Language Learning

So after some random encouragement to get back up on the language horse (one that I had recently fallen off of), I thought I should write a blog post about where I hope this little pony will take me.

First of all, I should explain the horse that I fell off of a few months ago.  Before we had Enoch, I had dabbled in a few languages.  Spanish, Arabic, Ancient Greek.  All three are great languages, and I was privileged to have amazing teachers in each.  I am able to recall Spanish the easiest- possibly because I invested more time in that language than the others, but possibly also because I had to speak some Spanish when I worked for the lawn company over the past two years.  

Anyway, that was WAY before we were pregnant.  When we got pregnant though, I had these high hopes of teaching our children to be bilingual.   So after Enoch was born, I hopped right up on that language horse and started speaking Spanish to him.  Unfortunately, I was quickly bucked off when I was continually affronted by my poor knowledge of the language.  I realized real quick that my Spanish was quite limited, and I became more defeated when a few children's Spanish books (borrowed from the public library) were even hard for me to understand.  (pitiful, huh?)  So instead of pushing through and learning the words I didn't know (getting back up on the horse), I just gave up.  Actually, let's just say that I let the horse go out to pasture..

Recently though two people (in the same day) asked me about teaching Enoch another language.  After I replied that it hadn't worked out so well yet and that I had pretty much given up, they both encouraged me to take small weekly steps toward that goal.  So, I'm beginning intentionally re-learning Spanish and (at the same time) speaking it to Enoch... mounting back up on that language horse.

Here is my two-fold weekly approach:

1. Learn simple vocabulary (words of objects that he's encountering daily)
2. Learn translated phrases that I'm already saying to him 

And so, my words for this week are:

• the duck   ->   el pato
• the ball    ->   la pelota
• Are you playing?   ->   ¿Estás jugando?
• Are you talking?    ->   ¿Estás hablando?

I think that this little pony and I have many good years of riding ahead!  My hope is that teaching our children another language when they are young will help them more easily learn other languages when they are older.  Only God knows what each of our children will do when they become adults, but I know that it's highly likely that they will be around people who speak different languages because we're living in a more and more global world.  Now I won't go into my opinions about the English language being the only language used in the US, but I will say that it can be such a ministry to people to know and speak their language better than you expect them to know and speak yours (no matter what soil you/they are standing on).  So, all that to say that I hope our children will be well equipped to learn different languages throughout their lives because of our investment in Spanish now (Hugh also knows some Spanish, so he'll be speaking it to Enoch too.)

Would any of you like to ride along with me?  I realize that not everyone reading this is at the same level with another language- one of my friends has a minor in Spanish, another friend has dabbled in French, most of my family didn't have the opportunity to learn a different language in school- no matter where you are, learning languages is mostly about applying yourself to practicing.  If you want, you can follow and join our language learning journey here on the blog (weekly posts of our Spanish vocabulary) or you can go at your own pace with whatever language you choose.  :)