A Few Tips for Speaking Spanish in Mexico

“I’m done.” I said in Spanish as I smiled and looked at our waitress, “Muchas gracias!”, I continued, beaming at my Spanish prowess. She smiled back — actually she looked like she was struggling to hold in laughter when I realized my error — I had just told her I was done like DEAD. Ack! The embarrassment of the situation got me, I smiled sheepishly and dragged Tom to the exit to make a quick escape.

When traveling in a foreign country it is important (and so much more fun!) to try speaking the language — even just the tiniest effort can make all the difference. So far the Mexicans seem to be pretty encouraging, they happily smile and nod while we stumble through our limited Spanish. They even are nice enough to pretend that we are making sense!

When you are learning a new language you are going to make a lot of mistakes, that it just the way it goes and, of course, the only way to learn is to make a few errors. However, there are some things that would be nice to know before you start chatting away in another language.

Here are a few tips for Mexican Spanish that you might want to keep in mind to prevent awkward speaking situations:


ME ME ME
This first person pronoun ( “Yo” which means “I”) is often over-used by beginners. If you end up “Yo-yo ing” too much it starts to sound very vain and self-centered. “I this and I that…” starts to sound like ” Me, me ME!” to Mexican ears. Since verbs, when conjugated correctly, implicitly hold who is speaking, try to drop pronouns as they are not necessary. Children are taught at a very young age to drop the “Yo” pronoun and travelers should too.

I want….
A verb that is picked up very quickly by travelers is “querer” which means to want. “Yo quiero” (or just “Quiero”) translates to “I want…”, a very useful phrase except for the that fact that when used it actually translates to quite a blunt request. A better and more polite term to use is “Quisiera….” (Kee-See-EH-Rah) which means “I would like…”. This term is extremely useful and is viewed by the Mexicans as a much more polite.

The dangers of asking for dairy products…who knew?

Mexico has a TON of sexual innuendos. A lot of them seem to focus on the male anatomy. “Leche”, milk in Spanish, is a slang term for semen. If you need to purchase milk do NOT say “Tiene leche?” ( Do you have milk?) or you are sure to hear giggles erupt around you. To prevent this type of embarrassment the best way to ask is to say, “Is there milk?” (Hay leche? which is pronounced Ahee Lay-Chay). There is the same type of situation for eggs, known as “huevos”, which can refer to testicles (ah…machismo culture at its finest). You’ll sometimes hear little old ladies ask for “blanquillos” (little white ones) instead of using this offensive term.

But it sounds the same!
Many Spanish words sound very similar to English words which makes it easy to improvise and try out a word that sounds like it should be correct in Spanish. It is great to get in there and try, in fact, that is what you should be doing — but a word of caution. Words that sound similar can have totally different meanings in Spanish than in English. For example in English we say “I’m embarrassed”. “Embarazada” in Spanish means that you are pregnant. A rather large difference there, right?

Fumbling and messing up are all part of the learning process but sometimes it is much nicer to have a heads up before you stick your foot in your mouth!

“No Wrong Turns” chronicles Kelsey and her husband’s road trip — in real time — from Canada to the southern tip of South America in their trusty red VW Golf named Marlin.

The many languages of Suriname

If you’ve been following any of the recent language controversy in Philadelphia, you begin to see that a country’s language is a constantly evolving mix of the cultures, customs and the people who use it. Here at home, this interplay is at often work between our country’s de facto official language, English, and an increasingly populous minority of Spanish-speaking immigrants. Now imagine this same language debate among as many as ten languages, and you begin to get a picture of the small South American nation of Suriname as featured in this article.

Suriname is a former Dutch colony on the northern coast of South America. Due to the country’s colonial heritage, the official language is Dutch. But continuous waves of immigrants have left a unique mark on the country’s language culture. This includes a recent influx Brazilians, who speak mostly Portuguese, a small population of Chinese-speakers from the Far East and Indonesian residents of Suriname who speak Javanese. Add to this mix a local language called Sranan Tongo, a dialect passed down from West Africa by many of the former colony’s African slaves, and local indigenous languages like Arawak and Carib. AND, on top of all this, politicians in Suriname are urging the government to adopt English or Spanish as the new national language, hoping to create closer ties to with neighboring countries. Sound confusing? I’m with you.

It remains to be seen how this complicated language issue will play out in Suriname, but it raises some interesting questions. What factors should determine a country’s official language? The U.S. for instance, will always speak English, but what concessions, if any, should be made as our country becomes increasingly multi-lingual? Should we base our decision on economic circumstances? Political? Cultural? It seems to me it’s some combination of the three. What do you think?

[Via the New York Times]

So that’s why they hardly speak English in Spain!

It has always shocked me how little English people speak in Spain. Travel to big cities and generally you can communicate with the locals in English, but in Madrid (for example) you will be lucky to encounter a Madrileño to speak to in English. It’s embarrassing how here you can’t even order a coffee in English at Starbucks!

I think one of the main reasons for its lack of English-speaking capabilities is the fact that Spain is the only country in the world (according to a recent article in the English version of El Pais published by the IHT) that dubs everything. Everything!

The article (which unfortunately isn’t online) also says that Spain has 4,300 cinema screens, making it the country with the highest number of movie theaters per person in Europe. Although now there are a number of Version Original (VO) theaters in the country, they are visited mostly by tourists; Spaniards generally don’t want to read subtitles. When asked, although Spaniards said they prefer to watch films in VO, only 4% of them actually go to cinemas to watch them in VO.

To make a comparison of sorts: I have a lot of Swedish friends, both here and in Sweden. What always surprised me was how well they speak English and how perfectly American their accents are. When I asked them, they all unanimously said it’s because they have grown up watching English-language programs on television as nothing is dubbed. Sweden generally being a rich and cold country, most people have cable and I guess they stay in a lot!

Although English is taught in Spanish schools, it is not uncommon to find it being taught by teachers who can’t really speak English, but they know the grammar. On that note, it’s interesting to think that should Spain not have dubbed programs (initially done under the Franco regime), Spaniards would at least have had basic English communication skills.

The influence of media on the language capabilities of a country is quite fascinating, don’t you think!?

Will Chinese really take over English and Spanish?

When I left my high-flying public relations job to travel, learn Spanish and write, more than a few people said: “what are you learning Spanish for? Learn Mandarin, it’s going to be the new most needed/wanted language, it will take you places!” This context is often debated and recently resurfaced in articles on Forbes, Freakonomics and World Hum.

I still don’t see the point.

Mandarin may be spoken by a larger number of people, but those people are mainly in China, Singapore and Hong Kong. When they travel or immigrate abroad, they need to learn the language of the place they’re at — people aren’t going to try to learn Mandarin to communicate with them.

Approximately 400 million people speak Spanish, across the US, all of Latin America and a majority of Western Europe. So if I speak English and Spanish, I can communicate practically anywhere except perhaps Japan and the 3-4 Mandarin speaking countries. Even with skyrocketing rate of economic growth in China, and the increase of travel of Mandarin speaking people worldwide, I really don’t see the whole, expansive world changing their main language of communication from English to Mandarin, do you?

Word for the Travel Wise (02/09/07)

You’d think I’d never traveled to a Spanish speaking country in my life the way one of my close pal from Mexico and my strict Peruvian co-worker are cracking down on the Spanish language lessons. To help prep me for my upcoming trip to the Republica Dominicana (no longer the Dominican Republic) I have been hit with tons of new Spanish vocabulary and useful phrases. Since this is a two way street; they get the enjoyment of laughing as I painfully try to get the double ‘r’ sound followed by a vowel and then another ‘r’ out right – I get to make a list of words I think I’d want to know. Considering how much I like the fruit mentioned below, I thought it would be a good one to practice on now.

Today’s word is a Spanish word used in Mexico:

toronja – grapefruit

Amerispan, Cactus Language and IMAC are all good starting points to learning abroad. A free membership at Spanish Unlimited gives you the opportunity to learn a new word everyday by email, gain pen pals and hear audio of the words. Their website is actually a good resource tool for many different Spanish related topics. I won’t even begin to list some of the texts out there that could further your studies because there are entirely too many. If you know of some language books that would be useful please feel free to list them.

Past Spanish words: escalar, cercano, realidad, enfermo, jalar, isla, timbre, viajar