We asked intrepid reporter Lucy Tomlinson to find out, by taking a Spanish class…

Course: Absolute Beginners Spanish
Venue: Elite Language Institute

In the third week of my absolute beginners Spanish class at the Elite Language Institute, I read the following paragraph, which previously would have made no sense to me at all:

El espanol, o castellano, es lengua oficial en Espana. en muchos paises de America y en Guinea Ecutorial. Tambien se habla en la isla de Puerto Rico (donde es oficial junto con el Ingles) y en otras zonas de los Estados Unidos. El numero  de personas que hablan espanol  en el mundo es des unos 400 millones. El espanol es, por tanto, la tercera lengua mas hablada del planeta, despues del chino mandarin y del ingles, y la segunda lengua mas internacional.

Lost (and found) in translation
However, after just a couple of weeks of Spanish lessons I can now tentatively translate this previously incomprehensible paragraph as:

Spanish (or Castilian) is the official language of Spain, many American countries and Equatorial Guinea. It is also spoken in Puerto Rico (where it is the joint official language with English) and in other areas of the United States. The number of people who speak Spanish in the world is 400 million. Spanish is therefore the third most spoken language on the planet, after Mandarin and English, and is the second most international language.

Traveller’s tales
Pretty remarkable right? Actually, this isn’t down to any innate language skills on my part, but the technique of teaching at the Elite Language Institute. Teacher Raquel takes us through the passage, gently tweaking our accents and correcting the odd grammatical slip – but the most important thing she helps us grasp is that so much of language learning is based on realising that there are many more similarities than differences between Spanish and English.

Look again at that statement I so impressively translated above, and the reason Spanish language courses are one of the most popular adult education courses in this country becomes clear.

A quick survey of fellow classmates reveals many have been bitten by the travel bug, from the adventurous lady planning to spend a couple of years roving from Argentina to Venezuela and back again, to those who fancy spending a weekend in Madrid sampling the sunshine. There are those planning to move to Spain permanently and who wish to ease the transition, and then there is the gentleman who simply wants to  read aloud the work of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda in something approximating a decent South American Spanish accent (Raquel helpfully points out alternative options between Latin American and Iberian Spanish pronunciations).

World class
So a large part of the course’s appeal is the fact that, with so many people worldwide speaking this beautiful and surprisingly accessible language, learning Spanish makes a large part of the world pretty much your oyster. Or, as I can now confidently say, el mundo es su ostra.
 

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