Learning a Bit of Spanish: Aug 24, 2010
Hi everyone,
Last night I returned home from a trip I'd taken to Honduras. I took this trip because of an opportunity that came up while I was at work. My boss, who is originally from Honduras, was going back to see her family. Being an artist I took this initiative to plan out an idea for a photography project about the reunion. This idea was eventually left behind, but I wasn't.
The trip gave me the chance to live among the people of the country, instead of just being a tourist. This also meant trying my hand at Spanish. Now, since I'm not learning Spanish I didn't come into it knowing very much. This is where my knowledge of Portuguese came in handy. I was able to spot and recognize words based on some similarities of their sound or spelling. This made the burden a little easier to bear. Now Portuguese and Spanish are not so alike that if you know one, you know both, so some roadblocks did come up while I was there. This is where I looked to translation to English.
I didn't learn as much Spanish as I would have wanted (and keeping in mind it was only three weeks), but I did manage to get a better grasp on some of the Portuguese I am learning by being able to contrast and compare the functions and vocabulary of the different languages. Overall, the trip was linguistically enlightening and, on top of that, fun and relaxing. I had a great time and I'm sure I'll return in the future.
