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A friend of mine recently asked my advice for learning Spanish. He is 26 and planning on spending a couple of months in South America.
I spent two months in Argentina in 2016 and took Spanish lessons 3-4 hours a day and barely learned any Spanish. Reflecting on my time in Argentina, I would now have a different approach to learning Spanish. Here are my lessons for learning Spanish (or any language) that I shared with my friend.
Ask yourself these questions:
What level of Spanish proficiency do you want to get to and why?
How much time, energy, and money are you willing to make to get to your goal?
✍🏻 Journal on these. This will add clarity and scope to your journey. Mine (which I didn’t get to), was to be able to hold a lunch conversation in Spanish.
In retrospect, a better goal for me would’ve been to learn Spanish better than the average person knows English. My Spanish never got good enough, and after a few minutes of my sputtering, the conversation inevitably switched to English. Getting to a tipping point where I had better than an average person’s English, would’ve accelerated my learning even more since all my interactions would flip to a default in Spanish.
Since you are planning on spending a few months traveling to learn Spanish, here are my recommendations.
Prep for your trip
Sign up for Duolingo and do 15-20 minutes a day. Keep a daily streak going.
Pay for a VPN, which proxies your chosen location to unblock international YouTube, Netflix, and other content. The internet is so hyper-localized because ads target you based on the zipcode you are in. When you VPN to a Spanish speaking country, your content/ads which switch to that country.
Find a local - Ask on social media if anyone knows someone in “x” country who would be willing to meet you. You can also use “Small World” or LinkedIn to proactively see if you know someone in your target country.
Get a private virtual coach- Select one from your target country so you can start with getting the accent on point. Meet 1-2 a week in the months leading up to your trip.
Here are my 7 tips:
Live in a Spanish speaking country. You are off to a great start! The timing for taking a few months to travel abroad will never be perfect, but when you are old and wrinkled you will be grateful you took the jump. If you skipped the trip, you will likely regret it.
Where to live? I think Argentina, Colombia, and Costa Rica are the top places to go. I went to Argentina, because Buenos Aires is a world-class city and if I am being honest, I was copying Tim Ferriss. Colombians and Costa Ricans are known for having accents that are easy to understand.
Where to stay? See if you can get a host family. I got an extended Airbnb (1 month) that had other roommates. This was great for getting a sense of community, but most of us defaulted to speaking English.
Immersion, immersion, immersion. The more you can immerse yourself in Spanish, the better. Try cutting all English ties out of your life. You want to be thinking and dreaming in Spanish.
Switch your phone to Spanish, set laptop to Spanish, switch apps you frequently use, such as, Spotify to Spanish,
🍿Watch a movie over, and over in Spanish. Start with Spanish audio and English subtitles and move to Spanish audio and subtitles. Here’s how to set your Netflix and Disney+ to Spanish.
Master the accent first, vocabulary second, and grammar third. The accent is toughest to change once you have a larger vocabulary. Here is a good video on mastering a Spanish accent.
Building a community of Spanish speakers will accelerate your learning and you will have more fun along the way.
One way to do this is to find your “travel entry point”
For me, it is coffee shops. A few other examples of travel entry points from my friends are: live music, city parks, hiking, cuisine, bookstores, and golfing. Whatever it is, find your entry point into the country you are living in, and it will open doors to the rest of the culture.
Ideally, pick an activity that forces you to speak or interact with locals. For example, one of my roommates in Argentina went tango dancing til 4am every night. She loved it and formed a community very quickly from it.
Take classes. Provides structure and purpose to your days. Plus, it will keep you accountable for learning. I took group classes, but wish I also had taken 1 on 1 classes.
💃🏻 Go on dates with Spanish women. I didn’t do this, because I was seeing Jenny at the time and it would’ve felt weird to me to go on looking for friends. That said, my friend Jordan did an extended trip to Bogota. He was on dating apps and ended up matching with his tutor the day he got into town! They ended up spending every day, all day together, and he was practically fluent by the time he left.
Set clear boundaries with family and friends that you won’t call them as much while you travel. You can practice your Spanish by writing email updates of your travels in Spanish. If you want to hold yourself even more accountable, you can do a weekly blog in Spanish. It doesn’t matter if the Spanish is that good or if it only goes out to a small handful of people.
If you are interested, I have created a comprehensive list of resources. Buena suerte!
🕵🏼 Small World
Devon Zuegel is one of my favorite online writers and thinkers. She made a tool called SmallWorld. It’s like a Marauder’s Map, but for Twitter. See where the people you follow are located. If you are traveling to a new city, it’s cool to see who else is based there.
Awe
According to the Guardian, “regular doses of awe may be vital to our wellbeing and make us nicer people.” Here are a few ways I try to get that goosebumpy feeling of awe.
Stare out at the night sky.
Moving in unison with others, especially with live music.
Take a full body plunge into the ocean.
The feeling of something infinite and powerful reminds me of how small I am in the world.
Music I am jamming to
Say My Name by Odesza. I saw Odesza with a big group of friends this past weekend. They put on a show! The lights and visuals supercharged the music. Highly recommend seeing them live if they are coming to your town.
Pic of the Week
My “exercise” the past few months has been with a movement group in San Francisco. I did a 5-day movement immersive last week. The image above was (most) of our crew at the end of the week. We practiced a lot of stillness, explored moving and worked a lot with partners. If you are curious to hear more about my movement immersive or “movement culture” in general. You can reply to this email.