Conversational Spanish in 3 Months: Barcelona Report

At the start of the year I laid down my 2011 Year Plan.

In it I stated I was going to learn conversational Spanish, from scratch (save an entirely forgettable year in school) in three months, accumulating in a trip to Barcelona at the end of March.

I’ve already talked before about the methods and products I used to learn Spanish before I landed in Barcelona. Take a look at my progress report for all the details.

Barcelona was an experience, and something of a culture shock.

As of writing I’ve yet to have been outside of Europe (despite having been to nine countries within it). Barcelona has, by far, been the most diverse experience from my own culture I’ve met so far, which I’m aware is really not saying anything compared to other parts of the world I’ve yet to visit, Asia, South America and Africa, to name but a few.

Speaking Spanish to an actual Spanish person

On the flight over I had been having doubts about my ability to converse with the locals with my three months worth of Spanish. I was making my way through my one-hundred words and verb sheets, desperately trying to cram as much information into my brain as I could before the wheels touched the ground.

After navigating ourselves to central Barcelona, it was my time to shine. “Donde esta la Rambla?” (Where is the Rambla?) I asked a newspaper salesman that only moments beforehand I’d rudely ignored.

He understood me perfectly! I didn’t catch a single word of his response as I was so excited about speaking Spanish to an actual Spanish person for the first time, but we saw the general direction he was pointing in, said gracias, and went on our way.

Upon arrival at the hostel, I went in ahead. “It’s okay guys, I’ve got this one”, I recall boasting to my friends. ”Hola, tenemos una reservación para tres noches” (Hello, we have a reservation for three nights). ”Hola senor, lo que es tu nombre?” (Hello sir, what is your name?), said the receptionist.

I was taken aback. She was speaking Spanish to me! I know Spanish! But I don’t know Spanish that well… wow she spoke fast… I think she asked for my number. It’s a bit forward of her, but why not, maybe they’re like that around here…

“My number?” I asked in English. “No, sorry, your name please” she replied, also in English. We continued the registration in English. I tried to pitch in a couple more times with responses en espanol but they were weak. It was an awkward five minutes to say the least.

The next day I had a brief conversation with a bus driver taking us from Park Güell down to la Rambla. After working out the price of the ticket, I decided to give him the cash in change to remove the burden of all the five and two cent pieces I’d been carrying around for days.

Finally arriving at the corrent amount (he was at this point driving the bus, as I clinged on for my life beside him) I struggled to think of a way to say “It’s all there” as I handed him the coins. I opted for “Perfecta!”, unsure whether or not perfecta meant ‘perfect’ at all.

He looked at the coins. “¿Perfecta?”

“Si” I said, “lo siento…” (yes, I’m sorry).

Using Catalan to help you speak Castilian Spanish

The key thing I noticed when speaking Spanish in Catalonia was the difference in response I would get when purely coming out and speaking my beginner Spanish to somebody, compared to starting the conversation with a simple “Good morning/good afternoon/good evening” in Catalan (bon dia/bona tarda/bona nit) before continuing the conversation in Spanish.

Catalans are very proud of their independence from the Spanish. I noticed that most street signs in Barcelona are in Catalan, rather than Spanish. Where other translations were given, the ordering was always Catalan, Spanish, English.

You’re very unlikely to meet a Catalan local who can’t speak Castilian Spanish (or Spanish Spanish), but as a general rule Catalan is their preferred method of communication.

As Barcelona is a very touristy city, you need nothing more than basic English to get by, so there is really no need to worry about speaking Catalan over Spanish in the city. Locals will be more than happy to communicate with a tourist in anything other than English for once. Like the majority of non-English speaking countries, they’re grateful to you for making the effort to speak their language.

Cinco minutos

As many of you will recall, I wrote in my previous posts about learning Spanish that I would define ‘conversational fluency in Spanish’ by my ability to have a five minute conversation with a Spanish local.

This was achieved. Kind of.

On our second night in Barcelona we stumbled back to the hostel at 2am, tired and sunburnt, with little on our minds besides crawling up our ladders to our bunk beds. As we walked into the foyer, a guy we’d been talking to the night before called us over and introduced us to somebody he’d just met… somebody, I quickly found out, from Buenos Aires, Argentina!

I’ve got a huge amount of love for the Argentinians. I plan to travel around South America next year, and Buenos Aires has been at the top of my list of places to visit for a long time.

We got chatting, and I told him about my mission to speak Spanish in three months. We had a couple of short 2-3 sentence conversations in Spanish, but it was obvious I wanted to speak more about Buenos Aires, and he wanted to tell me, and the only way of either of us doing this well was through English.

The next day I knew he was my target. We chatted in Spanish briefly in the breakfast room, but soon went our seperate ways for the day.

Later that afternoon I caught up with him in the hang-out area trying to work while ignoring the utterly incredible Spanish version of Deal or No Deal taking place on the television to the left of him.

We spoke for ages about Buenos Aires, Barcelona, London, and all sorts of places in Spanish and in English. At no point did we go for five straight minutes speaking solely Spanish, but we certainly got at least that amount of Spanish conversation out of the whole time we were speaking. I’ll take that as a win.

Home is where…

Barcelona is the only foreign city I’ve ever been to that I have had a fairly good (albeit beginners) grasp of the language before arriving. This bought about a feeling of utter calm.

It took a few days to notice it. I won’t go as far as to say I felt at home in Barcelona, but despite the place being so far away from what I’ve experienced so far in my life, I didn’t feel at all phased by the differences, like I have done previously when visiting countries I don’t speak the language of.

Walking down the street I would pick up a word here and there, maybe even a short conversation if I was on good form. As English speakers, we know there are very few places in the world we can go to that we’ll be unable to communicate in; but knowing you can communicate with all the people around you in their language (well, kind of their language, in this case) is a different feeling altogether.

You feel like you’ve made an effort to get to know these people better, and your reward is the help and support they give you as you slowly but surely try to speak their language back to them.

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