Oh yeah and fortunately the pronunciation is pretty straightforward. And it is phonetic as well since it was put into writing only recently and using Spanish (which is also phonetic). I don’t think I would try to learn a non-phonetic language. I barely managed to learn English as a kid.
“I don’t think I would try to learn a non-phonetic language. I barely managed to learn English as a kid.”
Now try to imagine what it´s like to learn English as a kid in a classroom in Germany xD
Seriously I do imagine! 
The more I learn about languages the more respect I have for anyone who can learn English as a second language. It’s insanely difficult. My spelling was appalling at school and I still have no idea how to spell “bureaucracy”. And studying French at school put me off language learning for about 10 years.
“Kichwa From Zero” Now we talking! Already Tread of the year in my book!! Good Luck, inspirational and interesting!
Ha thanks! If I can inspire others that’s great, people here have been a great inspiration for me over the last 2 years or so. I really notice how different my attitude is this time around. I spent maybe years doubting whether I would actually get the hang of Spanish. Now I know that with time, enthusiasm and that ability to notice, I can make significant progress with Kichwa.
Updated opening post to include list of resources. Maybe useful to somebody at some point
First 100 words! Tiny milestone, but the first words are the hardest. Verbs are the key to this language* so once I’ve got a good number of them I’ll be really moving.
*For example: bedroom is “sleeping room”, hospital is “curing room”, beer is “foaming water”, medicine is “healing water”, to read is literally “to follow words”. I need to go and follow some more words!
Hi! =)))
The verb, oh yeah! =))))
Just exactly as in the language I’m involved with nowadays, i.e. na sa wikang Tagalog ! =))
The verb even defines the whole structure of the rest of the sentence, and because it’s an agglutinative language, such long words as, say, ‘pinapagmamahal’ are just normal and even the natives are not surprised by me building such words! 
Besides, Tagalog is also based upon Spanish, and, yes, it also uses very much similar word very often, i.e. ‘naman’ ! =))) As in ‘mabuti naman’, and ‘lang’ or its complete form ‘lamang’, as in ‘Okey lang’ !
Hi, Paul! =)))
Yeah, genau, kann ich mich dass vorstellen!
Ahh agglutinative! That’s a word I didn’t know, but that must be Kichwa as well. Thus, a herd of cute little pigs (kuchi) would be kuchikukunata (not to be mistaken with kuchirukukunata, a herd of nasty scary pigs). I think I read somewhere there are 70 different suffixes. Oh joy!
Yasssss! =))) Exactly ‘parang sa wikang Tagalog naman!’ =))) It IS an agglutinative one, as well, no doubt, as there’re very many different ones, please, do not be afraid of what they are called, “suffixes, prefixes, and, most unusual ones, INfixes!” =)))) And a huge lof of the so-called enclitic particles the linguistic name of which completely puzzles the natives extensively using them in their speech, though!
These suffixes, etc. are GLUed to the main root of the word, hence, aggGLUtinative type of the language! =)))
3 weeks in and had my first brief conversations outside of the classroom. Went to a market and asked a few people if I could practice with them. Managed some introductions and a few questions about families etc. I am quite pleased with my first attempt, mostly because I was understood! Also spent some time listening to market-sellers selling their wares. I am picking up a few words here and there, which is also a positive sign of progress.
Wow! =))) Quite a substantial progress, really!
What do you expect? Ever since he started this project, he looks like he has ascended to heaven and has been reporting back to us from that holy place high up beaming with light.
I do appeciate his progress as we both are nearly in the same situation, i.e. we both are involved with an apparently exotic language, both are agglutinative-type, and in both of these languages the verb is the most complicated part of speech and it may even determine the whole structure of the sentence, well, in my case, at least!
I know. I just can’t get used to his new photo, It is quite like an identity change.
New language, new photo, no?
First month review:
Finished a basic introductory course to Kichwa here in Quito. That’s given me a good foundation and understanding of grammar, pronunciation and sentence structure. I can introduce myself and ask some basic questions, but I have very little vocabulary and it is very difficult to understand questions.
I’ve done a lot of hunting for material so I now have a lot of audio and text stored up to work through. Also because there is no online dictionary for Kichwa I have made my own using LingQ. This was time consuming but is now going to make it possible to read in LingQ and make some real progress over the next few weeks (hopefully!).
Plan for the next month:
I’ll be in the UK for Christmas so won’t be having classes or talking to natives. I will use this time to press ahead with reading and listening. I have a book of Andean legends (parallel texts in Spanish) which I’m looking forward to. And a Kichwa audio course taken off youtube and edited (with Audacity) to remove extraneous music and spanish. I am hoping that a few weeks of regular input will move me a little forward for when I return to Ecuador in January.
Congratulations Simon, you’re an inspiration! Really focussed and organised. But hey, what about splitting this thread up? After all I hope to be hearing about your progress for a very long time to come! And your supporters club will all be commenting!!
Hey thanks! I’m not sure about splitting the thread as I wanted to keep a blog-like journal of my progress all in one place (it is a shame that the forums are set out as they currently are, in my opinion they were easier to navigate when they were paginated). But I am doing the 90 day challenge for Kichwa, so maybe I’ll start a new thread when I have completed that.