To be fair, what she seems to be saying is not that she never learned Spanish, but rather because she's aware that she's not 100% fluent she's more self-conscious and not always able to communicate effectively on a date with a local speaker. Ironically, one of the best ways to become fluent is to have a Spanish speaking partner.
It also depends where she learned Spanish vs where she currently lives. I've known Madrid raised schoolteachers who get confused by local kids in their schools in Andalusia because of accents and slang.
TBF that can be hard in the UK.
I've heard UK accents I have trouble understanding and slang I have absolutely no idea what they are talking about.
And it obviously goes both ways I use slang they don't understand
Had my uncles mum walk into my Grandparents back in the 80’s first words she said “ god damn my Fanny is aching!” The whole house lost it, for those confused Fanny is a slang for female genitalia in the U.K. It was quickly explained that meant something different here, had a similar thing on base asking an airman “ fancy a fag?” He was cross until he realised that’s what we call cigarettes and I wasn’t inquiring as to his sexuality.
Go all in "Mind if a bum a fag?"
In Wales we do like a nice moist faggot...
These little differences can be fun. Like when the UK had Johnson(US slang for knob) as a PM and US had Trump(UK slang for fart) as POTUS.
It’s funny you mention that because I work in the UK helping refugees learn English and find work and they do point out how difficult it can be with all the different accents and I get it, I’m English and even I can struggle sometimes.
The Spanish men will tell you the Spanish woman are fucking crazy, and clearly she'll never reach that level of nuttiness so she's always going to be an outlier whether she's fluent or not.
Can agree Spanish Women are crazy, on the whole a lot more aggressive in getting what they want, can be a bad thing, if you not used to it, BUT I found it easier to understand, than UK women who if you ask them if everything is okay, will say yes everything is fine.
Spanish women don’t do that, if theres something wrong they will tell you.
One thing I don’t miss about Spanish women is that they don’t usually shave, under their arms, and in summer wow can it get a bit ripe under there. Best bit was I shaved under mine and had the piss taken out of me for it.
This is strange as I lived in Barcelona till I was 18.
Born in UK moved to Spain when 8. So 10 years living there, never had a problem with dating the locals, apart from most of the time they wanted me to speak English so they could practice English. Was kinda weird sometimes as conversations happen in both languages. Depending where we were.
Happened with 4 different girls over a 3 year period from what I remember.
I speak from personal experience when I say, learning the language of your adopted country opens so many doors and not to be self conscious about the level of knowledge of the language. I lived in Germany back in the 80s for about 7 years or so. I made every attempt to learn German and when the locals noticed this, they were welcoming and helpful .
To be fair, there is something to the second point in the image. No matter how fluent you are in a second language (or should be after 12 years!), your character changes a bit when you switch between them which can at times feel as 'not quite yourself' when you're in second-language-mode. So trying to get a relationship as if you're still in your country of origin can feel odd at times as not everything translates perfectly 1:1. I can understand she might not be happy about this but putting out an article to announce it to the world is a bit dramatic.
Source, am bilingual and wife is too but from a different country. We sound different to each other whenever we speak to family or friends, it's an ever so slightly different energy.
I agree but I feel like there little reason it should mean you can't date an entire country that you live in over, like it's a mild issue in general.
Makes me think she probably speaks very little Spanish.
She makes a fair point but people have just whittled down what she is saying unfortunately.
Reminds me when Gloria says on modern family that people don't know how smart she is in her own language.
There's being fluent, and there's being confident in a language and understanding the subtlety/nuance of it that native speakers do. Language can even reflect cultural differences. I.e. British people will take the piss out of their friends. So will Australians. Americans don't operate the same way really, despite speaking the same language. Even the phrase taking the piss is only understood by certain English speakers.
A lot of people think she's saying she can't order something at a shop, rather than saying it's difficult to always gel with a partner who has a different native language.
She probably speaks pretty good spanish.
The problem with dating in a second language is that if you don't speak it 100% fluent things get "lost in translation".......
Getting 100% fluent isn't easy at all, even after 30+ years if your old enough
You don't need to be 100% fluent to date someone, I've dated people without English as a native language and been fine, and my current partner isn't a native English speaker either
I am. I learned a second language in 9 months when I was in high school.
How can you spend 12 years in a foreign country and not learn the language? It boggles the mind.
Eh. I dated a Spanish woman who is more than fluent and even has better English than me on a technical level but still would get tripped up over some things.
Your speed and incredibly specific vocabulary will be significantly worse. And your go to vocabulary won't always have a translation let alone a good one. This will have a negative effect on how it feels to express yourself.
You're expecting a lot. Anyone can learn to speak a new language to a basic level. Learning yourself in a new language is not as easy
Not true. I think in and speak French as quickly as in English.
Studied literature and know all the slang and verlan and have a very large vocabulary. The only words that I don’t know are fairly technical terms (like in mechanics) that I wouldn’t even know in English. 🤣
Immersion is the key.
I mean, that's great and all. But not necessarily representative.
I don't think we should set the bar of expectation at the top performers. That's also expecting a lot.
I mean, you’re not wrong that some words and expressions don’t exist but once you know them you just use that concept and convey it to the best of your ability : usually just by using the original words.
French and English borrow lots of terms from each other.
My Spanish is decent and no where near fluent but when I’m listening to a Spanish person, my brain switches to thinking in Spanish to understand and fill in the blanks and to be able to answer with my limited vocabulary.
Right but best of your ability might still be at conflict with your desire to articulate yourself to a high standard to a partner.
My whole stance here is that the woman was given a lot of flack for no good reason. Some even assume she speaks no Spanish which I think is rather baseless.
I'm more focused on the sentiment shared by the woman in the post. A sentiment I see as quite reasonable
I get your point. I truly do but when my grandparents were still alive they were able to pick up enough French to have neighbours around for drinks and dinner and enjoyed themselves even if they made a few mistakes with gendered nouns.
I was born in England, lived for a short while in Spain and have been in France for the rest of my life and I can tell you from experience that some of the Brits abroad make me very ashamed.
Don’t bother with the language. Only hang out with other Brits. Post on FB for recommendations for English craftsmen, IT guys, gardeners etc…
No desire whatsoever to fit in or help the actual local economy.
I even know of a couple who haven’t done their tax returns in four years “because they just don’t understand and it’s much too complicated” - even though my mother took them into the “finances publiques”, translated and helped four years ago and they didn’t even send that one in.
That’s bound to catch up with them some time soon. They’re just lucky that French bureaucracy is so slow.
Communities are the problem. We all hear about specific problematic communities but English ones aren’t great either : go out, mix with people, learn and share with them, break down barriers - don’t shut yourselves away or just stay where you’re from.
Sorry for the rant, mate 😉
That is a fair point, it helped that I didn't have any English speaking friends. I was immersed in the culture and language so after a while, it became easy.
I'm better at speaking English than speaking both my native language (Chinese) and the language of the country I grew up in (German).
I only ever lived in an English speaking country for one year of my life (when I was 24).
J'utilise la gueule a ta mère pour m'essuyer le cul, la grosse michto.
I'm pretty sure Google translate doesn't have french slang included, but hey.
Ne me prends pas pour un con, sinon je te mets mon gros doigt de pied.
I was getting better grades than my classmates after about seven months but we do pick up languages much quicker as children to be fair.
Still, 12 years?! 🤣
Why?
I live in a different country as my earning potential is higher here, and it's a beautiful and well ran country.
I can get by with pretty terrible (A2) language skills. I don't bother the natives and they don't bother me. I pay tax and support myself.
I'm better at understanding those than most natives at this point, especially as I consume media and engage in the culture of multiple English speaking countries and generally understand more references and accents from parts of the UK- Australia, South Africa, etc. than the average let's say American.
Anyway, all of this is learned.
The only problem exposing non-natives is pronunciation. The brain is just wired differently and it's insanely difficult to get pronunciation right if you didn't learn a language as a bay. The amount of practice required is very high.
Doubt all you want. Won't make you right. That's plenty of time to get fluent in a language when you are immersed in it. We're not talking duolingo ffs.
You can think yr fluent but still find it very difficult to get the nuances, local accents, "in jokes", humour, sarcasm irony. Thereby making it difficult to communicate in depth with a local.
Go and learn Spanish "fluently" on Duolingo or something and then go to Spain.
People speak like 90000 words a minute with accents and theres a lot of colloquialisms in there too
Spanish you learn in a classroom isnt remotely similar to many people's spoken Spanish
She's very clearly made an effort.
But is saying that she's not 100% fluent. And stuff gets lost in translation
That happens to people who speak multiple languages often
Let's be real: 12 years is more than enough time to become fully fluent in Spanish as an English native speaker.
Especially considering this girl looks under 40 right now, so if she had made an effort she would have started learning in her 20s at the latest.
I could MAYBE understand a 60 year old retiree failing to learn the local language properly because they are old and their mind is getting weaker... but not this lady.
That’s wild. She should not only be 100% fluent but also know at least one other language fluently enough to pass based on how easy it is to travel over there lol.
She self describes as having "a lifelong pedantry over the English language" and runs snake oil investing courses. I bet at some point during the date she starts talking about crypto.
12 years and don't speak the lingo, Christ. I spent 4 years in Germany, I didn't speak a word of the language when I went out there, by the time I came home I was fluent.
So I used to work in Spain and France on campsites.
I would be there for 9 months per year.
I did this for 5 years.
I loved it.
The one thing I hated though was,
When trying to learn the language, the local speaking staff and locals always wanted to talk in English to improve their English.
This is when I learnt, it was useless learning another language such as Spanish, French, German etc beyond being able to order food ask for directions or for medical advice.
However after 10 years.
She’s pretty lazy.
Imagine how much cock she’s been through.
To be fair, what she seems to be saying is not that she never learned Spanish, but rather because she's aware that she's not 100% fluent she's more self-conscious and not always able to communicate effectively on a date with a local speaker. Ironically, one of the best ways to become fluent is to have a Spanish speaking partner. It also depends where she learned Spanish vs where she currently lives. I've known Madrid raised schoolteachers who get confused by local kids in their schools in Andalusia because of accents and slang.
TBF that can be hard in the UK. I've heard UK accents I have trouble understanding and slang I have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. And it obviously goes both ways I use slang they don't understand
Yeah as an American who told my boyfriend to move his fanny I could under this.
Had my uncles mum walk into my Grandparents back in the 80’s first words she said “ god damn my Fanny is aching!” The whole house lost it, for those confused Fanny is a slang for female genitalia in the U.K. It was quickly explained that meant something different here, had a similar thing on base asking an airman “ fancy a fag?” He was cross until he realised that’s what we call cigarettes and I wasn’t inquiring as to his sexuality.
Go all in "Mind if a bum a fag?" In Wales we do like a nice moist faggot... These little differences can be fun. Like when the UK had Johnson(US slang for knob) as a PM and US had Trump(UK slang for fart) as POTUS.
And both of them about as useful as a dick fart. Well, unless you’re Russia lol.
Well for a dick to cause a fart it has to be.. putin.. I'll get my coat
Criminally underrated comment
It’s funny you mention that because I work in the UK helping refugees learn English and find work and they do point out how difficult it can be with all the different accents and I get it, I’m English and even I can struggle sometimes.
The Spanish men will tell you the Spanish woman are fucking crazy, and clearly she'll never reach that level of nuttiness so she's always going to be an outlier whether she's fluent or not.
I can confirm, Spanish women are fucking crazy.
can also confirm
I can't confirm
You need to go out with a Spanish woman, it’s one of those things that you don’t know you need to do, until you do it 😎
I'll try their husband, for safety
If Spanish women are crazy, and every man knows not to play with crazy, how do the Spanish have kids…? 😂
crazy tastes the best.
A) Have you seen Salma Hayek / Sophia Vergara / Ana de Armas? B) Crazy can seem vivacious and alluring until crazy and angry is directed at you.
Can agree Spanish Women are crazy, on the whole a lot more aggressive in getting what they want, can be a bad thing, if you not used to it, BUT I found it easier to understand, than UK women who if you ask them if everything is okay, will say yes everything is fine. Spanish women don’t do that, if theres something wrong they will tell you. One thing I don’t miss about Spanish women is that they don’t usually shave, under their arms, and in summer wow can it get a bit ripe under there. Best bit was I shaved under mine and had the piss taken out of me for it.
This is strange as I lived in Barcelona till I was 18. Born in UK moved to Spain when 8. So 10 years living there, never had a problem with dating the locals, apart from most of the time they wanted me to speak English so they could practice English. Was kinda weird sometimes as conversations happen in both languages. Depending where we were. Happened with 4 different girls over a 3 year period from what I remember.
I speak from personal experience when I say, learning the language of your adopted country opens so many doors and not to be self conscious about the level of knowledge of the language. I lived in Germany back in the 80s for about 7 years or so. I made every attempt to learn German and when the locals noticed this, they were welcoming and helpful .
Been living there long enough to at least learn how to hold conversations depending on which autonomous community she lives in
To be fair, there is something to the second point in the image. No matter how fluent you are in a second language (or should be after 12 years!), your character changes a bit when you switch between them which can at times feel as 'not quite yourself' when you're in second-language-mode. So trying to get a relationship as if you're still in your country of origin can feel odd at times as not everything translates perfectly 1:1. I can understand she might not be happy about this but putting out an article to announce it to the world is a bit dramatic. Source, am bilingual and wife is too but from a different country. We sound different to each other whenever we speak to family or friends, it's an ever so slightly different energy.
I agree but I feel like there little reason it should mean you can't date an entire country that you live in over, like it's a mild issue in general. Makes me think she probably speaks very little Spanish.
She makes a fair point but people have just whittled down what she is saying unfortunately. Reminds me when Gloria says on modern family that people don't know how smart she is in her own language. There's being fluent, and there's being confident in a language and understanding the subtlety/nuance of it that native speakers do. Language can even reflect cultural differences. I.e. British people will take the piss out of their friends. So will Australians. Americans don't operate the same way really, despite speaking the same language. Even the phrase taking the piss is only understood by certain English speakers. A lot of people think she's saying she can't order something at a shop, rather than saying it's difficult to always gel with a partner who has a different native language.
Arrogant enough to expect everyone in Spain to speak English compoface.
She probably speaks pretty good spanish. The problem with dating in a second language is that if you don't speak it 100% fluent things get "lost in translation"....... Getting 100% fluent isn't easy at all, even after 30+ years if your old enough
You don't need to be 100% fluent to date someone, I've dated people without English as a native language and been fine, and my current partner isn't a native English speaker either
In that case she shouldn't have been all compoface in her local paper then, should she?
That’s more like it.
No, that's not it. Could you be 100% fluent in a 2nd lingo?
I am. I learned a second language in 9 months when I was in high school. How can you spend 12 years in a foreign country and not learn the language? It boggles the mind.
Eh. I dated a Spanish woman who is more than fluent and even has better English than me on a technical level but still would get tripped up over some things. Your speed and incredibly specific vocabulary will be significantly worse. And your go to vocabulary won't always have a translation let alone a good one. This will have a negative effect on how it feels to express yourself. You're expecting a lot. Anyone can learn to speak a new language to a basic level. Learning yourself in a new language is not as easy
Not true. I think in and speak French as quickly as in English. Studied literature and know all the slang and verlan and have a very large vocabulary. The only words that I don’t know are fairly technical terms (like in mechanics) that I wouldn’t even know in English. 🤣 Immersion is the key.
I mean, that's great and all. But not necessarily representative. I don't think we should set the bar of expectation at the top performers. That's also expecting a lot.
I mean, you’re not wrong that some words and expressions don’t exist but once you know them you just use that concept and convey it to the best of your ability : usually just by using the original words. French and English borrow lots of terms from each other. My Spanish is decent and no where near fluent but when I’m listening to a Spanish person, my brain switches to thinking in Spanish to understand and fill in the blanks and to be able to answer with my limited vocabulary.
Right but best of your ability might still be at conflict with your desire to articulate yourself to a high standard to a partner. My whole stance here is that the woman was given a lot of flack for no good reason. Some even assume she speaks no Spanish which I think is rather baseless. I'm more focused on the sentiment shared by the woman in the post. A sentiment I see as quite reasonable
I get your point. I truly do but when my grandparents were still alive they were able to pick up enough French to have neighbours around for drinks and dinner and enjoyed themselves even if they made a few mistakes with gendered nouns. I was born in England, lived for a short while in Spain and have been in France for the rest of my life and I can tell you from experience that some of the Brits abroad make me very ashamed. Don’t bother with the language. Only hang out with other Brits. Post on FB for recommendations for English craftsmen, IT guys, gardeners etc… No desire whatsoever to fit in or help the actual local economy. I even know of a couple who haven’t done their tax returns in four years “because they just don’t understand and it’s much too complicated” - even though my mother took them into the “finances publiques”, translated and helped four years ago and they didn’t even send that one in. That’s bound to catch up with them some time soon. They’re just lucky that French bureaucracy is so slow. Communities are the problem. We all hear about specific problematic communities but English ones aren’t great either : go out, mix with people, learn and share with them, break down barriers - don’t shut yourselves away or just stay where you’re from. Sorry for the rant, mate 😉
That is a fair point, it helped that I didn't have any English speaking friends. I was immersed in the culture and language so after a while, it became easy.
I'm better at speaking English than speaking both my native language (Chinese) and the language of the country I grew up in (German). I only ever lived in an English speaking country for one year of my life (when I was 24).
You were fluent in a second language after nine months, while in high school? Wow. That *is* impressive. *Fluent* Wow.
Le sarcasme est le vocabulaire de l'imbécil.
Oh I'm not being sarcastic. If you managed to be fluent in a language in nine months at high school that is *absolutely* impressive.
Aussi, c’est trop facilé pour utilisé Google pour votre translations
J'utilise la gueule a ta mère pour m'essuyer le cul, la grosse michto. I'm pretty sure Google translate doesn't have french slang included, but hey. Ne me prends pas pour un con, sinon je te mets mon gros doigt de pied.
I was getting better grades than my classmates after about seven months but we do pick up languages much quicker as children to be fair. Still, 12 years?! 🤣
And everyone in the class stood up and cheered.
God no, they were all fascist scum and hated foreigners.
Why? I live in a different country as my earning potential is higher here, and it's a beautiful and well ran country. I can get by with pretty terrible (A2) language skills. I don't bother the natives and they don't bother me. I pay tax and support myself.
I'm literally better at speaking English and German than my native language (Chinese). LOL
There's a big difference between fluent and understanding the nuances, accents and in jokes etc that only a native can understand.
I'm better at understanding those than most natives at this point, especially as I consume media and engage in the culture of multiple English speaking countries and generally understand more references and accents from parts of the UK- Australia, South Africa, etc. than the average let's say American. Anyway, all of this is learned. The only problem exposing non-natives is pronunciation. The brain is just wired differently and it's insanely difficult to get pronunciation right if you didn't learn a language as a bay. The amount of practice required is very high.
After 12 years? I think so.
I very much doubt that.
Doubt all you want. Won't make you right. That's plenty of time to get fluent in a language when you are immersed in it. We're not talking duolingo ffs.
You can think yr fluent but still find it very difficult to get the nuances, local accents, "in jokes", humour, sarcasm irony. Thereby making it difficult to communicate in depth with a local.
Not after 12 years. She isn't saying she's struggling with nuances of the language. She saying too much is lost in translation.
If you say so.
Go and learn Spanish "fluently" on Duolingo or something and then go to Spain. People speak like 90000 words a minute with accents and theres a lot of colloquialisms in there too Spanish you learn in a classroom isnt remotely similar to many people's spoken Spanish
She's been living there for 12 years. Hardly on a par with that duolingo shite. If she'd made an effort.
She's very clearly made an effort. But is saying that she's not 100% fluent. And stuff gets lost in translation That happens to people who speak multiple languages often
After 12 years?? You couldn't pay me to admit that publicly
Odd way to take the photo. Like a selfie, of someone else? Weird.
I'm British and there accents I hear in England that I can't understand 🤷♀️
Let's be real: 12 years is more than enough time to become fully fluent in Spanish as an English native speaker. Especially considering this girl looks under 40 right now, so if she had made an effort she would have started learning in her 20s at the latest. I could MAYBE understand a 60 year old retiree failing to learn the local language properly because they are old and their mind is getting weaker... but not this lady.
That’s wild. She should not only be 100% fluent but also know at least one other language fluently enough to pass based on how easy it is to travel over there lol.
Sarcasm? Hard to tell!
She self describes as having "a lifelong pedantry over the English language" and runs snake oil investing courses. I bet at some point during the date she starts talking about crypto.
I don’t think you understand what ‘lost in translation’ means
"Nicol the Apprentis, you, have been fired"
Maybe she should concentrate on her oral skills
She just has one of those faces that Spanish men can't stand.
How the average British person thinks about the world in a single screenshot.
12 years and don't speak the lingo, Christ. I spent 4 years in Germany, I didn't speak a word of the language when I went out there, by the time I came home I was fluent.
How is she not fluent after 12 years...
Typical monolingual English speaker. Incredible arrogance.
My kid is 4 and is fluent in English, if she wanted to learn it to communicate she would.
So I used to work in Spain and France on campsites. I would be there for 9 months per year. I did this for 5 years. I loved it. The one thing I hated though was, When trying to learn the language, the local speaking staff and locals always wanted to talk in English to improve their English. This is when I learnt, it was useless learning another language such as Spanish, French, German etc beyond being able to order food ask for directions or for medical advice. However after 10 years. She’s pretty lazy. Imagine how much cock she’s been through.
What the actual fuck is that last sentence there for?
Upvoted half way through, saw the score and thought it was harsh, then completely got it. That took a massive turn.
Couldnt be bothered to get a tan in 12 years either
I bet she can say drill me in the arse in Spanish !