Learning Spanish – Part 8 – First Encounters In Mexico
In this text I want to speak concerning what happened to me during my early tries at trying to communicate in Spanish with the native Spanish speaking peoples of Central America. When spending six weeks ploughing through a basic level Spanish text book and learning as abundant Spanish vocabulary as my memory would permit I believed I used to be ready to take on the Spanish language for real!!
I actually started my trip through the Americas within the U.S. I spent your time in San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego before heading south to the Mexican border on route to Tiajana. Although I didn’t truly converse with anybody in Spanish within the U.S I did learn a ton concerning the Spanish conquest of this region before the English took over!
You may be wondering what that has to try to to with learning Spanish! Well, the purpose is that learning Spanish shouldn’t simply be concerning learning how to speak in Spanish. One in every of the most effective ways to stay yourself enthused about your studies is to immerse yourself in all things Spanish. Learning regarding Spanish history for example and in my particular case concerning the Spanish conquest of the Americas may be a nice means of adding substance. It reasonably validates and gives purpose and added reason to why you are learning the Spanish language in the primary place.
This may all sound a touch deep but the truth is that cultural immersion really can facilitate your to understand certain things regarding the Spanish language that you might not be in a position to gain from a textbook alone! Plus, if your something like me you’ll merely love learning regarding Spanish history and the conquest of the Americas as a matter course.
Before I visited the U.S I didn’t realise just how abundant of the Americas that the Spanish were originally in control of. Their rule extended the whole Pacific coast from Southern Argentina right the means up to trendy day Alaska. I additionally didn’t realise that the names of some US cities are actually Spanish names! San Francisco (Saint Francis) Los Angeles (The Angles).
The any south that you go within the U.S the a lot of Spanish influence there is. In Florida and L.A, Spanish place names are common and a few road signs are even translated into Spanish.
Therefore, with a very little Pre-Columbian history beneath my belt and my self study crash course in Spanish I caught a bus south from L.A direct to the Mexican town of Tijuana just over the U.S / Mexican border. To start out with I didn’t very get much of a probability to test my Spanish out on anyone. The taxi drivers, the owner of the hostel I stayed at and therefore the bar staff the least bit the bars I visited all appeared to want to speak to me in English! This wasn’t that surprising however! Tijuana contains a name for being a bit of a celebration city for young North Americans trying for a good weekend!
I attempted to talk a very little Spanish to the locals but couldn’t string sentences together quick enough. I suppose most people could see I used to be struggling and decided to create it easy for the ‘poor gringo’ by chatting with me in English! It wasn’t until I decided to move south again any into Baja de California that I got my 1st real opportunities to speak.
I went to a local bus company to book a bus to a higher city south, known as Ensenada. This point I used to be on my very own; no-body spoke a word of English. I then attempted to elucidate to the stunning young Mexican lady that attended me that I wished to catch a bus to a higher city south. The only issue was I didn’t apprehend how to say it properly. I didn’t know the word for ‘catch’ or ‘get on’ and had forgotten even basic words like ‘to go’ and ‘ticket’. All I kept blurting out was ‘ummm…..bus…..ummm…bus….. Ensenada!’ I should have looked sort of a bumbling fool and I definitely felt like one!
Of course the stunning young Mexican lady understood that I wanted to travel to Ensenada by bus, even from my mumblings, however the subsequent challenge was determining the bus timetable and how a lot of it had been visiting price me. If this wasn’t bad enough I couldn’t perceive a word of what the Mexican lady was saying to me in Spanish! In the top the Mexican lady had to write down numbers down on a bit of paper (thank god numbers are the identical in each English and Spanish I thought!) After a amount of time, that seemed like forever I ultimately paid my pesos and reserved a seat on the next bus out, that was during a few hours!
Admittedly I had only simply arrived in the Spanish-speaking world and I hadn’t extremely done a lot of learning therefore I probably shouldn’t have expected much! Later I was told that the Mexican accent might be one of the toughest in Latin America to understand as well. But, the factor was, I used to be pretty annoyed and shocked at simply how useless I was! So from that day onwards I promised myself that I would find a little time every day during the remainder of my travels, (not difficult as a backpacker), to improve my Spanish skills. I knew I had an extended means to travel but I was determined to do it!
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