ABOUT JARED

 
Suffering a typical 9-5 existence, my foray into lunch-hour Spanish shook up my mundane life.  I quit my job, stopped by briefly to school, and then left the US…for 14 years.  Early stumblings in real-world Spanish taught me that a cola isn’t just a soft drink, bicho doesn’t always mean a bug, and boludo may be heartfelt or middle-finger felt.  Nine countries, three startups, two bestsellers and a Puerto Rican wife later, I’m still confounded by how many Spanish words exist for “panties.”  My quest is to discover all those words.
 
My experience with Spanish began in 1993.  After more than a year of boring lunch hours, often alone, I heard that the place where I worked offered daily language classes, during lunch, for just about free.  I immediately signed up.  Five years and an MBA later I moved to South America.  Having lived in Maryland from five years old to twenty-four, this move launched a twist in my life I’d never imagined.  Since then, I have lived in four Spanish speaking countries, traveled extensively, written at the moment four books and launched this website.  All thanks to being bored at lunch.
 
Several years ago, after a 2-month layover in Mexico, I arrived in Chile.  At the time my Spanish was semi-functional, slow and, according to my then recently-acquired Chilean friends, somewhat Mexican in nature.  Now, my Spanish is a hodgepodge of vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar pulled from several countries, which may only be described as, well, a hodgepodge.
 
My books and now this website are a consequence of my early bumblings in Spanish, repeated bouts with culture shock, and confusions over the correct words for popcorn, gasoline, pen, bus, underwear, traffic jam and drinking straw.  One of the strangest things for me to accept during my learning Spanish was why the hell I’d spent years in classes, and yet a large portion of the words I’d learned didn’t do me a damn bit of good in the real world.  Since then I’ve spent a significant part of my time learning about these differences.  It still amazes me that depending on where you are chiringa, barrilete, papalote, cometa or volantín all mean the same thing (they all mean kite).  Or that bicho in some places can turn a fast food employee blush-red (my sincere apologies to the young Puerto Rican lady), while in others it’s a mere bug.
 
For me this is a never-ending process of discovery.  I hope Speaking Latino helps you discover too. Jared@SpeakingLatino.com