Ok this was embarrasing

[nadinbrzezinski]

We are working on a story involving native people in Mexico. So I needed to send an Email to proceso, one of the top political magazines. It took me literally ten minutes to compose an email in Spanish... my native tongue. So, the obvious thing is I NEED PRACTICE... damn I really do. So converted my IPOD to a Spanish computer and started plotting a short piece of fiction that will be done in Spanish. It will take me longer than English, but damn I need the practice. That was well, very embarrassing.

Ten minutes. Damn!

And that story better NOT involve going down to Ensenada, there are way too many personal safety concerns on that one.

[Agnosticsherbet]

1. Writing is a very difficult act...

Because it combines a radically different symbol sets. From what I've read, the mind reinforces those things is does most often. It would appear that old skills such as writing in a different language can degrade over time if not used, like muscles.

A Spanish language story will probably help you strengthen those muscles.

[Chan790]

3. I had a similar experience recently.

I list on my resume that I'm bilingual; primarily I worked in Spanish in my last job. I really hadn't been using it since I left banking 2 years ago though.

I walked into an interview and my interviewer asked me something in Spanish and I realized that I'd forgotten about half the vocabulary in the question which was clearly meant to assess my fluency. After I stumbled through the question and said that I was rusty but fluent because I hadn't used my Spanish in a couple years, I got through the rest of the interview.

There's a DU Groupe Francophone...maybe we need a Grupo Español?

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. Por supuesto.

La práctica nos caeria bien.