How I Learned Spanish
Hi there, Steve Kaufmann here today. I'm going to talk about how I learned Spanish. Uh, if you enjoy these videos, please subscribe. You can click on the mail and get the notifications. So I've done some video. I did one on how I learned French and another one on how I learned Mandarin Chinese. So I thought I would do one on how I learned Spanish.
Spanish has been with me for 60 years. You know, I started thinking about it. When did I first... what about what about my first encounter with Spanish? And so I entered the McGill university at the age of 16 and not really knowing what to study. I took, uh, two courses of English, two courses of French and one course of Spanish.
Each of the two years, I only stayed at McGill for two years. Then I basically hitchhiked on a boat going across the Atlantic and ended up studying in Europe for three years. But in the first year, you know, I have to hand it to the professor we had, we just started right into reading. I remember we had a story called La Barraca by Blasco Ibáñez, about these agricultural workers, very tough conditions, somewhere near Valencia
if I remember correctly. He was a very pleasant man, you know, relatively young professor, like in his thirties in those days. And, uh, we pick our way through it. It was painful because you know, every second word you didn't know, but there was a sort of a glossary there. And, and so I thought that was a great thing to do.
And I can't remember what we did in the second year. Uh, mostly I remember that, uh, near the university, there were two places that I would go to, uh, once every couple of weeks or so. One was a, um, sort of a bar cafe near the university where, uh, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, maybe there was a guitarist playing a Spanish guitar music, and I would order a cup of, uh, Sherry.
And I thought I was very, uh, you know, international or something. Uh, and then there was another place called La Asociación Española, nearby where you walk down and it was dark. And there was these, these men in their forties and fifties, uh, Who would always be there playing Dominos. And for me again, I'd go there and have a beer
and I think while I'm kind of in Spain. So that was kind of my first introduction to Spanish. And then I have, I had he's since passed away, but I had an uncle who lived in Chile. And when he heard that I was studying Spanish, he started cutting out newspaper clippings from El Mercurio, which was maybe still is,
uh, one of the main newspapers down there. And so again, I would be trying to read these articles from El Mercurio, underlining words that I didn't know, which was a lot of them and looking them up and again, very painstaking, but it again connected me to Chile another Spanish speaking country, obviously.
So, you know, very early in my Spanish connection was this sort of fascination with countries where they speak Spanish. Of course it was very painstaking to do that. It's not like LingQ where you can go into our Spanish library, find, you know, something of interest maybe or bring in, you know, import an article from El Mercurio and start looking up words automatically, click through the flashcards, all the different things that we can do at LingQ.
Uh, it's just night and day. Uh, bring things in from YouTube, whatever it might be. It's, it's very different from what it was like back in those days. In those days, you worked very hard. In fact, I would say that, uh, I, one of the major motivations for me to create LingQ was that I have a number of books, particularly in Spanish and German.
I had a number of books at home, uh, in the say, call it, uh, you know, and the, uh, late nineties, but, but I had had them for a while and I would try to read them. And always there would be 10, 15 words per page that I didn't know. And it was annoying and tiring to look them up in a dictionary. So slowly, that was sort of the genesis of LingQ. At any rate.
I went to Europe, I studied there for three years. And during the, and I would hitchhike all over and during the, uh, particularly the Easter holidays, I would hitchhike into Spain. And so I think it was 1964 when I hitchhiked into Spain for the first time. And I can remember, uh, carrying my rucksack and, uh, getting on a bus in Barcelona and the people were so friendly, so friendly.
And where are you from? And, and of course I started speaking, whatever Spanish I had. And then they invited me to this bar where they shared wine with me, you know, which we poured out of this sort of container, jug sort of thing that had this long beak. And, and I would always go, I would, whenever I had the opportunity, I just loved going to Spain and hitchhiked down through Southern France.
Nîmes , Perpignan, Montpellier, into the, the Costa Costa Brava. And, uh, worked my way down as far as, uh, you know, different occasions, Cádiz, uh, and all these cities were just amazing, like, uh, Córdoba and, uh, and, uh, you know, all the, all the cities of Spain and, uh, Marbella before it was developed, uh, Seville of course.
And of course, Barcelona and so forth. So it was just a fascinating... and I would sit and if someone picks you up, when you're hitchhiking, they want to talk. That's why they pick you up. And so I would be talking, I don't know how I managed or what I had to say, but, uh, hours on end, I would be talking to truck drivers or people who picked me up and.
I can remember one truck driver. He had a dog who sat on top of his cab. And then that night he slept in his, in his cab and it's warm enough. I just slept in the ditch. Uh, the next morning he got back in with him. We kept going and I was speaking Spanish. I remember I went to, uh, the Fiesta de San Fermín in Pamplona, then run with the bulls.
But, uh, I was, you know, going to, you know, bars and. Yucking it up with people and having a great time. And so to me, Spain was, especially in those days, it was so friendly. So relaxed. Uh, the tourist business was just getting started. And then when I left, um, Europe. I mean, I went to Sciences Po in Paris and then I graduated and I started working for the Canadian government and I essentially had no contact with Spanish whatsoever... until, when I started my own business,
uh, my wife and I decided to visit Spain. And I remember on one occasion in particular for my 50th birthday, she arranged for a big meeting of a lot of friends from Sweden, from Canada, from France, people... friends, business acquaintances, and we all met. I didn't realize that she organized it without telling me, and my uncle from Sweden, uncle and aunt.
And of course my son, the one son who could come. And we did this in, uh, in Marbella. And so I've always pleasant associations, but struggling, struggling with my Spanish. And then I, uh, bought, I decided I got to read a book in Spanish. So I bought a book called El Bosque Originario by a Basque writer called Jon Juaristi
I think it is. And it's because I'm interested in the subject of, of ethnic groups and the origins of different, different ethnic groups and so forth. So I bought that book and I just fought my way through it. And, uh, without the aid of anything really leaving a lot of words that I didn't know, but I was quite familiar with the subject and therefore a lot of the vocabulary was also familiar to me, and it gave me a great sense of achievement.
Uh, so I'm trying to remember. So with that, I, my, my Spanish slowly improved, uh, then with LingQ, I started, you know, we have, you know, audio books, uh, Trafalgar, I think is one of them. I can't remember. Uh, just continued reading and listening. I remember I used to listen to, um, there were, uh, there was a podcast called El Grupo Risa, which I listened to.
It was kind of funny. I didn't understand it at all, but... so it gradually improved. I'm going to, at the end, I'm going to suggest a couple of videos where I do speak in Spanish, but I think the key thing with my Spanish is, such as it is, and it's one of the languages that I speak the best. I think after my top four, which are English, French, Japanese, and Mandarin, Spanish comes right next to those.
And I think why I've enjoyed Spanish is wherever, whatever my level was in Spanish, I was happy. Uh, if I was fighting my way through La Barraca, I was happy. If I happened that, if there happened to be a Spaniard in that, uh, you know, a bar in Montreal and I could say three things to him, I was happy.
Uh, when I was hitchhiking through Spain, I was obviously making a lot of mistakes. I was happy at every step of the way, and I think it's important to enjoy, you know, I've never had to write an exam in Spanish. I never had to worry about how accurate my grammar is, I just enjoyed the language, listening, reading, speaking, whatever it might be.
I just enjoyed it. And I think that's a good attitude to have in a language. And I've enjoyed my... oh, I should mention, I also visited Mexico and we spoke some Spanish there, of course. And we were in Peru and in Argentina. So I'm continuing to have this very pleasant, enjoyable connection with the Spanish language.
Something that I will continue to have and people will point out that I don't get this right or don't get that right. And I don't speak as well as this person or that person, doesn't matter at all. It doesn't matter what my level is in any language. Uh, you know, my German is not as good as my Spanish and I, having an interview with a person in German,
so I decided to read some German books. And I, one that I bought a while ago called Gelassenheit beginnt im Kopf, and it means like an attitude of just take it easy, enjoy it, begins in your head. So it's not the circumstances outside you that decide whether you're going to be uptight or calm. It's how you take
these circumstances. So similarly with language learning, whatever you are doing in the language, enjoy it. You decide you're going to enjoy it. It's not the language, it's not other people that decide whether you're going to enjoy the language. You decide if you're going to enjoy the language, if you're going to appreciate what you have achieved in the language, which I do.
So with that, I'll leave it. And I'll suggest a couple of videos that you can listen to in Spanish. Uh, and, uh, you can send me any critical comments that you may have. Bye for now.