Hi there, for quite a few years now I have been very interested in learning a new language. With my job I am involved in a lot of translation work including producing literature and the website in French, German, Spanish and now Chinese. We have people within the company who speak many languages so we either use them or an external agency, I then lay the text out to produce the documents. I am in awe of people who can speak more than one language, I think it’s a fantastic skill to have.

So I decided to attend the Beginners Spanish course at Huntingdon Regional college on Thursday nights. I decided on Spanish mainly because many of the places I have been lucky enough to visit speak Spanish and I hope to have a lot of use for this skill in the future. Webtec very kindly agreed to pay for the course due to my constant involvement with translation work. So for the last 4 – 5 months I have been going to college along with about 10 other people to learn the basic skills to speak the language. It’s very hard and I didn’t appreciate the amount of work that goes into learning such a vast subject. Every single thing you’re told is brand new so it’s a very fascinating. I like to think I have made some progress, I’m lucky as well that at our US office we have Jessica Garcia who looks after our Mexico and South American Markets so she has been helping me by answering any questions I have, testing me and correcting me on my many mistakes. I have attempted to write a paragraph about myself in Spanish to test myself to see how far I have come. Jessica kindly checked this for me.

Hola, me llamo Sam hablo un poco español. Tengo treinta y tres años. Soy Ingles y vivo en Somersham en Cambridgshire. So diseñor gráfico y trabajo en Webtec Products Limited. Soy soltero. Tengo un hermano y se llama Joe, tiene vientisiete años. Joe es casado, su mujer se llama Heidi. Heidi es Americana de Detroit. Mi madre se llama Alison y mi padre se llama John. Mi madre es casada y su marido se llama Colin. Colin es mi padrastro. Tengo una ahijada y se llama Mia, tiene ocho años. Su madre se llama Sarah y su padre se llama Justin.

Gracias, hasta luego, adiós!

I would urge anyone to learn a new language as I think it’s such a good skill to have, I think we take for granted the fact most people speak English so when we travel abroad we don’t have to worry.

I hope to carry on learning after this course has finished and maybe travel to apply my skills, or get laughed at by the locals.

Thank you for reading.