How much of a problem is the language barrier in your daily life as an expat?

[LuckyLuke]

it never fails to amaze me how many long time expats in BA have such limited spanish. i’ve been here 5 years, starting with virtually no knowledge of the language, and here is a list of things i have done in spanish:
-negotiated rental contracts
-fallen in love
-received a dressing down from a government inspector
-sufficiently charmed the government inspector as to avoid fines
-pitched and closed 100kusd of investment in a restaurant (local argentine funder)
-broken hearts
-interviewed on national TV
-managed obreros in two different worksites

this is all without taking classes or using duolingo, but with a heavy emphasis on making argentine friends and refusing to hang out with other gringos. y’all who have limited spanish just need to go out more and actually have conversations with people who aren’t your maid or the guy in the carnecería!

I met an autistic boy last summer in San Rafael, who learned conversational English just by watching movies, reading Spanish subtitles and associating the two.

Easily learning a language has some correlation to brain plasticity, which varies by age, lifestyle and the degree of continual exposure to novel external stimuli.

If it came easy to you...kudos. But it's not for lack of willpower that others may struggle.

Personally, as the only native English speaker in the house, it's my responsibility to teach my kids English and keep my spouse's English sharp. I try to speak Spanish only outside the house and the interactions are few and brief. Were I single and hanging out with local friends, no doubt my Spanish would be better too.

 

[jantango]

If there is a problem here it is that the locals speak really fast. So understanding is sometimes impossible...sometimes.

I had a phone conversation with a Movistar rep that lasted longer than necessary, simply because he talked fast, and then asked him to confirm what I thought he said. He never slowed down, but at least I got a reduction in my phone bill and international calls.

 

[mc kenna]

When you feel confident about your Spanish, go ahead and listen to a soccer game on the radio lol that'll give you a clue how far you are from being really fluent
For those who speak English as a second language it would be , listening to a cattle auction on the radio in ...... nebraska lol
Or in my case , move to them hills in Kentucky, that'll show you, then and only then, you'll know how big the US is and no matter how fluent you think you are in 'murican, some parts of it do have their own lingo, bless your heart lol

 

[Ronnie Hotdogs]

When you feel confident about your Spanish, go ahead and listen to a soccer game on the radio lol that'll give you a clue how far you are from being really fluent
For those who speak English as a second language it would be , listening to a cattle auction on the radio in ...... nebraska lol
Or in my case , move to them hills in Kentucky, that'll show you, then and only then, you'll know how big the US is and no matter how fluent you think you are in 'murican, some parts of it do have their own lingo, bless your heart lol

I'm definitely not that fluent. Part of the problem is they use all sorts of words that are quite particular to football as well as talking very very fast.

 

[Ries]

I think in the average US city, definitely, (maybe not so much rural areas) you encounter, daily, a dozen or more different idiomas of english.
I had a roommate long ago from Trinidad. His english was completely incomprehensible to me for a few weeks. We had an employee for a while from New Zealand, and it took me months to fully understand her. I live near Canada, and have been trying to learn Canadian for decades. Often the pronunciation of common words is so completely different that it took sometime to speak basic Canadian.
I run into people in my mainly agricultural area, who are from Central America, but who only speak pidgin spanish, being native Awakatek or Nahwat speakers. Their english is, needless to say, interesting.
But I also have commonly tried to understand Massachusetts accents, or New Orleans, of South Carolina, or Minnesota, or the UP, or Maine, or Texas, or Valley Girl
Daily in the US, you accept the fact that there are many novel ways to pronounce and many versions of "grammar" in american english.
It gives you a more flexible attitude about language, whereas many portenos will fail to understand a very minor mispronounciation of the right word.

 

[Ronnie Hotdogs]

I think in the average US city, definitely, (maybe not so much rural areas) you encounter, daily, a dozen or more different idiomas of english.
I had a roommate long ago from Trinidad. His english was completely incomprehensible to me for a few weeks. We had an employee for a while from New Zealand, and it took me months to fully understand her. I live near Canada, and have been trying to learn Canadian for decades. Often the pronunciation of common words is so completely different that it took sometime to speak basic Canadian.
I run into people in my mainly agricultural area, who are from Central America, but who only speak pidgin spanish, being native Awakatek or Nahwat speakers. Their english is, needless to say, interesting.
But I also have commonly tried to understand Massachusetts accents, or New Orleans, of South Carolina, or Minnesota, or the UP, or Maine, or Texas, or Valley Girl
Daily in the US, you accept the fact that there are many novel ways to pronounce and many versions of "grammar" in american english.
It gives you a more flexible attitude about language, whereas many portenos will fail to understand a very minor mispronounciation of the right word.

Maybe your perception of how bad you are mangling the language doesn’t match reality.

 

[Ries]

Maybe your perception of how bad you are mangling the language doesn’t match reality.

No, I usually apoligize in advance for how badly I am going to mangle castellano. I am quite aware of my limitations. And my inability to pronounce Rodriquez Pena exactly the way the colectivo driver expects to hear it. What I am saying is that many people here have heard a word pronounced one way, and one way only, for all their life, while in the USA, I have learned over 70 years to understand a half different pronunciations of the same word as a matter of course, and to expect to often have to puzzle out an unusual word usage from context, because it happens so often. The USA is much more polyglot in its adapations of english, its inclusion of loan words, and its rapid acceptance of non-words into the vocabulary.
There is one way to pronounce "Buquebus", for example, and only one correct one. If it was an english word, there would be five.

 

[FrankPintor]

I think in the average US city, definitely, (maybe not so much rural areas) you encounter, daily, a dozen or more different idiomas of english.
I had a roommate long ago from Trinidad. His english was completely incomprehensible to me for a few weeks.

It used to be a thing for the upper-middle class in Venezuela to send their children to learn English on Trinidad

 

[mageesa]

No, I usually apoligize in advance for how badly I am going to mangle castellano. I am quite aware of my limitations. And my inability to pronounce Rodriquez Pena exactly the way the colectivo driver expects to hear it. What I am saying is that many people here have heard a word pronounced one way, and one way only, for all their life, while in the USA, I have learned over 70 years to understand a half different pronunciations of the same word as a matter of course, and to expect to often have to puzzle out an unusual word usage from context, because it happens so often. The USA is much more polyglot in its adapations of english, its inclusion of loan words, and its rapid acceptance of non-words into the vocabulary.
There is one way to pronounce "Buquebus", for example, and only one correct one. If it was an english word, there would be five.

This is exactly what I was talking about. What passes for proper pronunciation of English is a mile wide, other languages/places not so much.

I went to Japan in the early 90s and it was super extreme in terms of 'correct'. I sat with these guys in a bar who wanted to teach me to say 'beer' correctly, and nothing I pronounced would pass muster. I could not hear the difference. I would have to point at phrases in a phrase book if I needed to communicate, it was impossible. I think it's different now, from what I hear.

On the other hand I went to China for a month with a friend, and with our bad 2 months of 'do it yourself' practice we could buy things, ask directions (and hope they looked in a direction or pointed when they answered), whatever. If we read out of the Chinese phrase book, they usually understood, even though the pronunciation absolutely had to be a disaster. My friend learned from some free online site, I learned from Pimsleur tapes, so we would argue about how some pronunications, only to realize he'd learned one regional accent vs. the regional accent of Pimsleur. (One used an L sound vs an R sound). But people mostly understood our reeeeeeeally mangled Chinese, or were very patient, which seemed like a miracle.

 

[nikad]

This is exactly what I was talking about. What passes for proper pronunciation of English is a mile wide, other languages/places not so much.

I went to Japan in the early 90s and it was super extreme in terms of 'correct'. I sat with these guys in a bar who wanted to teach me to say 'beer' correctly, and nothing I pronounced would pass muster. I could not hear the difference. I would have to point at phrases in a phrase book if I needed to communicate, it was impossible. I think it's different now, from what I hear.

On the other hand I went to China for a month with a friend, and with our bad 2 months of 'do it yourself' practice we could buy things, ask directions (and hope they looked in a direction or pointed when they answered), whatever. If we read out of the Chinese phrase book, they usually understood, even though the pronunciation absolutely had to be a disaster. My friend learned from some free online site, I learned from Pimsleur tapes, so we would argue about how some pronunications, only to realize he'd learned one regional accent vs. the regional accent of Pimsleur. (One used an L sound vs an R sound). But people mostly understood our reeeeeeeally mangled Chinese, or were very patient, which seemed like a miracle.

Afaik Japanese would not accept any other language other than their own. They refuse to learn and speak English and they truly believe that you should learn their language to communicate with them and not the other way around, as opposed to Chinese and Taiwanese for example.