Continuing with my aim to speak more Spanish, courtesy of Benny, I’ve been trying to find opportunities to speak with people. It’s a little more difficult here in New Zealand and Australia, since there are just fewer Spanish-speakers around … I found it amazing in the Uluru-Kata Tjuta Cultural Centre, the visitor centre for Ayer’s Rock, that the information boards don’t have a Spanish translation, since Spanish-speaking tourists don’t represent a high enough percentage of visitors. Apparently Italian speakers are more common than Spanish-speaking visitors. It was true for our tour though, of the 22 people on board, three spoke Italian and none spoke Spanish.

The Garden of Eden waterhole at King's Canyon

On the last day of our six-day tour, I was feeling a little Spanish-deprived – not having internet access meant I couldn’t even speak with my Latin American friends online, or keep up with listening to BBC Mundo; it was a hard time for me. The last activity of the tour was an early-morning walk at King’s Canyon. Quite a few tour companies include the walk in their itinerary, and it’s always done in the morning to avoid the scorching heat that arrives later in the day, so there were quite a few other tourists on the path with us.

At one of our stops, I overheard a family speaking Spanish…I really wanted to speak with them but I couldn’t work out how to do it politely, and anyway their guide wanted them to move on. I saw them a couple of times along the way, and then, finally, I had my chance. Three or four groups were stopped at the Garden of Eden waterhole for a snack, and some people went swimming. The two kids had hopped in the water, leaving the mother sitting alone, so I went over and asked her (in Spanish) if I could speak with her. She was very agreeable, and very kind about my Spanish ability; her husband came over and we all had a pleasant conversation about Chile, Australia and New Zealand. We probably only spoke for about ten minutes, and as always I’m slow to get into the flow of speaking, but I was happy that I’d once again got over my fear of rejection and asked.

Apparently there are about 375 million native English speakers, and between 470 million and a billion non-native speakers. Since 215 million of the native speakers live in the United States, and they overwhelmingly don’t travel very much, students of English in non-English-speaking countries are much more likely to speak English with other learners than with native speakers. The use of English as a lingua franca increases this trend – as people from two non-English-speaking countries use English to communicate when they don’t know each other’s language.

This is not the case with Spanish. The number of native speakers of Spanish is roughly equivalent to that of native English speakers (depending on whose list you look at) but the amount of non-native speakers is radically lower (between 30 and 100 million). This means that students are more likely to be able to speak with people whose first language is Spanish, than with other students. Or at least, this has been the case for me. I almost always speak Spanish with native speakers, and haven’t had a problem meeting new people (mostly online) who are happy to help me out. This is contrasted with what I’ve heard from a lot of English learners, who have a lot of trouble finding native English speakers to practice with.

However, occasionally I do speak Spanish with non-native speakers, usually with other English speakers, and it’s an interesting experience. I try to match my speed and vocabulary to their level, which means if their Spanish is good, it’s similar to speaking with a native speaker. But if their level is lower than mine, it’s a great opportunity to slow down and focus on grammar. When speaking with a guy from the USA the other day, I realised that slowing down is wonderful – I can be more aware of what I’m saying, and think about whether it’s grammatically correct – which I don’t usually think about when chatting with my native-speaker friends. It’s awesome.

When learning a language, practicing is the most important thing you can do. Studying grammar is useful, and it’s important to have a good knowledge of vocabulary, but you really need to get the words out of your mouth for your language ability to improve.

Recently, I’ve been trying to take the chance to speak with native Spanish speakers whenever the opportunity arises. It’s strange, I’ve always been extroverted; my parents say I used to go up to people as a toddler and say: “hi! I’m Linda, what’s your name?” much to my sister’s shame. But when it comes to asking people if I can speak Spanish with them, I’m oddly shy. I suppose I’m scared of rejection, that they’ll say no, or that we’ll start speaking and they’ll not be able to understand me. But Benny the super-polyglot says it’s important, so I’m trying…

When we were in Australia recently, we went on a two-day tour to Kangaroo Island. The bus was full of people from Switzerland and Germany (or at least it seemed like it), very nice people but not Spanish-speakers. But then, the last person to board was a girl from Spain, called Sarah. Craig and I chatted with her in English on the ferry across to the island, and after a few conversations and various scheduled stops of the bus, I finally dredged up the courage to ask her if she’d speak with me in Spanish. I’d already told her I was learning, and she was willing to help me practice. We walked back from the beach to the sitting area where everyone else was gathered and continued talking – and although I was pretty tongue-tied to begin with, the conversation flowed well.

Over the next two days, we spoke several times in Spanish, and Sarah was really happy to do it – in fact, she told me that it was great to be able to speak her native language after three months of almost always speaking English. Plus she was really interesting to talk to, and it was easy for us to find things to talk about.

It was interesting to see how my fluency changed across a conversation, for the first ten minutes or so, it’s difficult for me to find the words, and I feel like my speech is quite stilted. But as the chat progresses, I get more comfortable and feel confident in my ability.

We’re in Vietnam at the moment, and the idea is that we spend three weeks stopped in one place to work and study. Well, Craig’s going to work and I’m mostly going to study. I really want to speak some Spanish every day, read a little, listen to music, and study some grammar. I’m finding it a bit difficult to find people to talk to though, we’re staying in a very small guesthouse without many other guests and it often isn’t convenient for my South American friends to talk with me because of the time difference.

However, the other day I had the chance to speak with a couple of Chilean girls when we were at the Cu Chi tunnels. I’m always so embarrassed to start a conversation with people in Spanish, maybe because I’m not too confident with it, or maybe because I think they’ll discover my dirty secret – that I’m addicted to Spanish!

Anyway, I offered to take a photo for them, because they seemed to be having trouble getting the framing right for their selfie. They said no but at least I’d made some contact, it’s always the hardest for me. Then Craig asked where they were from and, after they told us, they asked if we were from Spain! So our first sentences weren’t too terrible, just with a strange accent. I’m stoked that they didn’t pick us as English speakers immediately.

We chatted with them on and off for the rest of the tour, and even translated some of what the guide was saying into Spanish. They were lovely to talk to, and it’s always nice to meet people from one of my favourite countries.

One of the questions I’ve struggled with since I started learning Spanish seriously in August last year, is when can you say “I speak Spanish”? To be able to say this has been my main goal since my addiction began, I wanted to learn the language to a level where if people asked me which languages I spoke, I could say “English and Spanish” without a modifier – I don’t want to have to say “I speak a little Spanish” or “I’m learning Spanish”.

I asked a few people about this, to find out what they thought. Some people said you can say that you speak a language when you can communicate, but I think you can communicate using a phrase book. Others said when you can have a conversation … I think that’s a better measure.

Personally, I think if you’re at about intermediate level you can say you speak the language – you can deal with any situation, even if the grammar is shocking. I know that if I moved to South America tomorrow, I could get by only in Spanish. Recently I was chatting with some people about the languages they speak, and they were quite happy to say they spoke a language if they were at intermediate level. They then asked me if I spoke any other languages, and I said “yes, Spanish” without a modifier – a big deal for me! Of course, I’ve got lots of other Spanish goals to reach, but I’m really happy to have acheived this one.

One of the things that I picked up from Benny’s ebook is that the most important thing to do when learning a language is to speak it. I think I did the right thing by getting hooked into italki right at the start, because I was using Spanish almost immediately – okay, it was full of errors and I didn’t understand 80% of what the people I was talking to were saying, but I was using it. After a little while, I started talking on Skype with some of my italki friends, and it was hard, but really worthwhile.

I’ve added a lot of my italki friends to Skype and whenever I can, I try to talk with them instead of just instant messaging. Sometimes we just talk Spanish, sometimes Spanish then English (it’s polite to help them too, after all). What I really love though, is when I can just chat with someone for an hour or so, about nothing in particular, and it’s completely normal. Last night I talked to a friend about curtains (note: new word – persianas) for about half an hour. I’m excited because a year ago I never would have thought I could just laze around in the evening chatting about curtains (or anything else) in Spanish.

It’s strange, I suppose, because I’m an English teacher and I see people progressing in English all the time, but I never had a concept of myself as someone who would be able to speak two languages. But now I can, and I’m so happy!

We spent last week in Spain, and it was awesome. I loved just eavesdropping on people in the subway and ordering food in Spanish. But one of my most interesting experiences wasn’t in Spanish at all … well, there was Spanish involved but not as I knew it.

We’d missed the last metro to our hotel, and were in the metro station trying to work out what time they run until, when we saw another guy in the same predicament. We told him “no hay trenes, han terminado,” but he said “no español.” Turns out he was from Italy. We don’t speak Italian, and he had only a few words of Enlgish, but we established that we wanted to go to the same metro stop as us. We headed up the road in fairly uncomfortable silence, trying to break it with the few words we knew in each other’s language.

It didn’t work very well at first, but eventually we broke the ice and were chatting away amiably. He spoke slow Italian, we spoke slow Spanish … and it wasn’t too bad. I think we all understood about the same amount, which wasn’t too much (maybe 40%) but it was enough to have a conversation. Now we’re firm friends and Luigi invited us to stay with him in Italy. I’m not sure where he lives, but I know it isn’t Naples! It’s fun to see how learning Spanish can help with other languages too.

We’ve just finished up a week in Belgium and the Netherlands. Neither of these countries were on our original itinerary, but our friends Tom and Floor convinced us to go and visit them – not that convincing us took much work!

We met Tom in 2008 while walking the Camino de Santiago in Spain. Then, I spoke no Spanish at all – I was trying to get past the numbers 1-10 and basic greetings, and was always nervous walking into shops to ask for stuff. Tom, on the other hand, had just been living in Spain for a year, with the aim of learning Spanish, and seemed completely fluent to me.

Linda and Belgian beer - Learn Spanish

Sadly, the Netherlands didn’t provide me with much food for my addiction. Our hosts didn’t speak Spanish, although Floor was very good about using what she did know, just to please me (“Yo quiero sol! Vamos a la cama! Hola! Hasta la pasta!”). The tourist information office was bereft of literature in Spanish, though there might have been some behind the desk if I’d asked. All I could find was a brochure in Spanish and Italian about the churches of Utrecht, which I found in the cathedral. Obviously God wants me to learn Spanish.