5 Tips to Learn Latin American Spanish FASTER and EASIER

So you work with coffee in Latin America and you need to communicate with people in the industry. Perhaps you need to speak with coffee growers. Or office workers at a cooperative, or perhaps customs officials. Or you want to speak to coffee cuppers or exporters at a coffee auction. (Or even Juan Valdez – yes, that’s the “real” Juan Valdez that I’m speaking with in the picture below).

But they all speak Spanish.

Do you?

Even if you don’t, take courage! You can learn. I’m going to share with you 5 tips that have helped me learn languages.

Before I start, I want to mention that I speak 4 languages (with varying degrees of success). I was born in the United States, so my English isn’t so bad (depending on who you ask). I learned Spanish in the States before I moved to Latin America. While living in South America I learned French and Portuguese to participate in a volunteer educational work.

That’s a total of 3 languages that I learned as an adult, all while living in countries where very few people speak that target language. And I was working full time. Two of those languages I learned in my 30s, past the age when learning languages seems easy. Next year I’ll start working on my 5th language.

What helped me to learn Spanish faster?

I have a little system that I call LASTS. It’s a mentality about language learning that creates a skill that lasts throughout your whole life. (And it’s a cool little acronym).

L
A
S
T
S

Let’s start at the beginning, with L for Lists.

Lists

I learned French and Portuguese while working full time and traveling several weeks out of every month. I had little free time and not a lot of energy to devote to language learning.

One of the things that saved my language learning attempts was that I made lists of words I wanted to learn. Every day I scribbled my language learning goals for that day on a brightly colored piece of paper. During the day I‘d whip out my list and take a look at it every time I had a free moment. And even in those short spaces of time I learned a lot.

So what can you do? Make a list of just a few words – we’ll talk about how many in a bit. Write them down in a column in your language and in another column in your target language. Set up the list so you can fold the paper and look at just one language or the other.

During the morning hours you’ll need to look at the list in both languages and try to associate and memorize the words. Do this frequently throughout the morning – it only takes a few minutes to go through the list.

By the afternoon try to test your memory by just looking at one column or the other and remember the word in the other language.

I created all these little lists for the whole week on Sundays, when I had a bit of free time. That way every morning I could easily slip my list in my wallet and I was prepared to make progress.

The next letter in LASTS is A.

Attitude

A is for attitude. As in, cultivate a positive one. Even if you don’t personally know anyone who’s ever learned a foreign language, you can do it!

In some countries, learning 4 or 5 languages is considered part of basic life skills as people communicate with others in tribes or neighboring countries. We all can do it – we just have to develop the skill. So keep a positive attitude and be confident that you can reach your goal.

Simplicity

When learning languages…or, well, almost anything else in life…my advice is to keep it simple. How do you do that with language learning?

Forget the grammar. To get your ideas across to another person you do not need elaborate grammar, flowery words or beautiful sentences. You need basic vocabulary.

Spending hours in absolute boredom memorizing lists of verb conjugations is not going to get you to your goal fast. Focus on the most important words you need to reach your goals. We’ll tackle that in the next part, which is T for Time.

Time

How much time will it take you to learn a new language? Well, that depends on how consistent you are in practicing your new skill. But it also comes down to focusing on the most important words. The goal is to learn those words in the least amount of time possible.

How many words do you need to know to speak a language? Some language experts say you need to know 500 basic words to get your ideas across.

Of course, that’s not going to get you to a high level of fluency. It’s just to be able to communicate. (Which is what your initial goal should be anyway).

How long will it take you to learn 500 words?

Let’s get out a calculator and really think about this. Let’s see if a three month, or 90 day, goal is possible.

Divide 500 words by 90 days and you get 5.5555555. So let’s consider that 6 words, since learning 5 and a half words is a bit tricky.

How long does it take you to memorize 6 words in a day?

Let’s say you have to spend some time deciding on those 6 words, writing them down, and repeating them over and over. Throughout the day, that might take 15 minutes. Just 15 minutes a day.

Of course, learning a language is about more than just memorizing a list of words.

You need to get used to how the language sounds, so you’ll want to listen to some easy recordings every day. You can do this while driving or on transportation, or while you make a meal – it doesn’t have to rob you of time, and it doesn’t have to be time solely dedicated to language learning. 15 minutes is enough.

You’ll also want to read a bit so you get used to reading in your new language. Again, just 15 minutes a day is better than putting it off indefinitely because you’ve programmed an impossible amount of time. You could also add 15 minutes of reading aloud to practice your pronunciation.

So a little bit of reading, a bit of writing, a bit of listening, and a bit of repeating. If you spend one hour most days, spread out in four 15 minute spurts, you can make a lot of progress in 3 months.

The last letter in LASTS is S, and S stands for…

Stupidity is beautiful

Yes, stupidity. You need to embrace stupidity.

This is a hard one – what business person wants to look stupid? However,  when learning a new language we all look and sound a bit stupid. We can’t avoid it. Almost no one can be exposed to a new language and immediately sound good.

So embrace your stupid Spanish look.

Don’t be afraid to stumble around looking for the right phrase. Accept that in the beginning, you’ll pronounce beautiful words in the most horrible way.

The good thing about most Latin Americans is that they’ll love you for trying, which makes for a very forgiving audience. Practice as much as you can, and know that stupidity in Spanish is actually a comfortable place to be.

So there you have it, my tips for learning a language skill that lasts.

LASTS
Lists
Attitude
Simplicity
Time
Stupidity

*******

Are you interested in learning about coffee in Latin America? We have the online course that you need! The Slurp Fast! Crash Course in Latin American Coffee will teach you all you need to know to start working in the coffee industry or to deepen your knowledge of the coffee industry in Latin America. Check out our course syllabus and all you’ll learn with us – just click here.