For most people, it seems like their level is gone from the comments. I only see a couple people that have their level showing. I don't seen an option to enable it in settings. Is it just me or anyone else?
I currently only have around 130 hours all from DS. I live in Miami so it is easy to find places where people speak Spanish but I don't want to be the person to start speaking broken Spanish when the staff speak English perfectly. With that said it is easy to find hole in the wall places in Google maps where I know the waitstaff will speak no / limited English. My goal was to simply be able to get through everything without using Google translate or pointing at the menu, and it was nice to pay $3.50 for tacos instead of the normal inflated prices.
It was kind of nerve racking, the restaurant was super busy so I took an available table that was in the middle of the restaurant. The waitress came up with her notepad and just smiled. I said "como estas" instead of "que tal" because I'm not confident in pronouncing "tal". I don't know if she answered me quietly or not, because it was very loud. I said "Tienen cola cero' and she said yes, then for the food.
In my head I was planning to say something like "quiero probar algo nuevo" and then ask for a recommendation, but given I didn't hear her answer when I asked how are you and how busy it was I wasn't really comfortable in having any dialogue, also because I want to be respectful since it is busy.
I ordered with the menu closed and without pointing, "Quisiera tacos" and then "un taco de pollo y un al pastor, y salsa picante". Also I accidentally pronounced pollo the argentinian way like "posho" but she understood.
She asked in Spanish if cilantro & onions were ok and I said yes. That was almost the extent of the dialogue - The whole process felt kind of alienating with it being busy and all, I know it was probably just in my head but I felt like all eyes were on me.
The biggest fail was I needed napkins so I had to flag her down and ask. (I waited a long time but she passed by several times asking other tables if they needed anything but didn't come to me). I already knew I either forgot the word for napkin or had never been exposed to it, but I didn't want to cheat and use my phone. So I said "tienen papel, no se la palabra" and she had a confused reaction and then I made a gesture with my hands, and she understood. I remembered papel higienico was toilet paper so I knew not to say that. I was going to say como se dice esto and point when she dropped off the napkins but she had food she was bringing to another table so she just quickly dropped them off.
I sat for like 10 minutes after I ate, TV was on with Spanish subtitles on the sports channel. Reading comprehension was good, at least 80%. I didn't know if she was going to bring me the check or if I was supposed to pay at the register. I was going to say "yo pago aqui o aquell" and point to the register, which I looked up after and know that is incorrect. But she didn't come anyways so I didn't say that, so I just got up and went to pay at the register. I just said gracias and left, I was going to say disfruta el dia after but I wasn't feeling confident.
Overall, I feel like I would be less nervous now the next time at the same restaurant, or a different restaurant. I didn't get to test listening comprehension as much as I would've liked, I think maybe when you speak Spanish very poorly people may assume you won't understand anything they say even though listening comprehension is different. For example I understood when she checked on the tables next to me and asked if they needed anything else, but she never did that to me, which could still just be a coincidence. I didn't go in expecting to have dialogue, just to survive the encounter. So I think with my comprehension and broken Spanish I can already survive restaurant encounters without using my phone.
In DS we are exposed to a variety of different countries / dialects, and since we are learning Spanish as a second language, most of us don't have our own regional dialect. If I were to visit Argentina and pronounce Yo as Sho is that like the equivalent of me going to England as an American and speaking in a british accent. What about using y vos instead of y tu
Here with another update post (from back when I finished all free super beginner videos and decided to subscribe).
Background before starting: 2 summer semesters (4 hrs. a day) in college 10 years ago, Some Duolingo (section 3).
Thoughts:
I believe in the method and can see that it is going to work, even though I knew a lot of words beforehand, watching the 50 hours of input helps me form basic sentences with them and the speed of comprehension with vocabulary I know is very instantaneous for me. I have picked up a lot of new words from the 50 hours of CI though that are now in my memory.
Challenges:
DS videos are ahead of what I learned (or remember) from college and Duolingo now. The beginner videos I watch in DS now started using past tense verbs a lot which I don't remember from college and never started learning in Duolingo. There is just so many verbs and I don't know the pattern of how they change in past tense yet. My brain is confused right now because from my naive basic experience "basic" verbs like quiero and tengo put an o on the end for 1st person present, but now in the DS videos there is a lot of verbs that put a o on the end for either 2nd or 3rd person past tense, I forgot. I am choosing to believe in the CI method and deciding not to lookup the past tenses of verbs.
Roadmap alignment:
Level 2 is still very elementary of course, and the DS roadmap is basically that you know some common words. I agree with this. However it is a bit conservative, although I would struggle to do it in real time and hold a conversation, I can form very basic sentences and also know how to make sentences with reflexive verbs in 1st/2nd/3rd person. I have zero confidence in past tense right now though.
Interactions:
I am only 50 hours in so I don't try to speak Spanish, because it is broken of course. I live in Miami though, and someone asked me for directions probably 30 hours in, to the water taxi, and they only spoke Spanish. Using the vocabulary I knew (al lado, cerca, calle, derecha, izquierda etc) I was able to tell them where it was.
Next steps:
I'm running into more words that I don't know now and the videos have began introducing past tense as I said. I'm just going to trust the CI method and keep chugging a long.
Today I am ~18 hours in and I finished all the free super beginner videos. I took Spanish for 2 summers in college ( 4 hrs a day), but this was 10 years ago. Before finding DS, I was doing some Duolingo currently at Skill level 20 (Section 3). I only started DS ~3 days ago, and now spend the majority of my time on DS instead of Duolingo. I have a 4 hour goal, but have spent 5-6 hours per day since signing up (with full focus, not burnout).
I'm a bit of a completionist , so I'm deciding to subscribe now and finish the super beginner videos rather than watching the rest of the free beginner ones.
First thoughts - I think this is definitely the way forward but I have to give credit to college + Duolingo for the basic vocabulary and basic grammar to carry me through the super beginner videos. Since college was so long ago I'm unable to differentiate what's in my memory from school versus Duolingo. With that said, plan is to probably do 4~6 hours of DS a day and only 30 mins - 1 hr of Duolingo at most.
It's so interesting to hear the speakers from different countries. So far, Columbia & Mexico are the easiest to understand for me. I wondered if it was just a me thing, so I did a google search and it seems Columbia & Mexico have a reputation for being easy to understand compared to other countries. I am getting used to the differences in pronunciation though of Argentina & Spain, at first it was very confusing and I had to turn subtitles on to verify they were saying the word I thought (playa, for example sounded like plasha).
I'll give another update in the future for a milestone.
Edit: Sorry to Colombians, today I learned how to spell your country correctly.
In college, I took 2 summer semesters of Spanish for 4 hours a day, even though this was 10 years ago some basic common vocabulary and very basic grammar stuck with me. About a week ago I started duolingo and got to near the end of section 2 (19 score I think) and then found about Dreaming Spanish!
I watched some super beginner videos and understood 99% of them (Andrea + Shelcin). I've decided to continue with Dreaming Spanish so I sorted by old and I've watched a few 2018 videos (Pablo + Adria) and ignoring the expected production value difference, it just seems a lot harder in terms of speaking speed and even vocabulary.