Spanish Friday: Mi Nuevo iPhone
A bilingual installment written after acquiring an iPhone 4, pairing Spanish and English vocabulary and phrases around the new device.
Category
Language Learning
Notes from learning Spanish and other languages while living abroad — bilingual "Spanish Friday" posts, the tools I reach for, and the slow progress that comes with living in a new language every day.
Learning a language from the inside
Language learning here is not a classroom subject — it is part of daily expat life. The blog follows my own attempts to pick up Spanish and other languages in the places where my husband and I have lived, from El Salvador and Guatemala to Jordan and Nepal.
I am a writer, a runner, and the wife of a Foreign Service Officer with USAID, which means my language practice happens in host countries, at markets, in offices, and at home with a household that does not always share my first language.
What you will find here
Series
Spanish Friday
Bilingual posts with Spanish and English side by side, including "Spanish Friday: Mi Nuevo iPhone" from September 28, 2012, written around the arrival of a new iPhone 4.
Tools
Working with Rosetta Stone
My experience of using language-learning software alongside real conversations, and where practice on screen helped and where it did not.
Reality
Challenges and progress
Honest notes on the harder side of acquisition: listening, mistakes, the gap between a phrase on a screen and a phrase in a crowded room.
Also
Beyond Spanish
Other languages encountered while living abroad, and the routines that keep study alive between postings and long travel stretches.
Selected posts
Talking on the Phone
Written from El Salvador about communication habits — an introvert's preference for writing, and staying in touch over Skype and FaceTime while living abroad.
Learning a language as an expat is less like studying and more like sinking into water. There is no weekly grammar review, no exam to pass — just the slow accumulation of words overheard in markets, overheard accents in corridors, and half-understood signs on trains. This page collects those notes from years of living abroad, tracking the small victories and stubborn confusions that come from trying to order food, ask directions, and make a friend in a language that is not your own.
Some of the most useful tools are embarrassingly simple: a phrasebook worn soft at the corners, a voice recorder, a whiteboard on the fridge, a patient local who repeats a sentence until the meaning settles. The blog follows the approach of noticing, writing things down, and revisiting them later, with bilingual "Spanish Friday" entries that pair new expressions with the everyday situations that gave them meaning. Progress is measured in conversations survived rather than pages finished.
There is a particular kind of tiredness that comes from living inside a second language, and also a particular pleasure: hearing a joke land, dreaming in the local tongue, or catching a song's meaning without translation. This section of the site gathers reflections from that middle ground, written by a writer and runner who has moved between countries and learned that patience, repetition, and a willingness to sound foolish are the real curriculum of living abroad.
How the language work connects
- Expat Life — the everyday situations where a new language becomes necessary or useful.
- Foreign Service — deployments and the rhythm of life in a posting, from clearance paperwork to arrival.
- Travel — destinations such as El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Jordan, Laos, Nepal, and New Zealand, where local language opens doors.
- Cooking — local cuisines and dishes, including Quesadillas Salvadoreñas, and the words that come with them.
Sometimes I think that if I could, I would conduct all my communication in writing. You all know I'm an introvert. And I obviously like to write.
From "Talking on the Phone," June 6, 2013