Made by a learner in Spain

People say full immersion is the easiest way to learn a language. Nobody warns you how much you miss your own.

Hola! I moved to Spain this year. People say full immersion is the easiest way to learn a language, and maybe it is, but it’s still hard. It’s overwhelming, and the part nobody warns you about is how much you miss your own language: just having an easy conversation without searching for every word. It can feel surprisingly isolating.

So I had an idea: what if a book started out in English and slowly swapped in Spanish, one word at a time, with a little more Spanish in every chapter? It turns out this already exists. It’s called a “diglot weave.” But when I went looking for one on Kindle for Spanish, I couldn’t find any. So I decided to try making one myself.

With AI helping, I thought it would be pretty simple. It wasn’t! It took many hours of reading, checking and editing. AI is a great tool, but it’s not perfect, and I learned quickly that you can’t trust it blindly. Along the way I’ve learned a lot about Spanish, about AI, and about how much care goes into a book like this. It’s also been a great project to keep me busy while I wait for my residency to come through.

I’m starting with well-loved classics because they’re easy to get hold of, and I’d love to grow into more original stories over time. I made these to help myself learn, and I hope they help someone else too. Enjoy the stories, and pick up a little Spanish along the way.

¡Gracias por leer!
Jamie

Read to Books publishes the Read to Spanish classic novels, the Color to Spanish colouring storybooks, and the Color to English colouring storybooks for Spanish speakers learning English. Every book is sold on Amazon.