Welcome to a Multicultural World

Coming from a what is known as a Third World Country where Spanish is the official language, I never could understand why my mom wanted me to learn another language. Everything started when I was 4 years old with French. Then, it continued with English when I was 11 years old. However, at that time I wasn’t so in love with English as I was with French. I used to dream about going to Paris and visiting the Louvre and The Eiffel Tower.

At the end of my undergraduate studies, I realized how important it was to learn English. Initially it because I needed to learn English in order to read books. I still remember  going to my first Internship with my huge English-Spanish dictionary. After seeing my struggle with English, my brother bought a package of private classes for the both of us. As a consequence, I started pushing myself to learn my third language. 

 It took a lot of time: 5 years in total, and even now I am still learning. However, everything has paid off since I took my first English class. After spending 3 months on my first trip to US I became fluent. I came back to my country and got my first great job where an important requirement was to speak, read, and write English. Latter, the company sent me to Brazil for training for 1 week. I arrived to Sao Paulo, without any knowledge of Portuguese, but I was pretty confident in my language skills. However, I couldn’t understand many words from the first day of training because everything was in Portuguese. The second day, I found somebody who could speak English. I saw the light! After that moment, my training and the possibilities of learning changed.  Days later, I came back to my country and started reading manuals, contacting people by email in the US for analytical support, and also speaking with them directly   by phone.

Two years later, I traveled to Quebec, Canada and I lived there for two years. During those years, my French (which I learned during childhood) came back and now I am fluent in 3 languages again. And guess what?  I never  want to lose my French skills again!

Today, looking back I can see why my mom made me study French and then pushed me to learn English. Now I love different cultures, languages, and traveling!  It is fun for me to understand some languages by using the ones I know. For instance, I use my French and Spanish skills when I want to understand Italian or Portuguese. You should see how fun it is to speak with my Italian cousin, answering in Spanish or French. It's hilarious!

Conclusions? Sure! Don’t stop learning languages! Keep pushing yourself to continue learning and expanding your vocabulary. Use the knowledge from your own language to learn another one. Trust me, you will be surprised and happy with the results.

Welcome to a multicultural world.

By Evelyn Musslewhite, Spanish Instructor with The Language School

Interesting Facts About The Spanish Language

After the Latin, the greatest influence on the Spanish language is Arabic.

Spanish is a Romance language

The Spanish is spoken in Europe and America, but also in Africa (Morocco and Equatorial Guinea, which is the official language), in Asia (the Philippines) and Oceania (Easter Island)

Spanish is a phonetic language, most of the words are pronounced the way they are spelled, except for some new foreign words that keep their original spelling.

Due to demographical reasons, the percentage of the population worldwide that speaks Spanish as native speaker is growing, while the English and Chinese speaker population is decreasing.

Because English and Spanish share many words of Latin origin, you will already be able to recognize more than 3,000 Spanish words!

In 2030, 7.5% of the world population will be speaking Spanish (a total of 535 million people), a figure that stands out above the Russian (2.2%), French (1.4%) and German (1.2%). By then, just Chinese will have more native speakers than spanish.

In the next three or four generations, the 10% of the world population will understand Spanish.

In 2050, the United States will be the number one country with more Spanish speakers.

Around 18 millions people are studying Spanish as a foreign language.

In writing, the most repeated words in the Spanish language are the ‘e’ and ‘r’.

«Esternocleidooccipitomastoideo», «anticonstitucionalmente», «electroencefalografista» y «otorrinolaringológicamente» are the longest words in the Spanish language.

Art in singular is masculine (arte moderno, arte abstracto) but in plural is feminine (artes plásticas, malas artes).

Cinco (five) has five letters. It is the only number in the spanish language that has as many letters as the number meaning.

The only number without the letters “o” and “e” is Mil (1.000).

The only word with three letters, three vowels and three syllables is “Oía”.

One of the major difficulties of learning Spanish is the distinction between “ser” and “estar” and “with” and “for”.

One of the most difficult sounds to pronunce in Spanish is the rolled “r”. Try to say this tonge twister “El perro de San Roque no tiene rabo, porque Ramón Ramírez se lo ha robado”(Saint Roch’s dog has no tail, because Ramón Ramírez has stolen it)