Learn Spanish and Speak to Others Who Don’t Speak it Well (part I)

I realised a strange thing a while back; it is easier to speak a foreign language with someone else who is also speaking it as a second language.

Of course, you will want to learn Spanish or any other tongue with a native speaking teacher. This is by far the best way to learn the rules and the proper pronunciation quickly and efficiently. However, after this you will probably benefit from speaking to other newcomers to the language. Here are a couple of examples of how I came to my conclusion.

Speaking Spanish or Portuguese?

After beginning to learn Spanish I made a trip to Brazil and had to decide whether to try and learn a bit of Portuguese or just muddle by in Spanish, which I wasn’t very confident in yet. I went for the clever / lazy option of speaking nothing but Spanish while in the land of Guaraná and chicken coixinhas. As there are a lot of similarities between the two languages and a lot of contact between the different countries here most people seem to be able to understand those who speak the other tongue without too much problem. What amazed me was that I felt a lot more comfortable speaking Spanish with Brazilians than I had done with people who actually spoke it properly.