25

For the first time I let a little Spanish wash over me.

I love its sounds—those rolled R’s. The music of Mexican bandidos in Westerns! A lot of its structures seem familiar.

I took a 5-min chunk of text (the start of Harry Potter). I looked. I listened. I looked while listening. And then I compared the text with English. The same number of words. But Spanish words are a little longer.

My audiobook seemed speedy, so on YouTube I found a slower narrator—4 minutes versus 3.5 minutes.

I feel that I have ‘activated’ Spanish in my brain.