Learning the Language
Learning the culture will mean learning at least some of the language. You cannot become part of the local community unless you speak some Spanish. Nicaragua has surprisingly few people that speak English. There are an infinite amount of books and CDs on learning Spanish in every bookstore where you live and at Amazon.com. I won’t try to list them all or even recommend any since it is easy to research on the Internet. Before moving here, take some courses at your local community college.
When you get here, try out several Spanish teachers before agreeing to a long-term agreement. Many of our friends found they did not like how the teacher taught or they did not speak clearly. People disagree with me but I believe a good language teacher is bi-lingual. How can they teach if they have never learned a second language? Some things must be explained in the native language to be understood. Other people believe total immersion is the best route. You will have to decide. It will be a lot of work if you plan to learn the language extensively but remember, there are eight year old children that speak three languages. After all this time, we actually still enjoy the classes.
Buy the reference books before coming here since they are not common and are expensive here. By reference, I mean the Spanish/English dictionaries, the common verb form books, basic Spanish grammar, picture dictionaries, etc. There are many “side by side” books which we found especially helpful such as grammar i.e. one page would explain the English grammar rule and the opposite page would explain the Spanish equivalent. It is even harder to learn Spanish grammar when you do not know the rules of English grammar. Picture dictionaries are very useful since it usually has the English and Spanish word for every item and grouped by function. For example, there would be a classroom page and pictures of everything you would find in a typical classroom. They are very handy when going to a hardware store, for example.
We like Spanish/English dictionaries and you will use them extensively in your language classes. We wore out about three of them already. Buy durable books that last and ensure they have large enough print to read easily. We keep about four of them around the home and one in the vehicle. We also bought an larger hardback Spanish dictionary which we use when we want a detailed explanation. The common paperback dictionaries are smaller because they have less words and shorter descriptions.
The Internet has many sites that will perform translations for you by just typing in the English or Spanish text. This comes in handy when you receive something in Spanish and you need to translate it. All of them will translate to/from English and almost every other common language. Be careful, though, since the translators only do a fair job of translation then you will need to correct it.
My wife and I only spoke English our entire lives but we took several basic Spanish classes in the states before moving here. We still take Spanish lessons twice a week and we are nowhere near fluency. We have friends that have been here many years, work extensively with the locals and still can only speak Spanish in the present tense. The ones that have made the most progress appear to be those that took extensive Spanish courses before coming here or lived with a Spanish-speaking family. If you have the time, living with a Nica family is a good way to learn the language. Actually, they say the fastest way to learn is to marry a local but my wife would not agree.
The person that stated that Spanish was an easy language to learn was obviously not as old as us and did not grow up where English was the only language. According to several books, Nicaragua has the least number of people of the Latin American countries that speak any English not including the east coast where a mixture of English, Spanish and a native Indian language is spoken. With the number of hours we spent in class and doing homework we could have become nuclear physicists or rocket scientists by now.
We are amazed by how few expatriates here speak Spanish fluently. There are a few that communicate well or adequately to get the ideas across. Our major problem is that when we hear something, we must translate it to its English equivalent, think of the response, translate it to Spanish then speak it. And that’s assuming we remember what the original question was. My wife is much better at comprehending what people are saying while I still just hear mumbo-jumbo. My strength is that I understand the rules of English and Spanish grammar better so I can form more correct responses assuming the Spanish speaker can wait two minutes while I formulate the response. So we do make a better team then tackling it individually.
We have been told it is usually 5-7 years of immersion before we begin thinking in Spanish instead of translating everything which brings up the original issue again. You can not literally translate Spanish to English which is probably true for most languages. For example, we say “I am hungry” while they say “I have hunger”. This may seem minor but it means you can not just translate the words and get the same meaning for the sentence. Please remember, I am not a linguist and these are merely my perceptions on learning another language. I now have much more respect for people that speak multiple languages. I shudder to think how many times I heard someone in the states make derogatory remarks about a Latino speaking halting English. I now wish I had that much mastery of the second language.
People will tell you Spanish is easy to learn because so many words are the same or similar but that is what makes it difficult because you tend to fabricate non-existent words by adding an “o’ to the end or just pronouncing it differently. People will also tell you that in Spanish you always pronounce the letters the same unlike English where vowels are pronounced in many different sounds depending on the word. That may generally be true but in Spanish the “h’ is silent but the “g” has the “h” sound when preceding “e” or “i” while “j” normally has the “h” sound. And don’t forget every language has a lot of foreign words in it and then the rules do not apply.
You can’t do anything about the nouns, you just must learn the new words. It’s the verbs that are the killers. In English there are basically three forms of verbs; present tense, the past tense and the past participle. I drink a beer, yesterday I drank a beer and by tomorrow I will have drunk another beer. All of the other forms simply add the same old auxiliary verbs. I will drink, I would drink, I have drunk, I had drunk, etc, etc. A few oddities like I drink, we drink, they drink but she drinks, adding the “s’ in third person singular.
But in Spanish there are 15 forms of each verb plus the past participle and gerund. Within these 15 forms the verb has six styles to indicate who is the speaker or originator of the action. In English we would say I have, you have, we have, she has, they have while in Spanish you say yo tengo, tu tienes (informal you), nosotros tenemos, ella tiene and ellos tienen. So each verb has up to 90 spellings for a single verb but there are rules so you do not have to memorize everything. Add on top of that, that adjectives must match in gender and number and that nouns may be masculine or feminine with corresponding articles, and you have quite a lot to learn.
Anyway, don’t let me scare you away. When we arrived in Nicaragua, we thought we would be fluent within a year and learning Spanish has made us forget some English. It is fun learning and you have the advantage of knowing at least one language already. Remember, all of the little children here have learned Spanish successfully and the Nicaraguan school system for the majority of people is not very good.
A website that shows the many schools in Nicaragua available to learn Spanish including homestays.
Click here for the website
When you get here, try out several Spanish teachers before agreeing to a long-term agreement. Many of our friends found they did not like how the teacher taught or they did not speak clearly. People disagree with me but I believe a good language teacher is bi-lingual. How can they teach if they have never learned a second language? Some things must be explained in the native language to be understood. Other people believe total immersion is the best route. You will have to decide. It will be a lot of work if you plan to learn the language extensively but remember, there are eight year old children that speak three languages. After all this time, we actually still enjoy the classes.
Buy the reference books before coming here since they are not common and are expensive here. By reference, I mean the Spanish/English dictionaries, the common verb form books, basic Spanish grammar, picture dictionaries, etc. There are many “side by side” books which we found especially helpful such as grammar i.e. one page would explain the English grammar rule and the opposite page would explain the Spanish equivalent. It is even harder to learn Spanish grammar when you do not know the rules of English grammar. Picture dictionaries are very useful since it usually has the English and Spanish word for every item and grouped by function. For example, there would be a classroom page and pictures of everything you would find in a typical classroom. They are very handy when going to a hardware store, for example.
We like Spanish/English dictionaries and you will use them extensively in your language classes. We wore out about three of them already. Buy durable books that last and ensure they have large enough print to read easily. We keep about four of them around the home and one in the vehicle. We also bought an larger hardback Spanish dictionary which we use when we want a detailed explanation. The common paperback dictionaries are smaller because they have less words and shorter descriptions.
The Internet has many sites that will perform translations for you by just typing in the English or Spanish text. This comes in handy when you receive something in Spanish and you need to translate it. All of them will translate to/from English and almost every other common language. Be careful, though, since the translators only do a fair job of translation then you will need to correct it.
My wife and I only spoke English our entire lives but we took several basic Spanish classes in the states before moving here. We still take Spanish lessons twice a week and we are nowhere near fluency. We have friends that have been here many years, work extensively with the locals and still can only speak Spanish in the present tense. The ones that have made the most progress appear to be those that took extensive Spanish courses before coming here or lived with a Spanish-speaking family. If you have the time, living with a Nica family is a good way to learn the language. Actually, they say the fastest way to learn is to marry a local but my wife would not agree.
The person that stated that Spanish was an easy language to learn was obviously not as old as us and did not grow up where English was the only language. According to several books, Nicaragua has the least number of people of the Latin American countries that speak any English not including the east coast where a mixture of English, Spanish and a native Indian language is spoken. With the number of hours we spent in class and doing homework we could have become nuclear physicists or rocket scientists by now.
We are amazed by how few expatriates here speak Spanish fluently. There are a few that communicate well or adequately to get the ideas across. Our major problem is that when we hear something, we must translate it to its English equivalent, think of the response, translate it to Spanish then speak it. And that’s assuming we remember what the original question was. My wife is much better at comprehending what people are saying while I still just hear mumbo-jumbo. My strength is that I understand the rules of English and Spanish grammar better so I can form more correct responses assuming the Spanish speaker can wait two minutes while I formulate the response. So we do make a better team then tackling it individually.
We have been told it is usually 5-7 years of immersion before we begin thinking in Spanish instead of translating everything which brings up the original issue again. You can not literally translate Spanish to English which is probably true for most languages. For example, we say “I am hungry” while they say “I have hunger”. This may seem minor but it means you can not just translate the words and get the same meaning for the sentence. Please remember, I am not a linguist and these are merely my perceptions on learning another language. I now have much more respect for people that speak multiple languages. I shudder to think how many times I heard someone in the states make derogatory remarks about a Latino speaking halting English. I now wish I had that much mastery of the second language.
People will tell you Spanish is easy to learn because so many words are the same or similar but that is what makes it difficult because you tend to fabricate non-existent words by adding an “o’ to the end or just pronouncing it differently. People will also tell you that in Spanish you always pronounce the letters the same unlike English where vowels are pronounced in many different sounds depending on the word. That may generally be true but in Spanish the “h’ is silent but the “g” has the “h” sound when preceding “e” or “i” while “j” normally has the “h” sound. And don’t forget every language has a lot of foreign words in it and then the rules do not apply.
You can’t do anything about the nouns, you just must learn the new words. It’s the verbs that are the killers. In English there are basically three forms of verbs; present tense, the past tense and the past participle. I drink a beer, yesterday I drank a beer and by tomorrow I will have drunk another beer. All of the other forms simply add the same old auxiliary verbs. I will drink, I would drink, I have drunk, I had drunk, etc, etc. A few oddities like I drink, we drink, they drink but she drinks, adding the “s’ in third person singular.
But in Spanish there are 15 forms of each verb plus the past participle and gerund. Within these 15 forms the verb has six styles to indicate who is the speaker or originator of the action. In English we would say I have, you have, we have, she has, they have while in Spanish you say yo tengo, tu tienes (informal you), nosotros tenemos, ella tiene and ellos tienen. So each verb has up to 90 spellings for a single verb but there are rules so you do not have to memorize everything. Add on top of that, that adjectives must match in gender and number and that nouns may be masculine or feminine with corresponding articles, and you have quite a lot to learn.
Anyway, don’t let me scare you away. When we arrived in Nicaragua, we thought we would be fluent within a year and learning Spanish has made us forget some English. It is fun learning and you have the advantage of knowing at least one language already. Remember, all of the little children here have learned Spanish successfully and the Nicaraguan school system for the majority of people is not very good.
A website that shows the many schools in Nicaragua available to learn Spanish including homestays.
Click here for the website
