Learn Spanish, the language is learned quickly, right?

The headline alone makes me smile.

With exactly this thought, I went to the thing ran. How hard can that be ?! Spanish, I had that at school. Unfortunately, the whole thing was already 15 years ago and then I have never heard the language again, let alone spoken. In summary, I can say that I have reset to factory settings, arrived with my suitcases in Cancun.

I was always good at learning by heart, but I never liked books. That’s why I decided to load the application “Babbel” on my mobile phone and learn about it. So I could tell myself when, what and how much I want to learn or what I want to repeat. I really like this app and learned the words and grammar rules really fast.

Unfortunately I ignored that I am in Mexico.

The national language is fundamentally Spanish, right, but the Mexicans commonly have their own vocabulary and also use the grammar differently. The same problem will be experienced in Argentina or Colombia.

For example, we watched the series “Narcos“. Without Spanish subtitles, my friend would not have understood much, and I certainly did not.

The Babbel app teaches European Spanish, as it is spoken in Madrid for example. Also the European Spanish is spoken differently, there the tongue is very much used. That does not exist in Mexico, for example. For my friend as a Mexican and for me meanwhile, this accent sounds like the German, Bavarian or Austrian accent. You understand, but it’s harder to understand.

Without wanting to bore you with the details, there

are a lot of differences and it took me a lot of nerves to learn this language single-handedly. “Babbel” helped me to learn the basics in Spanish.

The colloquial language and the “typical Mexican words and terminology” I could only learn through Netflix and many conversations.

At this point, my advice to anyone who wants to learn Spanish, listening to Spanish radio, Spanish music and watching Spanish films (preferably with German subtitles). In the beginning it must have been quite a pain for my boyfriend to listen to me in Spanish, but that’s the only way to acquire a language. Talk, talk, talk and never be discouraged! Of course I have easy talking because I live in Mexico and am forced to speak Spanish. Alternatively, however, there are many Facebook groups, for example, with German or Spanish native speakers. There you can talk. Talk on Skype and learn to speak step by step.

Currently I understand Spanish very well and

speak fluently. However, I did not find it particularly easy to learn, and I do not mean to order bread from a baker in Spanish. I had that out after a day. The ear needs a whole time to get used to the language and to be able to speak you need a lot of words that you have to learn first.

Especially the first months in Mexico on birthdays or other events were just terrible for me. I felt like a speech therapist, stuttered and probably pronounced the words more than wrong. I probably do not need to talk about embarrassment. I am by nature a total chatterbox and I found it hard not to participate in conversations. This completely contradicts my nature. I wanted, but did not understand anything.

I am glad to be able to be myself again, even if today I still do some grammatical mistakes or speak Mexican slang with a German accent, I can take this with humor and laugh about myself.