La Cebolla

Day 136: Me gusta la cebolla. Ellas comen las cebollas. La cebolla no es un animale, es un vegetale. Yes, I am back practicing Spanish again. I have a decent vocabulary, but my grammar is appalling. The simplest things like "who," "which" and "how" trip me up. I can make my verbs agree with their subjects and my sentence structure is reasonably good, but those little words need a lot more practice, and to that end, I have signed on with DuoLingo. The site was recommended to me by a native speaker who teaches intermediate and advanced classes in the same building as Morris dance practice. When I arrived early a few weeks ago, I sat outside the door listening in. When I spoke with her afterwards, she suggested DuoLingo as a prerequisite for her intermediate class. Oh, how I would love to become fluent!

DuoLingo lets you go at your own pace, and allows you to return to earlier lessons for practice. The student is asked to type in responses. Sometimes, an unmistakable visual clue is given; other times, you are given a sentence and asked to translate it to or from Spanish. By typing in the words over and over, the spellings and tenses are drilled into your head without the need for painful memorization. I'm finding it quite an enjoyable way to learn a second language (or in my case, refine one I'd already begun to study). They offer courses in many other languages as well...and KLINGON is in the works! That will be my next project.