hi there steve kaufman here today i'm
going to talk about
how i learn spanish uh if you enjoy
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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
when was my first encounter with spanish
and so i entered
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 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
barracca by blaschko ibanez
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 30s in those days
and uh we picked 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
mostly i remember that uh near the
university there were two places that i
would go to
once every couple of weeks or so one was
a
sort of a bar cafe near the university
where thursday friday saturday maybe
there was a guitarist playing
spanish guitar music and i would order a
cup of
sherry and i thought i was very uh you
know international or something
uh and then there was another place
called the la sotia fiona espanola
nearby where you walked down it was dark
and there was these
these men in their 40s and 50s
who would always be there playing
dominoes and for me again i'd go there
and have a beer and i think wow 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 uh newspaper clippings
from el mercurio which it was maybe
still is
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 the sort of fascination
with countries where they speak spanish
of course it was very painstaking to do
that
it's not like link 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 flash cards all the
different things that we can do at link
it's just night and day
bring things in from youtube whatever it
might be 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 i
one of the major motivations for me to
create link
was that i have a number of books in
particular in spanish and german i had a
number of books at home
uh in the say call it uh you know
in the uh late 90s 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
link
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 was 1964
when i hitchhiked into spain for the
first time and i can remember
uh carrying my rucksack
and getting on a bus in barcelona and
the people were
so friendly so friendly and where are
you from and
of course i started speaking whatever
spanish i had
and then they invited me to this uh bar
where they
shared wine with me you know which we
poured out of this
sort of container that jog sort of thing
that had this long
beak and i would always go
i would whenever i had the opportunity i
just loved going to spain
and hitchhiked down through southern
france al you know neem
al pepina montpellier uh
into the costa costa brava
and uh worked my way down as far as
uh you know different occasions cardiff
and all these cities were just amazing
like cordoba
and and uh you know all the cities of
spain and
marbella before it was developed uh
sevilla of course and of course
barcelona and so forth so
it was just a fascinating and i would
sit and and if
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
the
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
the next morning i got back in with him
we kept going and i was speaking spanish
i remember i went to the fiesta de san
fermin in pamplona
didn't run with the bulls but 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 chiang spo 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 again 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 bought i decided i got to read a book
in spanish
so i bought a book called el bosque
origenario
by a basque writer called jon juarez
juarez 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
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 my
my spanish slowly improved uh
then with link i started you know we
have you know audiobooks uh
trafalgar i think is one of them i can't
remember
i just continued reading and listening i
remember i used to listen
to uh there were there was a podcast
called el grupo
lisa which i listened to was kind of
funny i didn't understand it 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 have enjoyed spanish is wherever
whatever my level was in spanish i was
happy
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
you know 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
and 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 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 were
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 begint in cough
and it means like an attitude of just
take it easy enjoy it
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
and you can send me any critical
comments that you may have
bye for now