The Long, Bloody Battle with Spanish Goes On

 “When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men's weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be damped.”
 Sun Tsu The Art of War

Over the past month I have been reading a lot in English and very little in Spanish which always makes me feel guilty no matter how good the material is in English. This time it has been a history of the Battle of Stalingrad by Antony Beevor, Stalingrad, as well as his fine history The Fall of Berlin. I also made it through Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad by William Craig. Reading these three books in quick succession gave me nightmares one night, no kidding. I was sort of knocked out with a bad cough for almost a week and had little energy so reading was more than a comfort than usual. I just didn’t have the energy to track something down in Spanish to read and I felt that my language skills backtracked considerably in these weeks of winter.

I am feeling much better and it’s time to return to reading in Spanish. I wish that I could afford to take a break from the study of Spanish (and French) for my forays into English but I feel that if I am not forging forward I am sliding backwards. Even after all this time in Spain I still have so much to learn about the language. Wordreference is my constant companion and my best friend. Granted, most of the words that I am forced to look up these days are obscure even for an educated Spaniard but I wonder if I will ever be able to read my adopted language with as much facility as I read in English. All that I can say is that I am not there yet.