After re-reading some of Benny’s ebook, I decided to visit lingq.com and see what it has to offer. Since I don’t have a computer at the moment, I found it a bit difficult to navigate (on my iPod), but I love the concept.

On the homepage it says you can: Get help from a personal tutor, make friends in the community, join live conversations, have your writing corrected, learn your new vocabulary, and download and listen on your ipod.

I definitely haven’t tried out all of these aspects – I use italki and lenguajero to find people to talk to and make friends with, then talk to them on Skype. And you have to pay for a lot of the features on Lingq, such as talking to a tutor and having your writing corrected, and I just don’t want to pay – especially because I can have my writing corrected for free on busuu.com. But that’s okay, the part of Lingq that I like is something that I can’t find on other websites.

Lingq has a large library of lessons for a selection of languages (including Spanish of course) at all levels. Each lesson consists of an audio file and a transcript. You can download the audio (which I’ve had some problems with, working on my iPod, I imagine it’s a lot easier on a computer), then you listen to it a couple of times before looking at the transcript. In the transcript, new words are highlighted in blue – of course, to begin all of the words are blue! You click the words you don’t know and can either enter a definition or choose one that another user has created (if someone has). This creates a lingq, which is like a super-flash flashcard, and means that every time you come across that word again, it’ll be highlighted in yellow. When you’ve finished reading through the transcript, you can click the “I know all” button and all the blue words will lose their highlighting.

As you study more lessons, fewer words are highlighted and I got a real sense of progress. There’s also a little indicator in the corner of the screen which tells you how many words you know, which also gives a nice feeling of progression. Of course it’s completely meaningless, since it counts all different forms of a word as separate words, and only measure what you can identify in context, not what you can actually produce, but it’s still nice.

Then, you get a daily email with your new lingqs, and you can also study them using an onsite flashcard programme. Sadly, on the free version you can only create 100 lingqs, and if you want to create more you have to delete them individually – I haven’t worked out how to delete them in batches.

But apart from that, I think Lingq is a great idea. I love being able to listen to something then see exactly what was said. And being able to click a word to see a definition is really useful too. It’s a pity that the other features are quite expensive, but for now I’ll enjoy the free parts!

Since my computer broke, I’ve been spending a lot of time on my iPod Touch. Actually, I’d probably spend a lot of time on it anyway, since it is awesome. I’ve got all sorts of apps for it, including some strange ones – Craig bought me one with jokes in Spanish, and there’s a section of jokes about Twilight! I also have a couple of translators, the Bible in Spanish, and a book of legends. I’m still trying to find a flashcard program that works for me, but I’m sure I’ll get there.

One awesome thing about the iPod is that you can have an option of keyboards. I’ve chosen a standard English one and a Spanish one, and I can flick between them by just tapping a button next to the space bar. This changes the language of the dictionary, and the dictionary is really important when you’re typing on such a small keyboard – I mistype words all the time and it automatically corrects me, if for example I type “yiu” instead of “you”. This saves a lot of deleting. Of course, I keep forgetting to hit the magic button and start typing in the other language, with occasionally hilarious results. I was chatting to someone the other day who asked me a question, so I wanted to answer using the word “porque” (because), but the dictionary corrected it to “pirate”.

I’ve also recently changed the operating language for the iPod, so all of my titles and announcements are in Spanish. It’s great just to have more of my mind in the language, and I understand most of it.

“Hablas muy bien español.” Since I started learning Spanish, quite a few people have said this to me. It’s very encouraging, but I found it a bit strange to be told that I speak Spanish very well when I could only use the present tense. And now that I can use more tenses, the compliment is the same.

So, I was wondering why people say this to language learners, and why they insert the “very” in the middle. I mean, as an English teacher, I often tell people that their English is good, but I try to only say “very good” if it’s actually true. And I’m very sensitive about my Spanish, I’m very aware of how much more I have to learn.

So, why all the compliments? My first theory was that Spanish-speakers are just very nice, and there’s a culture of encouragement. There definitely was a great vibe amongst the students in Perth who helped me at the beginning of my language journey, I always felt so good about myself.

Second, Craig suggested when we were in South America that while maybe our Spanish wasn’t awesome, it was better than that of most tourists. Plus we’d made an effort with our accents so we could probably be understood better. I remember once a Buenos Aires taxi driver told us our Spanish was good after only a minute of conversation, most of which was giving him the address. Craig said this was probably more than most English-speakers could do, and maybe he’s right.

Or maybe it’s the communication thing again – if you can communicate, you’re winning. It doesn’t matter if the grammar is a little off or the accent isn’t perfect – if you can express what you want to say, hablas muy bien español.

When learning a language, you’re definitely going to make mistakes. It’s just a part of the journey. And sometimes, those mistakes will be hilarious – the trick is to laugh at them as well, don’t get caught up in them. I used to get a bit stressed every time I stuffed up, now I just try to learn what I should have said and move on.

And in the spirit of laughing at myself, I thought I’d share some of the funnier mistakes I and my friends have made.

First, breakfast. As you know, I really like italki.com because it really kicked off my Spanish journey. So I talk about it a fair bit. When we were in Chile, I was explaining what it was to a group of people, and I wanted to say that you can talk with people who speak the language you want to learn and who want to learn your language. People with the opposite desires (deseos) to you. Except that instead of saying “deseos” I said “desayunos,” which means “breakfasts.” I don’t think I’ll ever live that one down.

Another time, I asked if a guy’s girlfriend was open (abierta) instead of awake (despierta). At least I never said I was pregnant (embarazada) instead of embarrassed (avergonzada) – I’d been warned about that one. And my favorite mistake of all time wasn’t mine – my friend wanted to ask our host’s husband for glasses (vasos) but accidentally asked for kisses (besos). That’s one I don’t think she will live down!

And of course, I’ve made my fair share of sexually-charged errors, always fun when you’re talking to guys. Girls: “estoy caliente” means “I’m horny” not “I’m hot” (try “tengo calor”), and “estoy mojada” (“I’m wet” – for example if you’d been out in the rain like me) has the same sexual connotation as in English. But “traviesa” (naughty) doesn’t have a sexual side to it. And also be aware that “me gustas” (I like you) means that you have a crush, not that you’re happy that you’re friends with someone. I learned that one quite late… Very embarrassing, since I’m married!

But I lived through all of these mistakes while learning Spanish and they didn’t kill me. Some of them are really quite funny to look back on, and at least I’m not likely to make the same mistakes again.

We’re in Vietnam at the moment, and the idea is that we spend three weeks stopped in one place to work and study. Well, Craig’s going to work and I’m mostly going to study. I really want to speak some Spanish every day, read a little, listen to music, and study some grammar. I’m finding it a bit difficult to find people to talk to though, we’re staying in a very small guesthouse without many other guests and it often isn’t convenient for my South American friends to talk with me because of the time difference.

However, the other day I had the chance to speak with a couple of Chilean girls when we were at the Cu Chi tunnels. I’m always so embarrassed to start a conversation with people in Spanish, maybe because I’m not too confident with it, or maybe because I think they’ll discover my dirty secret – that I’m addicted to Spanish!

Anyway, I offered to take a photo for them, because they seemed to be having trouble getting the framing right for their selfie. They said no but at least I’d made some contact, it’s always the hardest for me. Then Craig asked where they were from and, after they told us, they asked if we were from Spain! So our first sentences weren’t too terrible, just with a strange accent. I’m stoked that they didn’t pick us as English speakers immediately.

We chatted with them on and off for the rest of the tour, and even translated some of what the guide was saying into Spanish. They were lovely to talk to, and it’s always nice to meet people from one of my favourite countries.

We’ve just spent a week in Italy, and it was one of the most frustrating weeks I’ve had recently. The internet access where we were was absolutely atrocious, we had to pay a euro for an hour’s access and it was so slow you could only do ten minutes’ worth of work in that hour. We found one cafe with free wifi but it stopped working on the second day and never started again – very frustrating!

Also, I didn’t manage to speak any Spanish all week. Well, that’s not quite true. I don’t speak Italian and most Italians don’t speak English, so when I wanted to communicate usually Spanish came out of my mouth – and surprisingly, this sometimes worked! I had to remember to say “due” instead of “dos” and “latte” instead of “leche” but on the whole people understood what I was saying.

Everyone loves the sound of Italian, and yes, it is very beautiful, but I still prefer Spanish. Plus, you can use the internet in Spanish-speaking countries!

I really wanted to go to Spain this year, after all we were in Europe for three months without any firm plans and it would be our first time there since we started learning Spanish. We planned to have two weeks there – five days each in Valencia, Barcelona and Madrid, but as always our plans changed and we had to head to Vienna after just one week. We spent four days in Valencia (and attended the La Tomatina tomato fight) then had just two full days in Barcelona – definitely not enough.

I really enjoyed being in Spain, being surrounded by people speaking Spanish, catching glimpses of Spanish TV shows, and reading all the signs in Spanish. But apart from that I didn’t have as much of a chance to speak it as I would have liked. The first two nights we stayed in a hostel run by a Dutch guy, and he amiably spoke Spanish for us although his English was impeccable. The next two nights we stayed in a hotel, and as soon as we opened our mouths the concierge switched to English. The same thing happened in restaurants and cafes, it was really annoying. Sometimes I kept speaking Spanish, but usually just admitted defeat and went back to English.

On the train to Barcelona we were sharing a table with an older couple from Barcelona. We had a great chat with them, most of the way actually, but I found the woman quite hard to understand – I think she was speaking faster than I could follow, and with an accent I wasn’t familiar with. They gave us some very useful advice about how to use the metro before we said goodbye.

In Barcelona we were couchsurfing, and we generally spoke English with our host Ruben. On the first night though, we met a couple of his friends and had a fantastic conversation with them – on the beach and later in a kebab shop – in a mix of English and Spanish. I used to find switching really hard, and I still do, but it seems like it’s getting better.

So on the whole it was good, and Craig and I are talking about going to live in Spain for six months or so at some point, but I definitely want to go back to South America first – there’s just more Spanish there.