Actually, I've never seen Star Wars, but I think using our life force or that hidden force of good that underlies many things is the way to go. My native language is English. Enough about that. I started learning Spanish in middle school. I was Diego there. Later I became Pedro because I didn't realize what a great name Diego is. I liked Spanish in middle school. It was like playing. I was fortunate to have good teachers. My first one probably wasn't native, but she made class fun. My second spanish teacher was a fiery Latina from Guatamala. She had a real gift for language teaching. She gave us the Nobel Prize winning book El Señor Presidente. I started reading it at the time and was shocked that I was able to understand some of it. Unfortuately, I was a dumb peer pressured youth and didn't read the book. At the University, there was a language requirement. I was crazy about a girl who had taken 4 years of French in high school, and probably 3 in middle school, so I became as obsessed with French as I had been with her. In two semesters of college French, I was pretty much the top in the class. At least I was pretty sure of it. This included kids who probably had 4 years of French in high school and were looking for an easy grade. That sort of individual though isn't really looking to learn "a Romance language", "the language of love". My approach then was to do all of my textbook work, lab work, etc. I also talked to myself in French all the time. It as a very good combination. Oh, of course being obsessed with the girl and thinking French would give me some kind of chance with her was all the motivation I needed. My love of French came to an end one day when the 3rd semester prof said some sort of derogatory remark about my French in front of two cute young girls (probably French majors or grad students). Anyway, gave me a tremendous complex that my speech, though amazingly fluent, was probably hampered by grammatical errors or imperfect pronunciation. From that moment, I shifted from a love a French to just coasting the rest of the semester to complete the language requirement for a degree. Many, many years later. I'm in my forties. I'm not happy. I see pickup trucks with what looks like a bunch of Mexicans in the back. They are happy. They are probably going to a day labor job. They probably don't have the benefit of a visa or passport or citizenship. I think, those guys have to know a hell of a lot more about living and life than I do. How am I going to find out their secret? Well, of course, learn Spanish! I remembered a few things from middle school. I became obsessed with Spanish for a few years. I did lots of stuff, but my primary learning tool was FSI Basic Spanish, the audio-lingual course created by the State Department for Foreign Service Institue diplomats. It was challenging as far as discipline is concerned, but effective. I learned a fair bit about my learning style with that experience. I met some great Latino people. I learned to speak and read the language. I also realized my motivation for learning Spanish was perhaps an indicator that I was slightly off my rocker. I got a girlfriend and forgot about Spanish for a while. Then we got engaged and were taking our honeymoon in France! That started the current phase of French. Aboout 3 months before we were taking our lune de miel, I started studying French again. I had several courses going at the same time, most of them were from Assimil. New French with Ease, French without Toil, Using French. I started primarily with a listen/reading approach using those courses. I do lots of other things now as well, but that's probably enough for an introduction. I've been studying French for almost 2 years again. Note, although my French was much better in college than my Spanish was in middle school, I remembered more Spanish than French when I started them back up.
There were a few occasions where knowing some French was helpful. One was in while looking for a remote restaurant in the boondocks. Mainly it was useful with people who didn't know any or very little English. I was surprised though at how many of the French did know English. We were in Provence.
