I think I mentioned after New Years that there would be a lot of studying for me this year. And next week, the first of my planned courses starts: a distance course in Romanian at Lund’s University in Sweden. The thought of not only forgetting the little Romanian that I learned during my two years in Moldova, but also never having really learned the language properly has sadden me a bit, and since I am now working with several projects in both Moldova and Romania, I thought I’d take the opportunity to improve my skills.

The other language that I am focusing on this spring is Spanish. Choosing between Russian and Spanish has been difficult since I really want to learn both. Russian has appealed somewhat more to me since I did study Russian for a while in Moldova and since being able to read Russian classics in the original language has always been a dream of mine. But speaking Spanish makes things so much easier here in Washington and I do have plenty of opportunities to practice here, and I have thus decided to devote at least the first six months of this year to Spanish studies. And yes, as some of you might recall, I did speak Spanish fairly well at one point in time. But as I have not used it at all for the past six years, it is now buried deeply under my Italian and my limited knowledge of Romanian and Russian. Buried to the extent that I now see words and verbs that I know I used once but I no longer even recognize. (Forgotten might actually be the appropriate term for it. Or Alzheimer?)

Anyway, since I spend 2*25 minutes per day walking to and from work, I like to listen to recordings in different languages on the way, and I found this great podcast called Coffee Break Spanish. Even though it is for beginners, I can really recommend it for anyone who is interested in learning Spanish. Not the least because the Scottish hosts, Mark and Kara, are  so enthusiastic and lovely to listen to. The idea is to provide a language course through short episodes, so that the listeners can follow the course over a coffee break. It is produced by Radio Lingua Network and they have similar courses in several different languages. And best of all, it is totally free of charge – just download it from i-tunes!

Coffee Break Spanish – I really recommend it