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Spanish on the Internet

© Twila Godinez

The internet has changed our lives more than we can imagine. One of the biggest advantages of the internet is the ability to communicate with people in all parts of the world with the push of a button. Today, there are internet sites in almost any language imaginable. What an advantage to the student of foreign languages! As time goes by, it is becoming more and more necessary to learn a foreign language, and Spanish is quickly becoming the choice for many people. I, like many other students in United States, was required to take two years of a foreign language in high school. I'm from a small town so the only choices were French or Spanish. I chose to take Spanish for several reasons. The most important was that I saw more and more people speaking Spanish. Every time I went to the mall or to the movies, I seemed to run into people speaking Spanish. Besides that, my best friend was from Mexcio, and I thought it would be neat to be able to talk to her parents who spoke very little English! As time went by, I got more and more interested in learning. Then, I met the man I would eventually marry. He, like my best friend, was from Mexico. Now I really had a reason to learn Spanish! I took every Spanish class that was offered at my high school and read all of the "learn to speak Spanish" books that I could find. Whole new worlds began to open up to me! Then one day I discovered Spanish music! Through music I was able to hear how Spanish speakers pronounced words and I heard many words that just weren't in my textbooks. I listened to hours of Spanish music trying to make my mouth say those foreign words and get my brain to understand what they meant. All of my hard work paid off! Now I consider myself bilingual (my husband and I speak Spanish almost all the time at home), and I'm also certified to teach Spanish at the high school level. My television is almost always set on Univision (a Spanish language station), and when someone asks me about my favorite song it is almost always in Spanish. Just a few years ago, it was difficult to find any kind of Spanish entertainment. We would have to travel hours to the nearest city to buy cassette tapes that were always at least a year old. The only Spanish movies we could see were several years old. It was a treat to visit my husband's home in Mexico because we could buy the latest CDs, magazines, and videos in Spanish. We were culturaly starved!