Learning a New Language
Start Simple
It is hard until it isn’t hard. Does that make sense? Everything you do is really like that. With the time of new resolutions for the coming year fast approaching, many of them that people will make are going to be new to them, for instance, perhaps learning a new language. If you can imagine what it would be like to sit in a restaurant and have a nice conversation with a new friend in Spanish, you actually don’t need to know a whole lot of words.
It gets a bit easier once your mind gets back into the rhythm of learning something new. Once you are able to devote some time to the idea of spending perhaps fifteen minutes a day, every day, in furtherance of learning a new language, it just gets easier. It’s a habit, and fifteen minutes isn’t that long.
Say, you learn how to say in your new language, “The girl is drinking milk.” With a couple more words, you could say, “The boy is drinking soda,” or “The older man is drinking a beer.” Then, you could twist it up a little and learn how to say, “The woman was drinking tea” or “That lady was drinking water.” I realize this is simple, but you get the idea that just by learning a few words, you can be on your way to expressing yourself in a new language. I understand that just talking about drinking is boring, but one day of learning adds on to the next, and before you know it, you are able to speak a new language. What might happen after a month of study?
I recently read on Google that you can have a decent conversation with someone if you have a vocabulary of 2,000 to 3,000 words.
Here is something interesting. I went to ChatGPT and asked for a word count of all the disparate words in the section with all the different people drinking that I wrote above. The actual word count is 130 words, but the disparate word count is 94. Imagine if you could translate that actual section in a bold font above into Spanish? All you would need to know is 94 separate words.
And, with the power of ChatGPT I asked that the same section be translated into Spanish:
Imagina, aprendes a decir en tu nuevo idioma, “La chica está tomando leche.” Con un par de palabras más, podrías decir, “El chico está tomando refresco,” o “El hombre mayor está tomando una cerveza.” Después, podrías darle un giro y aprender a decir, “La mujer estaba tomando té” o “Esa señora estaba tomando agua.” Me doy cuenta de que esto es sencillo, pero captas la idea de que solo con aprender algunas palabras, puedes estar en camino de expresarte en un nuevo idioma. Entiendo que hablar solo de beber es aburrido, pero un día de aprendizaje se suma al siguiente, y antes de que te des cuenta, podrás hablar un nuevo idioma. ¿Qué podría pasar después de un mes de estudio?
I realize I don’t know enough Spanish to say some of what was translated into Spanish is just not correct, but I’m willing to bet it comes close. If you know Spanish, could you please tell me if the translation is okay or just totally wrong?
With a teacher at your side like Rosetta Stone or Duolingo, I would guess you would certainly make progress and actually be able to have a nice conversation with someone.
Thanks for reading.