Hola! This was the first word I learnt in Spanish a few years ago which translates to “hello” the entry-level word most language speakers learn as a way of introducing themselves. Being from London I essentially felt quite comfortable about not needing to learn another language as people from all around the world tend to just adjust to mine “English”.

Growing up, both my parents spoke different languages and the only common ground was English. I wasn’t surrounded by any other languages domestically at least and having friends who even though were born and bred in the UK are able to speak another language simply by childhood osmosis.

One of my main life goals was to learn a new language and be able to communicate on a different level and one of the earliest languages I had exposure to was french. Not surprising, as France is that close you can pretty much throw a stone there.

However, my early experiences of learning french weren’t the best as I didn’t really possess the passion for learning as I hold now and well… teachers can shape how you learn and not blame any of my teachers or anything, but my encounters with the language were not the smoothest if you ask me.

Though I learnt a few words, the “bonjours” “ca va ” but if asked to order a pizza, I’d probably end up ordering the wrong one with maybe even pineapples on top… I hate pineapples on pizzas yuck!

It wasn’t until around early 2019 that I decided to continue my quest for learning another language and actively take steps to accomplish my goal. Despite having some what of a base in French, I decided to change languages entirely and learn Spanish.

A few reasons why I chose Spanish over french were;

1. Spanish is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world with over half a billion speakers.

2. The way the language sounded to me was nice.

3. A love for Latin American culture and music.

 

Hola and welcome to lesson 1

I first started learning Spanish using Pimsleur a series of iTunes audio lessons which I downloaded (cough cough). I only managed to get through the first chapter as I found it rather banal. Although it taught me some basic foundations of the language, if I was to ever reach my goal of speaking Spanish I needed something a bit more entertaining to keep me motivated. It was at this point that I pivoted to Youtube and a Spotify podcast called Coffee break Spanish.

 

I managed to listen to over 50 episodes and on top of that I would watch a few Youtube videos here and there. I only practised a few times every week or so max 2–3 times and I would roughly spend about 20 mins as that was the duration of the episodes. I listened to episodes on my commute to work or while driving sometimes, though while driving I would almost immediately switch it to hip-hop and blast some Kendrick Lamar or Skepta.

I had a friend locally who I occasionally practised with but I could barely understand her most times as my Spanish just wasn’t up to that level so we would end up speaking in English most times. Now at this point could I say I felt comfortable to speak, absolutely not… but that moment came later on.

It was only when I took the leap to live abroad in Colombia that I truly got the passion again for learning and things started to fall into place once more. I remember being on that long flight and racing through my mind was how on earth I would be able to communicate with people once I got there with the little Spanish I knew at the time.

One of the first things I managed to say to the uber driver picking me from the airport was “Tengo ambre” which means “I’m hungry”. I remember buying a warm bunuelo which is like a lightly flavored cheesy puffball and the flavour blew me away. I ordered two more I was that hungry.

For the first few weeks, I lived with people from the US so my exposure to Spanish on a domestic level was pretty much non-existent.

Though I did manage to speak with the house help Mariana who came every two days to help keep things in order. I regularly attended free language exchange meetings (intercambios) either downtown or in the local universities (about 3–4 times a week) and taught English to locals in exchange for Spanish. Not only were they a great way to learn but they also allowed me to build connections with locals and get some information about what Medellin was like and also Colombia as a whole.

One of the drawbacks about the meetings was because it was quite popular a lot of people generally attended and therefore they tended to be quite noisy, so making conversation seemed difficult most times.

Two of my friends felt the same way about them and so we decided to take the initiative of hosting our very own intercambio at home. The plan was simple, invite our English-speaking friends and Colombian friends over, cook some food (done by me mostly as I’m a really good cook), play games, organise discussions, and just have a good time.

Here is a vlog I made of our intercambio.

The Switch

After a few weeks, I ended up leaving that house as I wanted to be more immersed in the language so I moved to a place called Estadio close to the football stadium (which was super fun during matches).

In my new house, everyone spoke Spanish except for my housemate Jason from the US who was learning Spanish and on a similar level to me at the time. It was here that I truly learned the bulk of my Spanish in my opinion and though my sentences were all over the place my housemates could kinda get the gist of what I was saying and correct me. I never had problems with the dog though as he only understood love and food time.

As a traveller, I come across different types of people and whenever I ask someone who speaks multiple languages how they did it, one thing which they all tend to say is

“one of the fastest way to learn a language is to get a girlfriend or boyfriend to practice with”

They were right. I mean thinking about it, having a girlfriend is the perfect Intercambio partner. Not only would you get to learn about each other you would do so in your target language and cover not only the essentials but also a more niche set of topics that podcasts don’t really cover like… swear words, body parts, sex, things you like to… (okay not that kind of article let’s not digress).

The everyday interactions I had were all part of my journey to learning Spanish even if they didn’t seem like much at the time. From workers at the shop to local fruit sellers to taxi drivers and my roommates, all enabled me to learn Spanish at a much faster rate than I would have back home in London.

Living in the country where my target language was spoken made a huge difference yeah sure but probably another main thing that helped me also was the lockdown… yep lockdown, let me explain.

Right of the bat, I’d like to say being locked down in a different country sucks! But in this case, I had to play with the cards I was dealt. At the early stage of the lockdown, we were only allowed out of the house once a week…. yep once a week. This forced me to find other things to do with my time as I could no longer salsa on Sundays, or fiesta on Fridays.

Here’s a random video of a steamy salsa night.

 

The lockdowns helped me to build a deeper connection with all seven of my housemates but two of them in particular “Eduardo and Gabriela” I built a particularly strong bond with.

Around month one of the lockdown, we started this ritual of almost every evening (except on weekends) around 10 pm we would sit in front of the house, and practice English and Spanish for about one hour and drink tea and biscuits (you can take the guy out of Britain but you can’t take Britain out of the guy lol).

We did this for close to four months and we would shape our talks around themes of the day which could be anything from, how to order food, slang words, verbs, music, or just randomly talk and laugh about anything really.

By the time I reached month four in Colombia, I was able to understand so much Spanish I could have conversations for well over an hour about different topics and not get tired.

Here is a video of the final lesson we had before my journey back to Europe. I bought a cake for the house.

 

Conclusion

I mean the title of this is how I learnt Spanish in 6 months and I can’t really say you need to do this, that and the third to learn a new language as it might not apply to everyone. But instead, share my journey of how I learnt and the things along the way which made me feel confident and comfortable speaking.

Here are a few important things to note when learning a new language;

1. You will make loads of mistakes. Don’t be put off but embrace them as that is how you’ll learn.

2. It will take time but the more effort you put in the better the results and the more progress you make.

3. Sometimes it will feel like you haven’t learned anything (happened more times than I can count) until you randomly remember how to say something you learnt a few days ago.

4. Have fun along the way as that is what learning is all about.