About Careers

From Latin to Spanish - and Beyond

January 24th, 2009

After a year of Latin in high school, my parents and I moved to a new town for us, Seminole, Texas - about as far West Texas as you can get, without being in New Mexico. Since I enjoyed Latin, I signed-up for Spanish, since that was the only language offerred. We had a great teacher, and I took Spanish my sophomore through senior years.

It always amazes me that people talk about taking a language class in high school, then graduate without actually being able to speak any of the language. After a year or two pass, they can’t seem to speak a word of it. In our classes, the teacher always made us practice actual conversations, and I believe that helped to make the language stick.

In high school, I had part time jobs at a fast food place, and as a janitor. In both of these jobs, I was surrounded by Spanish speaking co-workers; so I picked up some Spanish that I cannot repeat in mixed company. But in general, it did help enforce the “proper” Spanish that I was learning in school.

Every summer, our Spanish teacher took a group to Mexico city. Travel is, of course, a great way to further one’s language skills. I took lot’s of pictures, created a scrapbook accompanied with an audio tape, and got three hours credit for the trip from a nearby community college.

I also discovered CLEP (College Level Examination Program) tests, and took the Spanish exams. My university awared me 14 hours of credit just for my Spanish! I went to college already having 17 credits (plus even more for math and science exams).

In college, I didn’t major in Spanish, but almost got a minor. If I remember correctly, I had one class in conversational Spanish, and two classes in Spanish literature. I was also involved with Spanish Clubs and Honor Society on campus.

After college, I was curious about other languages, so I delved into French, Portuguese, and Hebrew. Later I even tried a sampling of Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, and Greek, but I can’t really claim to speak those languages. Before the internet existed, it was hard to find courses, and of course they were all on audio tapes back then in the 1980s.

In 1995, I was a consultant and got a job offer in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Being single and living by yourself is not the optimal way to learn more Spanish. But on the job, I was able to put a lot of Spanish to use, even though it wasn’t a requirement.

So after trying dozens and dozens of language books, courses, tapes, CD, and software programs, I became sort of an expert at what works and what doesn’t. I created a software program to teach the Hebrew alphabet, and now I’m focusing again on Spanish. We have just created an online Spanish learning center, have brought in some great talent to build lessons and answer questions in the forums.

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