Second Key

You know, I am pretty psyched about this immersion I'm feeling en La Mission pero I need to hablar con los vecinos (a word I pulled all the way from high school Spanish class -- way to go!) si quiero to improve mi castellano. Me gusta Spanglish, pero mas castelleno es preferable. I can already read about ten times the amount of I can produce, just because I know French and English.

I'm recently caught between the Italian and Spanish spellings of ciao/chau. Maybe I should just go the ironic 'merican way and say, "Chow."

Que es la diferencia entre castellano y espaNol? No entiendo muy bien. (I made that first sentence up and as far as I can tell, it is correct. I love Spanish.)

Ah, but the Internet enlightens us:

Castilian) Spanish (lengua)

CASTELLANO Castellano (Castilian) is the official term for Spanish used in the Spanish Constitution of 1978, but “español“ (Spanish) and “lengua española” (Spanish language) are often used when referring to Spanish as opposed to French, Italian or German, and also in linguistic or academic contexts. Elsewhere, the term “español” is often avoided because of its associations with either the former colonizing country (in the case of Latin America) or (in Spain) with the domination of Spanish over the other languages spoken in Spain (principally Catalan, Basque and Galician).

So that makes sense. It is a much cooler word than espaNol, as well. (I'm gonna learn how to type an N with a ~. Promise...)

First key

Actually find time to study. This has been difficult of late on my end, but I think I will start taking notes off the bilingual signs in all the trains I ride -- I can learn words like:

silla
caer
hacia
uhm...

Shoot, I know there are more words! ;D unicamente -- did I spell that right? Anyways, if I take notes and think a little harder (and get a little more sleep, no doubt) then I can at least talk about what to do in the event of a train emergency :D

SF is not my abbreviation of choice

I was always a fan of "Frisco," although since I know nearly everyone disapproves of that; I usually just spell it all out. SFO would be the perfect candidate, except that people actually call the airport here by those call letters -- it would be like calling Los Angeles LAX, but I mean, I guess we already call it LA, and that is shorter ;D

Anyhow, now that that's out of the way, the point of this blog is basically that I am learning Spanish in addition to Japanese, now. Or at least, I hope in addition. My schedule isn't quite figured out yet with the new job, so it'll take some time to find a comfy fit. 

The main impetus for learning Spanish is that I had a big realization that I really don't want to leave the Mission, and if I'm committed to that, I might as well be committed to getting to know the neighborhood more, and learning how to talk to the neighbors. 

The first step is Pimsleur Basic - Advanced. All 100 lessons. So far I've done five and they are moving at a glacial pace. I guess that is probably just because I have taken Spanish before (in middle and high school, although I forgot pretty much everything). More on that later. Too sleepy now.