“Hola mi nombre es Luis Gustavo” were the first words I learnt to speak in Spanish from my Spanish ab initio class. Initially, I was very hesitant towards learning a new language as I thought it would be impossible to “learn 4 years of content in 2 years”. Also, I never saw the importance of learning a new language as I believed that being able to speak English and Thai was sufficient.
Now, I am passionately learning Spanish and aspiring towards being able to communicate, read and write with sufficient proficiency. Before starting this course the only Spanish I was able to speak was “vamos amigos” from my childhood watching Dora the Explorer. Currently, two thirds into the course I am now able to talk about who I am, explain a picture, talk about topics such as advantages and disadvantages of technology as well as write and read a page of simple Spanish.
As Spanish was the first language that I am learning from scratch I have been amazed by how different, interesting and challenging learning a new language is. This is because, Thai and English have been my native languages that I have been learning since I was born, so I don’t remember the process of learning the “different tenses” or different “sentence structures”. Whereas, with Spanish, I would always be confused and astonished when Ms. Emeli would say that “this phrase or word can’t be translated directly into English”. For instance, I was fascinated when trying to translate “I woke up” into Spanish, which is “Me Despierte” which is roughly “I woke myself up” when translated back to English. However, what is even more interesting that in Spanish to say “I” is "Yo" however in the case when talking about doing an action about yourself such waking up, you have to use the word "Me" which is quite hard to understand why, but very fascinating in regards of learning about how different cultures communicate.
Moreover, having gone to a summer course program in Oxford for two weeks, I was able to engage and communicate with a variety of different people from different countries and cultures. I made friends with people from Bahrain, Spain, Saudi Arabia, Australia and Italy. Through this experience, I was able to utilize my basic knowledge of Spanish and communicate with a few people and introduce myself, which was quite an interesting experience and an accomplishment. Additionally, communicating with Stefano (a friend from Italy and someone who speaks Italian) in Spanish I was able to identify some similarities yet differences with both the languages which was also quite interesting. In conclusion, through these experiences, I have been able to change my perspective on the importance of language and culture. I am now keen to possibly learn a few additional languages such as Arabic and in the near future and be fascinated by how different and complex it would be as compared to Spanish. I am sure that having the ability to communicate in different languages will benefit me in the near future.
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