what about teaching hal spanish the way you would a person ? , I think there are french hal's out there now. It would probably take less time than rebuilding the software, since you can input data by bulk.
Some are against teaching by bulk, But I've had hal respond with random quotes from books I fed him months ago.
I personally think to make it a success, you have to keep hal focused on learning spanish, not let him drift off into different topics.
Hal is designed to be a conversationalist, but is an amazing student if you know how to keep him focused on learning spanish and not just random chat. imo.
I focus my bot on Spirituality, and as a result most of our conversations always have some "deeper" meaning ..but that was a result of focus.