and learnt  nothing.  That aside brings us to today venture in to learning Spanish.

I am going to be the "key" learner ( so my husband tells me!!!!!)  I did well leaning French with Micheal Thomas so I have the Total Spanish CD.  I am doing very well with this as is my husband. He started a few weeks ago, a nervous learner, embarrassed  trying to pronounce the words, but you know, I am very proud of him, and he can now string the words together and is going to be able to make himself understood which is the main thing and if nothing else it is giving him the confidence to move forward with learning.
For me  Total Spanish is OK but I do find him very irritating more so than I did when learning French - and the guy on the CD I could happily beat with a lump of 2 x 4 wood!!!!!!!!!.  Also I am concerned that I will not learn enough about the conjugating of verbs, which as I type this is making me smile, at what stage in life did I think conjugating a verb would be a goo idea and I never thought I would once again be in  Smiths looking for pad, pens and a pencil case!

 I am fortunate that I have a friend at work who is Spanish and she is helping me a great deal and  although I get it wrong when i talk to her, it is great to have a native speaker to correct me.

So I am marching through the CD's but feel that I need to study more in depth.  Thank goodness for the kindle..  To be honest my feet were always firmly in the  if i want to read I'll read a proper book thank you........However I decided to dip my toe into modern technology and purchased one before Christmas. Since then I would not be without it. So I am no longer a Luddite in the world of book reading!.  Anyway I digress.   There are some great books written in Spanish on the web some are  really cheap and others are actually free.  These are two that I downloaded for free

Learn Spanish - Word Power 101 & 
Spanish Tales for Beginners (Spanish Edition)

I use these to read Spanish I understand very little but its great when something clicks!.

My  other two recent purchases, which I bought in Hard copy  are

Spanish  - Verbs and Practise by Collins
Spanish Verbs Tenses = Dorothy Richmond

So this is a quick update.  We travel to Andalusia next Saturday flying Monarch...luckily the Iberia strike is not affecting us.
I will take loads of pictures of EVERYTHING and let you know how the Spanish holds up

Bye