I learned Spanish in school, in 1990-1991, in an afternoon course of two hours a week. I remember having so much fun in this weird ‘language laboratory’, as it was called.

Equipped with the latest 70s audio technology, so we could listen in to Spanish texts, repeat them and the teacher could hear and correct us individually.

The grades did not matter, as it was an additional course that you signed up for voluntarily. At the time, my friend Petra and I had more fun in drawing funny pictures of classmates, or sending weird echo sounds through the system when we played with the buttons, than actually speaking Spanish.

While Petra, the more conscientious one of us, continued with the course, I got bored half way through year two and dropped out, just as we had started to learn the different forms of past tense. An error that still haunts me today. My Mom had warned me….

My brother-in-law is Spanish, from Valenica, but as he and my sister live in Paris, we only ever spoke French. So that was not helping, either.

And even Spanish boyfriends, Spanish friends and movies – I can understand Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios pretty much without subtitles – never got me to seriously sit down and learn the language properly. Lo siento.

I lack practice, I lack vocabulary, and I lack the grammar…. I forgot the correct forms of the verbs, I only vaguely remember the easier form of past tense (the one that South America has chosen NOT to use), I can’t do any future tense except the simple ‘voy a…’

I signed up for two Spanish intensive courses at work, during the summer. The first year, they put me in level three, but I went back to level two right away and had the greatest language course ever, in a fun, young group with a young teacher who liked to show us clips on Youtube and made us speak a lot.

The next year though, level three revealed that I had forgotten all in the 11 months without practice. Back to square one.

So here I am, and I’m having a 24-hour-course. Some people I meet over a beer are constantly speaking Spanish to me, and make me answer, as basic as it might be, but it’s a great help. My brain is fried after that, but after three weeks I can see some progress.

Sometimes in the wee hours of morning when I start to wake up, my brain somehow feels like it’s buzzing in Spanish. Not sure what I dream about or if it makes any sense, and I doubt that it’s in Spanish. But I can feel I’m processing so much vocabulary and grammar in my sleep.

And I’m getting the Argentinian version of it all… the ll that sound alike a sh, the tu that becomes vos, the other words and accents….

Only to be told that, oh, in Chile it’s all different again… And they talk even faster!

I am curious how much I will have progressed by Navidad, when I’m flying up north and south again to my three months in Down under.

Until then, I’m practicing on this one: ‘Acento español. Cómo pronunciar el español estándar europeo.‘

¿Qué?