From 0% to Fluent: How I Learned Spanish in 1 Year

I’ve always been fascinated by languages. In my youth I declared that I wanted to speak at least 10 of them. Unfortunately after several years studying French in school and barely being able to order ice cream in Paris, I accepted that languages do not come particularly easily to me. So I had to change my approach 🙂 .

This included trying to brute force my way into another language: Italian. I took daily Italian classes in college for 2 years, in order to qualify for an immersive program allowing me to attend an Italian university for a semester, while living with Italian roommates in a city where no one speaks English.

Unfortunately, even with all of that – by the end of my 6 months living in Italy, I was barely able to call a cab company in Italian to arrange a ride to the airport. The oral exam I had to complete in order to pass my university classes was painful. I resigned myself to not being able to learn another language, but I didn’t abandon all hope.

I told myself that maybe classroom learning, while taking a slew of other classes and living a busy life, might not be conducive to me learning a language. I hoped that being able to fully focus on it while living in countries that speak that language for longer amounts of time, might allow me to finally successfully learn a language – and I was right 🙂 . Retirement to the rescue once again!

So I want to go through what I did, how I progressed, and what I’ve learned on this journey to finally becoming multilingual in the last year. Let’s get into it!

My Goal & Approach

During this language learning journey, I also for the first time learned what “fluency” means. I previously thought it was like an on/off switch, but people who actually study languages for their careers, taught me that it’s actually more of a spectrum that looks like this:

These levels are how my Spanish school in México separated out classes, so I of course started at A1. Fluency is generally considered to be B1 or B2. The former of which requires at least 450 hours of study and the latter requiring more like 650 hours. Here’s an example of how speech evolves at each level:

Going into this challenge, my unscientific goal was to be “fluent” in the sense that I can hold a conversation, understand others in real life situations, and get around only speaking Spanish. That seems to align with a B1 level of fluency. So I had my goal: at least 450 hours of study and being able to get around when I lived in Argentina in November speaking, reading and listening to Spanish.

I was planning to do this by immersing myself in the language instead of following the classroom and book-based approaches I previously did with French and Italian. So the below outlines what I did each month of the year, how I progressed, and if I reached my goal (which I think you already know based on the title 😉 )!

My Tasks & Progress

Month 1-3 (January-March)

Hours: 15/month

Tasks: I’m going to break each month’s tasks into 3 sections:

• +Added: These are new tasks I haven’t done in previous months, but added this month and will continue
• -Subtracted: These are things that changed or that I stopped doing
• Ongoing: These are all the tasks I added in previous months and continue to do monthly

So for the first 3 months of the year, this is what I did:

+Daily Duolingo Lessons

Progress:

In these first few months, I was using Duolingo’s regular lesson features, which taught me basic vocabulary and simple grammar. When I attempted to watch a show or movie in Spanish, I understood 0% of what I was listening to – it sounded like music to me.

Month 4 (April)

Hours: 128

Tasks:

NEW

+Lived in México: We moved to Mérida, México for 9 weeks to jumpstart Spanish learning! Outside the house, we were always speaking Spanish. One of the reasons we chose to live in Mérida was because it’s not a tourist town, so very few people actually speak English. If we went to the market or the doctor or the pharmacy – we were speaking Spanish the whole time and we learned a wild amount. Immersion for the win!

+Intensive Spanish Class 4 Hours/Day, 5 Days a Week: We signed up for in person classes at La Calle Spanish School that were all in Spanish from Day 1. We were never given a book or really taught rules. They just asked us to try and speak, like a child would learn. We also had homework and in addition to that, we kept track of all the new words and phrases we were learning. It took at least an hour in addition to class time to do all that.

+16 hours of movies (no subtitles): At the recommendation of the amazing book Fluent Forever, I started watching 2 movies a week in Spanish without subtitles

+Español Spreadsheet: To keep track of everything I was learning inside and outside of class, I made a spreadsheet that I use to this day that lists all the new words, verbs and phrases I learned doing all of the above. Here’s what it looks like:

+Weekly Call in Spanish: I’ve started speaking with my Argentinian ex-roommate in Spanish for the weekly calls we’d already been doing for years. This had the added benefit of getting me more used to the Argentinian accent before I lived there in November.

+Texting Airbnb Host in Spanish: Our Airbnb host in México was very kind and helpful and said he’d only text with us in Spanish to help us learn, which led to some interesting interactions. I now know how to talk about an air conditioner and toilet bowl at length in Spanish 🙂 .

Ongoing

• Daily Duolingo Lessons

Progress:

Despite knowing basically no Spanish before I arrived, and our Spanish classes being completely in Spanish, I got the gist of what was going on in class – though that might have had more to do with having great teachers than my ability 🙂 .

Today is my first day of Spanish class in Mexico🇲🇽. I'm going to be learning with a total class size of 2-6 people for 4 hours/day every weekday for a month and I'm terrified 🤣. I speak basically no Spanish😬. Let's do this🙌🏾! pic.twitter.com/YUzKZWIG2Y

— A Purple Life (@APurpleLifeBlog) April 4, 2022

After only a day of class, I was able to understand enough Spanish to go to the market, pharmacy and (with the help of Google Translate) the doctor. Such progress in so little time!

I was also able to understand 1 word every few sentences in movies. I’ll take it as progress!!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by A Purple Life l Early Retiree (@apurplelife)

Month 5 (May)

Hours: 48

Tasks:

New

+Vocabulary Cards: I put vocab cards all over the house with a Spanish word and a drawing of what it means

+My Mom and I started only texting in Spanish: My Mom and I text each other basically every hour so switching those texts to Spanish helped us keep practicing the language constantly

+Weekly Spanish speaking call with Mom: My Mom and I already have a weekly call when we’re apart, but now that call was in Spanish! We also at times watch a show together and now that started being in Spanish as well.

+Started watching Spanish speaking FilmTubers

+Started following Spanish language FIRE accounts

Subtracted

-No More Spanish Class: Our Spanish classes ended after 1 month and I’m glad we didn’t decide to do them for the full 2+ months that we were in México because my brain felt like it was going to explode 🙂 . Also studying and going to school all the time obviously got in the way of exploring and just slow traveling around México, so it was nice to slow down a little (while still being surrounded by Spanish) to see the sights.

Ongoing

• Daily Duolingo Lessons
• Lived in México
• 16 hours of movies (no subtitles)
• Español Spreadsheet
• Weekly Call in Spanish (Argentina)
• Texting Airbnb Host in Spanish

Progress:

Being forced to speak Spanish in class and in life made me more competent in Spanish after 9 weeks, than I was after 2 years of daily Italian classes (which were in Italian) or 5 years of French in school (in English). I’m in awe. Immersion really does work 🙂 .

My Mom checked the frequency list of most frequent words in Spanish I mentioned after reading Fluent Forever, and realized that we learned about 90% of the most frequent Spanish words during our first month of Spanish class in México. DAMN that’s amazing!

During the last month when I was watching movies in Spanish, I understood maybe one word every 10 minutes. The rest sounded like music  – I could hear the tones, but that’s it. Then about 2 weeks later, I could pick out individual words instead of just tones even though I didn’t know what all the words meant or couldn’t comprehend their meaning fast enough (I actually also have this problem in English at times 🙂 ).

Then 2 weeks after that, I could understand most of what was going on and started saying things in conversations that I had heard in movies that weren’t direct English translations. I would wonder where I learned a phrase, look it up afterwards to see if it was accurate, (it was) and realize it came from a movie! I’ve even gotten to the point where I laugh at the jokes in movies in Spanish. It’s wild 🙂 . I never got to this point with French or Italian.

This month I also watched all of Ted Lasso in Spanish, and I found myself basically watching the episode a second time in English because I wanted to hear the nuance of the emotional scenes. It already takes me about 30 minutes longer than the length of a movie to watch it in Spanish, because I’m pausing to record new words or look something up. My Ted Lasso watch obviously took more than double the time it should.

So at that point I decided to just stick to silly movies like The Other Guys and Hobbs & Shaw, but a few weeks later when my Spanish got better, I switched back to less ridiculous things because I understood the emotional parts enough to not want to rewatch a scene in English. So lesson learned in case I want to learn another language: Start with only silly stuff and then move to more emotional things once my comprehension is higher.

Friend: So how does pronunciation work in Spanish🇲🇽?
Me: L is L, but double L is Y. J is H and H doesn't exist.
Friend: Riiiiight😕
Me: 🤷🏾‍♀️ pic.twitter.com/IvHJsvbvrW

— A Purple Life (@APurpleLifeBlog) May 25, 2022

Month 6 (June)

Hours: 28

Tasks:

New

+Daily Duolingo Stories: I realized that the way lessons are in Duolingo was not helping me advance my Spanish, so I went looking for a better solution for me and found Duolingo Stories! It’s basically reading and listening comprehension where you’re asked questions about what’s going on and learn from context instead of English translations and repetition drills like the regular lessons. I found it a much more helpful way for me to learn.

+Spanish Podcasts: I started listening to a Spanish finance podcast called De Peso A Peso Podcast! Now I’m learning finance nerdery in another language 😉 .

+Self-Taught 3 New Tenses: I taught myself the Past Imperfect, Simple Future and Conditional tenses with a spreadsheet and go into detail on how in the Progress section below

Subtracted

-Lived in México & Texting Airbnb Host in Spanish: Sadly it was time to head back to the US before I was tempted to stay forever 🙂

-Daily Duolingo Lessons

Ongoing

• 16 hours of movies (no subtitles)
• Español Spreadsheet
• Weekly Call in Spanish (Argentina)
• Texting Mom in Spanish
• Weekly Spanish Call with Mom
• Watch Spanish FilmTubers & FIRE accounts
• Vocabulary Cards

Progress:

To see how I have improved in the last month, I looked through the list of words we learned in class that I keep in my Español Spreadsheet. I had previously organized them based on if I knew them or not in class and during this pass, I knew most of the words I had previously placed in the “do not know” column! Progress!!

As I mentioned, this month I also taught myself the Past Imperfect, Simple Future and Conditional tenses and used them all in conversation. I did this with (of course) another spreadsheet! Doing so helped me to see the patterns between them all and learn them more easily while also visualizing irregularities in my mind’s eye. Only a few months ago, all of these tenses felt insurmountable so I am VERY proud of myself for learning these at my own pace, which was still faster than I expected.

I spent one week in Phoenix, AZ this month and while I was there, visited a friend’s family, who are from Nicaragua, and I actually understood when they spoke rapid fire Spanish and I spoke back!!! I was literally shocked that I could do this, but this was another example that showed me all this work is paying off.

I’ve also started accidentally getting Spanish practice while out and about by: Eavesdropping (aka escuchar escondidas)! I’ve never been able to accidentally listen in to other conversations in another language, but I found myself accidentally being able to do so this month.

Also, I was shocked that I understood about as much Spanish airport announcements as I do in English (which is about 75% 🙂 ) and found myself in line for the plane before most people at my boarding gate, only to realize that’s because I got up during the Spanish announcement instead of English like most of the people going to the US. Wild!

I’ve also started to understand what’s being said when books I’m reading in English have a character speaking Spanish. It used to look as incomprehensible to me as Croatian (take me back to Dubrovnik please 🙂 ). I also now understand when a character is speaking Spanish in shows like Westworld (without reading the subtitles) and Barry (which often didn’t include subtitles).

Spanish Language Learning Update🇲🇽: I'm watching the #WestworldSeason4 premiere and I understand the Spanish speaking characters without the subtitles😍📺🥰!!! pic.twitter.com/23R23vYNfu

— A Purple Life (@APurpleLifeBlog) June 27, 2022

Month 7 (July)

Hours: 28

Tasks:

Ongoing

• Daily Duolingo Stories
• 16 hours of movies (no subtitles)
• Español Spreadsheet
• Weekly Call in Spanish (Argentina)
• Texting Mom in Spanish
• Weekly Spanish Call with Mom
• Watch Spanish FilmTubers & FIRE accounts
• Vocabulary Cards

Progress:

I met up with a finance friend in Seattle that I met years ago via Insta. She asked where’d I’d been recently. I said México and she started speaking Spanish to me! We kept it up for a whole conversation and I understood 95% of it. Big improvement!! Also when on my latest flight, I read the in-flight video’s Spanish subtitles and understood most of it!

I’ve also started to notice that I understand random Spanish while living my life, such as Spanish songs that were playing when I went to Zumba. I was surprised by this because I don’t usually listen to lyrics even with English songs, and I didn’t think my brain would have the capacity to understand Spanish words while I was sweating my face off at Zumba. My accidental eavesdropping on Spanish conversations has also continued 😉 .

I used to mostly only watch things I had seen before in Spanish, but I’ve started watching things I’ve never seen before (such as new Snapped episodes), and now understand what’s happening!!! This is a big change from previous months where I felt mostly lost.

Month 8 (August)

Hours: 40

Tasks:

New

+I Changed My Phone to Español

+Intensive Online Private Classes (1 week): The sensational Spanish school we went to in Mérida provides online classes! They’re super easy to set up and done via Skype. We usually email the school and they tell us a few days before our class is set to start what time it will be (based on the availability we already provided them). Then we get on a videocall and get to work with our favorite teachers one-on-one! It’s a wonderful way to continue our learning even though we’re no longer in México.

Ongoing

• Daily Duolingo Stories
• 16 hours of movies (no subtitles)
• Español Spreadsheet
• Weekly Call in Spanish (Argentina)
• Texting Mom in Spanish
• Weekly Spanish Call with Mom
• Watch Spanish FilmTubers & FIRE accounts
• Vocabulary Cards

I'm about to start daily online classes with my Spanish teacher from México🇲🇽…and I'm nervous😬. Let's hope I've improved! pic.twitter.com/TAiQlbbGJs

— A Purple Life (@APurpleLifeBlog) August 22, 2022

Progress:

Since the beginning of this month, I successfully ordered food delivery, got a library book, and did everything else a phone is used for, in Spanish on my phone without any mistakes! However, it started taking me longer to do anything (like texting my Mom in Spanish or posting something to the ‘gram), but I thought it was worth it to immerse myself in the language.

I also heard Spanish radio while playing Jurassic World Evolution and understood it! (The game and movie take place in Costa Rica). I also watched a movie that took place in México and understood what people were saying!

Month 9 (September)

Hours: 28

Tasks:

Ongoing

• Phone in Español
• Daily Duolingo Stories
• 16 hours of movies (no subtitles)
• Español Spreadsheet
• Weekly Call in Spanish (Argentina)
• Texting Mom in Spanish
• Weekly Spanish Call with Mom
• Watch Spanish FilmTubers & FIRE accounts

Progress:

I had a few interesting revelations while speaking Spanish this month. The first was that I kept saying words thinking I was making them up, looking them up and realizing they are correct Spanish words. I suspect my brain is starting to see patterns in words and just try out what I think would be correct – similar to how a child learning their first language would 🙂 .

The other thing that changed this month was how it felt to string together sentences. It used to be like grasping at air – I didn’t know where to go next and felt like I was struggling to grasp anything. This month, saying sentences felt more like putting puzzle pieces together – there are many pieces to choose from and I just have to pick up the right one. Basically, it feels a lot better speaking this month than it has in the past 🙂 . More progress!

I also went to a burrito place and they were playing music in Spanish and I understood as much of it as I would an English song 🙂 . During that month, I also re-watched Season 1-3 of What We Do In The Shadows (Lo Que Hacemos En Las Sombras 😉 ) and then watched Season 4 for the first time and there was a fair bit of Spanish in there and I understood it all!! People in the room even asked me to translate and I could. Wild 🙂 .

Overall, while watching shows completely in Spanish without subtitles this month, I understood most of what was said and if I didn’t, I can now tell when each word ends (instead of it sounding like continuous music). This new skill allowed me to look up the new words I was hearing – I could look them up even if I had never heard them before 🙂 .

Month 10 (October)

Hours: 38

Tasks:

New

+Intensive Online Private Classes (1 week)

Ongoing

• Phone in Español
• Daily Duolingo Stories
• 16 hours of movies (no subtitles)
• Español Spreadsheet
• Weekly Call in Spanish (Argentina)
• Texting Mom in Spanish
• Weekly Spanish Call with Mom
• Watch Spanish FilmTubers & FIRE accounts

Progress:

Having more online Spanish courses made me realize how much I’ve improved in 10 months. I went from having no idea what the teacher was saying, but getting the gist, to knowing everything she’s talking about. I was curious if I had actually improved much since the last time I had class and was happy to discover that I had!

When we first booked this Spanish school in México, they required that we fill out an Exam and…I could barely fill out my name let alone answer a question. However, I re-visted the exam this month and I UNDERSTOOD ALL OF IT. WTFFFFF?!?!?! I had no idea I had come that far, but if I filled out that exam these days, it would be a masterpiece. I guess my self-created lesson plan is working even outside of online classes!

This month I also asked around on Twitter for a new podcast and then realized: I can just Google that…IN SPANISH! So I did and found a new podcast to follow – and realized I can just access ‘Spanish Google’ whenever necessary. LIFE CHANGED!!

This month I went to a restaurant I had visited a year ago, and the menu is in Spanish. Last year I had no idea what it said and this year, I read it and ordered like a pro. It’s little things that like that helped me realize I really was making progress 🙂 .

I also popped into a market in New Jersey and quickly realized that it was a Spanish speaking market (all the labels were in Spanish) so I rolled up, whipped out my Spanish to check out and even responded well to a customer who accidentally bumped me (in Spanish!) I was so proud 🙂 .

In addition, I had a lot of random encounters this month that made me realize my Spanish audio comprehension was improving. Some of which makes no sense to me 🙂 . For example, learning Spanish seemed to have re-activated the part of my brain that previously studied French and Italian for years (and currently can’t speak a lick of it 🙂 ). I understood someone speaking Italian at the airport even though I’ve lost all my skills with that language. I could hear when each word ended and the words were close enough to Spanish that I understood. I haven’t understood Italian like that since college when I was studying it daily – and maybe not even then 🙂 . Wowza!

I also understood a baker in NYC that was speaking French to me and my friend. She was responding 🙂 – and I kept accidentally responding “Sí” instead of “Oui.” So I don’t know if Spanish has unlocked some previous language knowledge or if it’s possible that learning to listen to Spanish words, has made me more easily recognize similar words from these Romance Languages.

Other fun listening moments included understanding as much of the Spanish airport announcements as I did English once again – that shit is hard to hear 😉 . I also kept overhearing people in the American Airlines Lounge at JFK speaking Spanish. Some were speaking so fast I couldn’t parse the words, but I got the gist.

Before, I could recognize when words ended, but at times, someone was speaking so fast that I couldn’t always internalize what’s being said before the speaker moved on. However now, I’m starting to understand all the words people in movies are saying at the time they’re saying them! This includes understanding the meaning of words I’ve never heard before from context –  just like how I understand new words in English while listening or reading 🙂 .

Month 11 (November)

Hours: 48

Tasks:

New

+I Moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina: As a result, I paused the weekly calls with my Argentinian friend because I was there with her in person! I also didn’t watch 16 hours a month of movies since we often watched regular TV all in Spanish. I did this because I didn’t want to get headaches from working on a language too much like I did in México when I was bone tired all the time. Since I was living, listening and speaking in the language all the time, I gave myself less to do on that front and it worked out. No headaches this time!

Ongoing

• Phone in Español
• Daily Duolingo Stories
• Español Spreadsheet
• Texting Mom in Spanish
• Weekly Spanish Call with Mom
• Watch Spanish FilmTubers & FIRE accounts

Progress:

FINALLY! After 10 months of hardcore effort, I arrived at the ultimate test: Can I live in Argentina where most people (understandably) only speak Spanish? Well, it turns out that it was a good thing that I took on this challenge because 99% of the time I was alone in Buenos Aires and basically no one speaks English 🙂 .

I think I would have been screwed if I had come to live there and wanted to leave my house without knowing some Spanish so thanks past me – great job!

I've been studying Spanish intensely for 10 months and now it's the ultimate test: Living in Argentina🇦🇷. Did it work? Well just today I spoke to people to:
🚆Fill a subway card
💊Get meds
🛍️Check out at a grocery store
⏰Tell a local the time
SUCCESS! Soy hispanohablante🙌🏾!!! pic.twitter.com/8hNktsWFmp

— A Purple Life (@APurpleLifeBlog) October 24, 2022

So since my life was filled with several daily interactions like the above, I decided to change up my Spanish goals for this month so my head didn’t explode 🙂 . Instead of watching 2 movies a week in Spanish without subtitles, I’ve been watching at least 1 hour a day of the local news channels and gameshows to get more accustomed to how fast people speak in regular life and also to learn about local issues in Argentina.

Outside of the television, I’m reading and speaking Spanish at all times – the real heavy lifting 🙂 . It is fascinating to compare how voice actors speak compared to regular people – I’ve never really noticed it in English, but obviously speaking clearly is part of a voice actor’s job so they enunciate way more than people in every day life. This is another reason I thought switching from movies to a “real world” oral comprehension test might be helpful. And it has been!

Before I got to Argentina, I was so excited that I could finally understand basically all of what was being said in the movies I watched, but then watching live TV with real people with an Argentinian accent turned out to be the next level of hard mode. It felt a bit like starting over since I found it difficult to understand, but I started to think about it just like that – another level on top of what I had already learned. And by the end of the month, I was a lot better at understanding what was being said on a gameshow. I went from confusion to yelling at the TV the answers to the Argentinian Jeopardy 🙂 . Progress!

In addition to that, I wanted to finish Duolingo Spanish when this happened:

Duolingo: You have 1 test left to complete Duolingo Spanish!
[1 week later]
Duolingo: We've completed changed how lessons work. You now have 138 lessons left to complete Duolingo Spanish!
Me: 👿 pic.twitter.com/MGgk5UwTMd

— A Purple Life (@APurpleLifeBlog) November 11, 2022

That’s right. I went from being 1 test away from finishing their Spanish program, to having 138 lessons to go. I went from 90% done to 34%…seriously HOW?! And why would the program change in that way?? So frustrating. Anyway, I learned that I could go to lesson 211 and see if I tested out of those 138 lessons. I did so, which was hard and then I got 50 points total for the effort…SERIOUSLY?!

After that I discovered that I can’t test out of anything else. I have to do 50 lessons for only 10 points each to reach the end of Duolingo Spanish. So I started slogging through it. I now do 1 Duolingo Story and 1 Lesson each day and should reach the end of both by the end of the year. I also continued only texting my Mom in Spanish and speaking to her over video chat for about an hour a week in Spanish.

Back in the real world, I’ve noticed that even though I prepared for the unique Argentinian accent (that I go into detail about in my Buenos Aires Slow Travel Review) by talking to my Argentinian friend and listening to an Argentinian podcast, my brain was not ready for it in the wild 🙂 . I talked in my post about visiting a dentist in Argentina about the trouble I had giving medical information to the receptionist and understanding his accent.

It also seemed to take me a second to acclimate to how new people speak. For example, a few days after I arrived, a cleaning person came to clean my friend’s house. My friend was at work and I let the cleaning person in. I had a hard time understanding her that day, but 2 weeks later I understood everything she said and we had actual conversations over the hours she cleaned. Every week when she came back, it just got better. It’s like my mind needed a bit to get used to a new voice and also obviously the additional weeks of living in a foreign country most likely improved my audio comprehension in general.

In addition to all that, two cool things happened this month around language. One was that I read 2 books that had Spanish characters that spoke Spanish without many translations, and I understood all of it!!! The other thing was that someone on Insta tagged me in a Story that was written in Portuguese talking about how I inspire them and I actually understood what they were saying because it’s similar to Spanish. When I started my Spanish journey Portuguese literally looked as incomprehensible to me as Mandarin, so I’m counting that as a win!

Month 12 (December)

Hours: 28

Tasks:

Ongoing

• 16 hours of movies in Spanish (no subtitles)
• Phone in Español
• Daily Duolingo Stories
• Español Spreadsheet
• Texting Mom in Spanish
• Weekly Spanish Call with Mom
• Watch Spanish FilmTubers & FIRE accounts

Progress:

And so we’ve come to the end of my 1 year journey 🙂 . I kept going with my overall goals and despite the new obstacles put in my way: I FINISHED DUOLINGO SPANISH!!!

Well, I finished Duolingo Spanish and it was anticlimactic…now what🤣? pic.twitter.com/u9rppezs07

— A Purple Life (@APurpleLifeBlog) December 6, 2022

It was a sadly anticlimactic end to a year-long pursuit on their website, but I get it – if they give me satisfaction, I’ll leave 🙂 . Still, it was kinda shitty for an app that dances and claps for me when I do something tiny, to do basically nothing when I finally reach a huge milestone – especially one they moved the goal posts for many times. Oh well 🙂 . It’s a good thing I don’t look (much 😉 ) outside myself for validation.

Outside of that, I kept chugging to finish the year strong with all of my ongoing Spanish goals and realized that Spanish has wonderfully integrated into my daily life. I no longer notice that my phone is in Spanish and laughed when as a result, I got all of my rental emails from Airbnb in Spanish. Instead of it being a challenge, it just made me smile 🙂 . I’m excited to see what my 2023 Spanish learning brings.

Lessons Learned

I’ve had a lot of revelations during this Spanish speaking journey. Below is what I realized this year in no particular order.

Set Realistic Expectations

For an unknown reason, I expected to understand people 100% of the time in another language, despite the environment, slurring, background noise etc. when that’s LITERALLY not even something I can do in my native language of English 🙂 . So if I was talking to Purple 1 year ago I would say, “Set realistic expectations”.

For example, in English, if I’m approached by someone without warning, I often don’t hear what they’re saying the first time because I wasn’t paying attention and ask them to repeat that (“Sorry?”). But when I started learning Spanish, I mentally beat myself up if I didn’t understand anything anyone ever said in Spanish despite the circumstances. Dumb 🙂 .

Don’t Be Afraid To Ask For A Repeat

In a similar vein, a flight attendant for example spoke to me spontaneously in English recently and I asked them to repeat themselves, and they did. I wasn’t paying attention the first time, just like I wouldn’t have been in Spanish and that’s totally fine!

Another example is talking to someone in a loud bar – if I can’t understand what someone is saying in that scenario in English, why would I expect to be able to effortlessly do so in Spanish?!? Well, I did because I’m ridiculous 🙂 . So learn from my mistakes and DEFINITELY don’t expect yourself to miraculously understand a second language in a situation where you often don’t understand your first one 🙂 .

In high school and college, I used to berate myself if I didn’t understand what someone said to me in French or Italian while walking along the street for example, but I realized during this year’s travels, that I often don’t understand people talking to me in English if I’m not ready for the interaction.

No big deal, but for some reason, I didn’t think this was acceptable in second languages (WHY?!?!) I felt bad asking someone to repeat themselves when I speak Spanish, but now I don’t. I do this all the fucking time in English – why should I have other standards for a new language I’m learning? Ugh – I’m so silly sometimes 🙂 . Anyway, /rant over.

It’s OK To Rely On Gestures

So I had a quick interaction at the mercado in México when I was first learning Spanish, and mostly relied on hand gestures and context clues to figure out what was going on because my brain only realized what someone was saying after I had walked away.

Well, I realized about half way through 2022 that I do the SAME EXACT THING in English. I usually either don’t properly hear or don’t internalize what people are saying in these really fast interactions and I fall back on canned responses. Since I do the same thing in English, I shouldn’t feel self-conscious about it happening in other languages. Reading these revelations back, I think the main lesson here is that I need to chill the fuck out and put my perfectionist tendencies away 🙂 .

Schedule Additional Time

I found something interesting when I started watching films in Spanish: because I would pause to look up words every once in a while, it would usually take me about 30 minutes more than the run time to actually finish the film. So if you’re planning to do the same as part of your lessons, plan to schedule additional time.

In addition to the homework I had after a 4 hour Spanish class (tarea 😉 ), I always wrote down the new words I learned that day and liked to review them quickly before the class the next day. As a result, after a 4 hour group class, it would usually take me at least an hour to do my homework, recap, and prepare for the next day. However, when I did 2 hour private lessons, it would take 1-2 hours. What I found interesting was that homework and preparing for classes took more time than the actual class.

Listen To People Learning English From Spanish

Listening to a native Spanish speaker who is learning English, reveals how they say things in Spanish through their ‘mistakes.’ Similar to the mistakes I make in English. For example, a woman in Argentina who was learning English told me “It’s a pleasure to know you” because that’s the phrase in Spanish (un placer de conocerte) compared to the English phrase “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” Paying attention to these things helped me understand and use the correct phrases in Spanish.

Focus On What You Want To Learn

In high school I learned by reading French language rules in a book during class, and then applying them to written assignments. The classes were in English and the only time I spoke French was for a 1 minute oral exam twice a year or so. As a result, when I visited Paris, I couldn’t speak French at all 🙂 .

Give me a sign to read or a few minutes to respond to an email, and I can maybe do it, but speaking French – forget it 🙂 . That was because it wasn’t what we focused on. It wasn’t what I learned. So going into my Spanish learning, I knew what I wanted: to have a conversation. The thing I find difficult to do even in English 🙂 .

So all of my monthly Spanish tasks I set for myself were to reach that end goal. I wanted to be able to easily form Spanish words so I could speak with multiple people a week in Spanish. I wanted to be able to understand what other people were saying, so I focused on watching Spanish films without subtitles to build my audio comprehension.

I didn’t emphasize spelling or reading comprehension as much because that wasn’t my goal. And in the end, I seemed to have picked up that skill anyway through writing texts in Spanish and doing Duolingo Stories, but identifying what specifically I wanted to learn and focusing on what I wanted to learn really helped me get there.

Learn Like A Child

As I mentioned on Insta, one of the things I loved most about my Spanish school in México and something that separated it from any language class I’ve ever had before, is that we were never taught the rules. When taking a language in a US school, we were handed a book, told to read it, memorize language rules and then apply them in class or in homework.

However, doing so never allowed me to be able to speak the language. I could write it if given enough time, but that was not my goal (see above on focusing on what you want to learn 😉 ). However, learning through mistakes by never being told the rules, allows us to try just like a child would, to be corrected and grow from there.

This approach didn’t help my anxiety since I didn’t have the right answer, and had to answer anyway, but I think it was KEY to me FINALLY successfully learning a second language. Instead, I would try just saying things and sometimes it would be grammatically correct and sometimes it wouldn’t, but either way I would learn from it 🙂 .

An example of how this approach worked well for me was when I mentioned earlier that I realized I was using words and phrases in conversation that I thought that I had never been taught, only to discover that I heard them or that I was inferring a rule based on others I had seen, and almost always I was RIGHT! Languages have patterns and I tapped into them by learning like a child.

Mistakes Are Inevitable.

One of the reasons I was bad at learning Italian and French is that I was SO scared of making mistakes. I would formulate a sentence in my head before saying it, which isn’t conducive to a regular conversation. I realized that I OFTEN make mistakes when speaking in English that I either correct or realize way after the fact, and this is the only language I’ve been fluent in during my adult life. It’s totally fine and normal to make mistakes! And apparently I already do it all the time 🙂

People who are completely fluent in English as a second language make mistakes, but we move on just like with a native English speaker. It’s not a big deal, the message gets across. My friend from Ukraine has been in the US for 25 years speaking English and recently said “rumble” when she meant “rubble” – NBD! Hearing these things just further hit home that everyone (including myself) makes language mistakes all the time in every language, it’s not the end of the world.

Don’t Think. Don’t Translate. Just Speak.

This was really hard for me to do, but having multiple weekly calls where I can only speak Spanish helped a lot. In English, I don’t usually formulate my sentences – I just go out there guns blazing and I learned that I have to do the same in Spanish. I don’t prepare what I’m going to say. I react and sometimes realize later that my grammar or something else wasn’t perfect, but I communicated and that’s the whole point of this. I got across what I wanted to say and the other person understood me and responded. And that’s all that matters.

Take Breaks

I wish I had known this going into my intensive courses in México, but instead I learned it the hard way 🙂 . I knew that I would be prone to headaches since I got them daily when I went to an Italian university, but I wasn’t ready for the other side effects of learning so much in such a short amount of time because I never had before.

Outside of going to class, doing my homework, preparing for class and navigating México in Spanish, I was WIPED. So wiped that I didn’t even have the mental capacity to read – one of my favorite pasttimes 🙂 . Instead, I only had the brain space to watch FilmTube, which was still informative, but I would also find myself re-watching videos I had seen before because they were comforting. My brain was SHOT, so prepare for that if you’re doing intensive courses. At times, all your brain will want to do outside of that is recover and that’s completely alright.

No Subtitles

I watched all of 45+ movies I mentioned (and listed in this post) without subtitles, which was a suggestion from Fluent Forever and one that I think has been super important for two reasons. One is that when I have subtitles on, I read them. I’m not solely listening to the people speaking, which is what I wanted to learn how to do most (AKA have a conversation 🙂 ).

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by A Purple Life l Early Retiree (@apurplelife)

Use Visual Vocab Cards

Another thing I did was create my own card system based on the Spaced Repetition idea I learned about in Fluent Forever. That book suggests using the digital app and website Anki, which is free to use. I started making cards in the app and found that it didn’t work the way I wanted to use it. In particular, I didn’t want to use any English words and wanted to draw the meaning of a word and the app isn’t set up in a way to do that easily even with the app on my phone, which has its own stylus.

So instead, I created my own card system instead of just creating a physical Anki style card box. And I started by putting the cards around the house in places they make sense, such as kitchen words and verbs being in the kitchen. I also didn’t just put one word on each card. On each card I created a list of words that were associated with each other. As an example, here’s one of the cards that was in my bedroom:

Putting multiple things on one card has helped me create what my partner calls an association web of words, verbs and their opposites so all those things are hypothetically stored in the same place in my brain.

A Color-Coded Spreadsheet

I’ve been bringing my finance nerdery to my Spanish learning with beautiful spreadsheets 🙂 . I’m more of a visual learner, so to help me visualize the many irregularities of frequently used verbs in the past simple tense for example, I color coded all of them in the below chart so I associate them in my mind and can easily see in my mind’s eye what their irregularities are.

I’ve done something similar with pronouns and other things that have small differences that are grouped together. I mentioned my spreadsheet to two finance friends and sent it to them at their request. One of them asked if I’m going to sell it and I laughed 🙂 .

However, it was great to hear that something like this would be helpful for other people. I thought this was just how my brain worked, but it appears I am not alone in that 🙂 . I also find it helpful to have all my new nouns, verbs and phrases organized in an easy to search spreadsheet as well like I mentioned above.

Switching A Phone To Spanish

Changing the language of my phone from English to Spanish was an interesting challenge. Originally when I did it, I thought it wouldn’t be a big deal – and I was wrong 🙂 . From knowing what an alert means to deciphering which button to push on Instagram – changing a language on a phone requires learning a lot of specific vocabulary very quickly or making mistakes 🙂 .

So I found everything on my phone taking longer than usual because I was constantly learning new vocabulary words and figuring things out, but after a while I knew all the vocabulary and it became second nature. After several months, I found that I didn’t even realize my phone was in Spanish because it was as easy to use as in English.

However, I mentioned in a monthly recap post, that I discovered one situation where I needed to change my phone back to English before leaving the house: Group road trips 🙂 . Being in a stressful situation where I’m driving and someone else is navigating with my phone, is definitely not helped when the person doesn’t speak Spanish and my phone is telling them what to do verbally and visually in Spanish 🙂 .

So now before I leave the house in that kind of situation, I change my phone back to English. I learned that if I tried to change just the Google Maps app to English in its settings, that it actually reverts back if you ever leave the app, such as to change a song on Spotify. So it’s better to just change the whole phone’s language, which luckily doesn’t require a restart on my Android phone.

Conclusion

Phew! So that’s everything I did to become conversationally fluent in Spanish in 1 year as well as the many lessons I learned along the way. Language learning can be difficult and is definitely a lifelong pursuit.

When I was young and naive 3 years ago 🙂 , my Mom and I declared that after a year of Spanish we would dive into learning French, but we have now changed our minds because we know what is required to learn a new language. We’re going to keep learning Spanish, improving our language skills and moving up the proficiency chart. I’m excited to see how that goes 🙂 .

What other languages do you speak? How did you learn them?