¡Bienvenidos amigos! Today I’m going to be talking about my experience learning Spanish and staying with a Spanish-speaking host family for 3 months while in Costa Rica! If you’re worried about going to a country where most people speak a different language, this article is for you!
It can be very daunting to go to a new country without much prior knowledge of the language. If you know you’re studying abroad, I recommend downloading a language learning app like Duolingo to learn common phrases and sentences in your host country.
A little about my history of learning Spanish before this experience: I have taken Spanish from 6th grade through high school, eventually taking AP Spanish senior year. However, that was during Covid so my experience was not the most authentic. Afterward, I took ‘Spanish for Healthcare Professionals at Drexel’. I highly recommend this class, the Spanish I learned proved to be very useful for medical settings. I hope to work with immigrant populations in the future, so it’s very important for me to learn Spanish. Despite the amount of time I’ve learned Spanish, to be completely honest I am not very good at it. I can say this for certain because I’m already bilingual (English and Urdu) and those languages come very naturally to me. With Spanish, I need a minute to think of every sentence, to translate everything I want to say word-by-word from English and to think of the conjugation for verbs. Then I have to recite it once or twice before saying it out loud. Even with all this, my speaking is better than my listening. I can pick up the verbs and the nouns here and there, maybe I’ll understand a few random words, and soon I’m piecing a sentence together myself by translating what I understand into English. So, all things considered, I do not consider myself good at Spanish.Â
Living with a host family that only speaks Spanish was extremely scary at first. How on earth would I express my day-to-day needs? My host mom knows a little bit of English, but not enough that I could speak solely in English. However, I’m honestly very glad for this. I used to maintain the position that you can’t really learn a new language after say, the age of 10. I thought it would be impossible for me to learn Spanish in the way I know Urdu and English. Despite my years in Spanish, I still only knew things mostly by the book. However, living with a host family has strengthened my confidence and Spanish-speaking skills.
I think the most important part now of learning a new language is being in an environment where that language is spoken by the majority of people. I’ve acclimated to Spanish being spoken everywhere, and it’s made me attempt to comprehend things a lot more than I ever would have in the States. It definitely pushes you out of your comfort zone, but I’m so grateful for it. Also, my host mom thankfully speaks slowly to me with simpler sentences. Sometimes I get overwhelmed hearing conversations in Spanish because to me it feels like everyone speaks at the speed of light and I barely understand a single word. However, my host mom’s patience with me as well as her effort speaking in sentences that are easier for me has really helped me practice.
The locals in Costa Rica have also been so amazingly friendly and helpful and talkative, that I barely need to say anything at all for them to start telling me their wonderful tales. There are many times I try to say something and realize there are a lot of basic words I just have no idea of, but they’re words you don’t really ever learn in classes. For example, words and phrases like just, bite, a little bit, whatever, what happened, how was it, how far is it, etc. I feel like I speak a lot more formally than casually because there are so many average words you don’t even realize you use that I don’t know. However, now that I’ve been here for over a month, I can confidently say my Spanish skills have drastically improved. I even say sentences in Spanish without thinking about them in English first!
Reading this, you might still be worried because you don’t know much of your host country’s language at all, unlike my few years with Spanish. I promise, that’s okay too! A few people in my program haven’t spoken a lick of Spanish since middle school, but they’ve still had amazing experiences and have learned a lot from classes and their host families. Again, I suggest starting Duolingo as soon as you know you’ll be studying abroad. Speaking with locals has also strengthened my Spanish knowledge because it reminds me that I need to put myself out there to get the most from this trip in return. I hope I’ve eased some of your worries about learning a new language, good luck and happy learning!!
Below are some pictures of my week!
My friends eating fresh cut pineapple while on a boat on our way to see the bioluminscence in Paquera. This was so cool, we saw water glow!
Views from a local restaurant in Montazuma that overlooked the ocean.
We had to do a lot of hiking and rock climbing in many different steep places to see waterfalls in Montezuma, totally worth it and super fun!
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