Adventure Capitalist

One of the reasons I chose to go to Argentina for a month (or two?) was to improve my Spanish. I had been studying a little on my own prior to leaving, courtesy of the Michel Thomas audio courses.

So what is the reality of learning on your own? Well, the Michel Thomas courses are excellent - I’ve learned more Spanish, and built an understanding of the structure of the language in a way that 4 years of studies in high school/college never taught me. I have nothing but good things to say about the courses.
But.. there is a caveat with learning this way, or any other way: you’ll never learn in the same way as if you immerse yourself in a language, country and culture. In real life, you don’t only get asked questions with words you already know that can be answered with words you already know. Nor do you get the benefit of thinking for five seconds before responding (or at least I don’t give myself that luxury). The only way to really learn is to throw yourself in at the deep end.

Real people don’t speak like special needs school teachers
For me, I’m really struggling with the “Porteno” (Buenos Aires dialect of Spanish) - the pace of speech is something that I found really hard. But I’m getting there: whereas during the first few days in Argentina I struggled with ordering a burger at McDonalds, after 1.5 weeks, I’m starting to be able to hold a basic conversation with taxi drivers (a taxi driver asked me the other day if I was from Spain). I’d call that great progress.
At the moment, my biggest problem is my limited vocabulary, I’ve got most of the structure of language down (at least present- and future tense), so given the right words, I can make myself understood though I might not get the grammar perfectly right.
My biggest problem remains the local dialect in Buenos Aires: whereas I understood about 75% of what people in Iguazu (northern Argentina) said, I understand maybe 25-30% of what people in Buenos Aires say, it’s that bad of a difference in terms of dialect and pacing of speech.

Learning with “Spanglish”
The quite often limited English knowledge of the locals is actually a big help for me learning: a lot of the time, I have ended up speaking to locals in bars and other venues in what can best be described as “Spanglish” - both parties mix English and Spanish to make themselves understood, giving me context around words I do not know and vice versa for the other person. Language mixing might be inelegant, but it is very, very effective in picking up parts of a new language quickly.

To give the full picture, my Spanish is still very basic, and very flawed, but I’ve learned a lot in a couple of weeks, perhaps most important of all a certain level of confidence in basic situations, though I’ll admit it’s mostly situations where I can prepare myself a little and reasonably predict most possible responses, or in more courteous social situations that don’t go too deeply into things other than standard superficial pleasantries.
But it is now clear to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that the best way to learn is to have a basic grasp of the language structure, then just throw yourself in at the deep end. I’m sure by this time next month my Spanish will be much better, and if I spent about 6 months here, I’m sure I’d be pretty close to fluency.