Round The World Tickets
Learn some Spanish at some point
While it’s definitely true that you can go round the world speaking only English, knowing more than a few words in Spanish can really enhance your trip in quite a few ways. And I’m saying this as someone who didn’t realize this before he left, but really wished someone had told him about this earlier. So I’m telling you now.
I didn’t really even figure this out until it was way too late anyway, but basically, in all countries where Spanish is the first language, very few people speak English. It feels a bit ironic that everyone on the small resort island of Ko Samui in Thailand speaks a reasonable amount of English, but once you get south of Tijuana or other border towns like it, you are mostly in the “no comprende” zone. And this definitely isn’t a complaint because if I tour their country I can’t expect them to learn my language in advance to make it a bit easier. This situation surprised me, but it was my fault, not theirs.
In rural Mexico, all of Central America (except for Belize), and the half of South America that isn’t Brazil, English-language knowledge ranges from rare to nonexistent. And the same is true of Spain itself as well. The Spanish-speaking community is huge in the Western world, so native speakers can each visit around 20 countries without ever learning another language, which is certainly one of the reasons so few of them do. Of course, the language and expressions do change a bit from one part of this region to the next, so your high school Spanish might sound like you are butchering their language in some places, but at least you’ll be welcomed and understood.
Again, it’s possible to visit these countries speaking only English, but without being able to communicate well it might push you toward 3-star hotels and resort towns where you’ll be able to be understood, and it makes small and interesting villages far more intimidating. Even knowing a few hundred Spanish words and phrases gives you a leg up and will make your visit more enjoyable.
If you took Spanish in high school or you speak it otherwise, you should do fine, although you may want to brush up a bit before you go. But even if you know nothing more than menu Spanish at this point, it’s still not too late. If you could get a CD-ROM Spanish course or a book on tourist Spanish, it will really pay off if you work on it for a couple weeks before you arrive. Just knowing how to say (as well as understand when others say) “How do I get to the museum” or “Someone stole my luggage” will make a big difference.
Another option is to do a one-week intensive course when you arrive in your first Latin American country. Antigua, Guatemala is one of the many cities that have schools set up whereby for a small fee you live with a local family for a week, and take lessons with a teacher most of the day. This kind of emersion training can be very effective, and if you are planning on spending more than a few weeks in these countries it will really pay off.
I think during my 2 months or so in Spanish-speaking countries my vocabulary went from about 30 words to about 200, and now it’s back close to 50 again a couple years on. I could get in a taxi and give directions in Spanish, but I understood very little of what others were saying back to me. If I had to do it over again I’d have put effort into that language early on.
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