Friday, February 17, 2012

Blog of the Moment: Fluent In 3 Months

Have you ever wanted to learn a foreign language? I have piles of Spanish language learning books, tapes, CDs and manuals to prove I've made a half-hearted effort to learn a language. I don't think I'll ever succeed because I think I'm linguistically disabled and genetically pre-disposed to be monolingual. My dad has been trying to learn Spanish for 40 years and hasn't gotten past knowing a few common words and phrases. Why has he attempted this over and over again (every once in a while he'll go on a Spanish binge and break out all his accumulated language materials, only to put them away again after another failed try to make progress)? Because his mother was Mexican and didn't pass the language to her children, so he's been trying to get it back ever since. I know what you're going to say "He's not doing it right", but that misses the point. Not doing it proper is part of our family history. It's a disease. We can't help it.

Which is why I'm not worried about the increasing use of Spanish in America. More and more jobs in our service oriented economy are in need of bilingual English/Spanish workers to fill them. Which gives you an edge if you speak both languages. So why am I not worried? First, I have a Spanish-speaking girlfriend, and I'll eventually fall back on her to bring home the bacon if I have to, but second, I have that language disability, so I'm going to use the ADA to keep any job I have if they ever dare to even hint at letting me go because I can't communicate (except in caveman style) with half the customers.

Which brings me to our Blog of the Moment!




Fluent In 3 Months


Written by Benny Lewis, self-described "polygot", the blog is frequently updated and full of helpful language learning stuff. And when he says "3 months" he means it! This is fast language skills acquisition we're talking! There's even a forum for others success stories. It's just too bad I'm disabled and unable to take advantage. Oh, well.

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