You will begin to improve your local Spanish within days, if not hours, of stepping into a new country. As you experience your new local language be aware that 4 basic categories exist where you should focus your learning.
Local Spanish differences fall into these 4 categories:
- Vocabulary
- Grammar
- Pronunciation
- Intonation
Vocabulary is perhaps the most time consuming. Each Spanish country’s vocabulary will change considerably. A simple word in one country may be an extremely crude term to avoid in another. Or a basic everyday word such as KITE requires you to learn pandorga, chichigua, chiringa, papalote, papelote, volantín, barrilete and cometa (as a quick tip, learn COMETA first, it’s the most universal).
Grammar variations exist across countries but are not difficult to learn. In fact, after a few weeks of local exposure you will be copying common local sentence structures, verb conjugations and similar stuff. At first these differences will sound strange compared to the book grammar you learn but you will quickly adjust to them. Please don’t spend much time fretting over these local differences. Your time is better spent out in the street conversing.
With pronunciation, again there’s really not a lot to cover. Each country’s accent will be different from the basic Spanish you study. Use my 8 tips to speak like a native guidelines to focus on these local differences. Again, do not put a ton of time into copying a certain accent. You will automatically absorb it without much effort, simply by talking to locals.
In my opinion, the hardest of the four areas is to consistently mimic the intonation of a language. This requires lots and lots of practice (at least for me). I would leave this for the last of the four categories to perfect. It is tied closely to the local pronunciation so will require you to first understand that before moving to intonation differences.
The best advice I can share is to just jump in. The more you are involved with people, culture and the language, the sooner you will master the local language. Have fun!
“A different language is a different vision of life.” – Federico Fellini
“Languages are the only thing worth knowing even poorly.” -Kato Lombi
Check out these other Learning Spanish Slang articles.