Apr
19
Challenge your assumptions
Today’s post is by guest blogger Graham Stephen. Graham is from Scotland but he lives in Wales and he is a fellow Spanish-language enthusiast like myself. We “met” each other in the Coffee Break Spanish’s online listeners’ forum. You can read more of Graham’s writings about the Spanish language on his co-authored blog, English-Spanish Exchange. Thanks, Graham!
Recently when I was looking for volunteers to provide voice recordings for a study of regional accents I received a few replies from people kindly declining and saying that they would not be suitable for the project as they ‘did not have an accent’ - funny how it is always other people from other places (and never ourselves) who do speak with an accent. Of course, everything is relative.
There are lots of different motivations for studying a new language: business, travel, vacations, relationships, fun, intellectual challenge, even health (recent Canadian research suggests that being bilingual can delay the onset of dementia by over four years), to name a few. But whatever your particular reason for learning Spanish happens to be, one thing that it will give you is an ideal opportunity to challenge your assumptions, to view things from a different perspective.

Next time you want to gripe about the current cost of living, consider that it took more than a day’s salary to buy a chicken 500 years ago. Yeah, I know, you’ve got more pressing matters to think about but it is kind of cool to get new insight on the present by considering the past.
I used to be a “lo siento” junkie when I first came to Spain. Lo siento when I wanted to leave the
Here’s Part 2 of my chat with
Tikal ruins photo from