Picture: Me with my Mexican book club

Is speaking Spanish necessary for living in Mexico? The short answer is that people do live in Mexico happily without it.  

It's also irrefutable that you’ll have a richer experience and much less stress with some fluency in the language. According to the national census, only 5-12% of Mexicans speak English. Without Spanish, every errand, shopping trip and household task that takes you out in the world comes to be something you have to gear up for. Life without Spanish is frequently tiring, frustrating and more expensive.

The one comment you’ll see repeated over and over on forums on Mexico is “I wish I’d started learning Spanish before I left”. Once in Mexico, expats realize their mistake and think of all the time they could have been learning it in spite of a pretty obvious fact: to eliminate much of the stress of living in any foreign country, you need to speak the language. It also offers numerous other benefits to your brain and even can change how you see your world.

“I don’t have anyone to practice with” is frequently given as an excuse for not learning. But it’s a total myth that you need to find native speakers to practice with for maximum benefit. As my favorite online Spanish teacher explains here, native Spanish speakers aren’t Cervantes, and students need to stop making native speakers their North Star.  

The average native speaker speaks at B-1 level, has an average vocabulary of 300 words and likely poor syntax and imperfect grammar. A native speaker offers no guarantee of learning proper, educated Spanish. The people I know who learned Spanish “from the street” rue the day they thought it was a good idea. Their Spanish, while sometimes sounding fluid, is that of a common day laborer. Uneducated Spanish is particularly notable in writing (in your texts).

What type of Mexicans do you want to develop relationships with - housekeepers, restaurant workers, and real estate people who want to sell to you, or would you prefer friendships with people more like those you hang out with at home? Even as a beginner, an attempt at proper Spanish is duly noted by Mexicans. They can tell if you’ve picked it up randomly or took it seriously. Seriously makes a better impression. 

Breaking bad habits is much harder than learning proper grammar from the start. If you don’t have access to educated native speakers, speaking with educated non-native speakers who are also learning Spanish has many advantages. They are easier to understand. They’ll understand you more easily.  That makes the practice far more reinforcing - and you need all the reinforcing you can get to keep going as a beginner. Any speaking helps you gain the confidence necessary to reach the next level.

Anyone learning Spanish as a second-language is a good prospect for practice, not just English native speakers learning Spanish. One of my practice partners in Spain practices English with a young man from India. English is a second language to both of them. My friend tells me the Indian’s English is far easier for him to understand than mine (probably more grammatically correct, too).

In choosing teachers, non-native teachers understand exactly why you’re making the mistakes you’re making. Pick your teacher with whom you connect and have a methodology that works for you rather than using their native language as the top criteria. You don't learn a second language to speak it, you speak a second language to learn it. It really doesn’t matter to whom you’re speaking.

The important thing as a beginner is that you talk. Take advantage of any and all opportunities to speak before you come to Mexico.  MeetUps are a great place to start. MeetUps take place all over the US and reflect every imaginable interest. In most cities you’ll find at least one Spanish Meetup group or Spanish practice group.  

MeetUp practice groups with other Spanish students help you get comfortable making errors. Without that year of getting over my timidity in MeetUps with other non-native speakers, I would have been totally overwhelmed once I arrived in Mexico - the deep end of the pool. 

At first, it may feel odd speaking Spanish with other native English speakers like yourself but soon you’ll like that you’re all in the same boat, facing the same challenges - unlike the native Spanish speakers that drop in to the meetings occasionally and only have to show up to look good.

My Meet Up experience

My favorite Spanish Meetup before I moved to Mexico was at 9:30 am on Tuesdays and Thursdays, making it more likely to attract older and retired people who (from my experience) tend to be more serious about learning.

We met at the Gypsy House Café, a fabulously funky hookah bar in Denver. The Turkish woman who owned the place only took cash. We waited with gleeful anticipation to see if our coffee would arrive in a chalice or an onion soup bowl. Prices on the chalkboard were estimations.

We hung out for hours in our own little Parisian cafe, pontificating from overstuffed sofas in our beginner Spanish on politics, environmentalism or existentialism. Regardless of ability we shared a passion for the language. We could debate for half an hour on whether the subjunctive tense always followed the Spanish word for "if." 

Side conversations in French, Italian, German and Portuguese invariably broke out, as the group tended to attract polyglots. Others had traveled to Spanish-speaking countries, fallen in love with those countries and sought to maintain a tenuous love affair through practicing with the group.

For our group, the new language sometimes became a veil, a way to try out opinions, insights and even jokes we’d never try with a native speaker. The laughter we shared trying to remember the correct verb or just making things up (aka giving it our best shot) made even the most mundane topic entertaining. Sometimes there were 25 people, sometimes a companionable six, but always a good practice that we hated leaving.

Guessing words incorrectly led to some memorable moments. Once I inadvertently asked the patriarch of the group, a multilingual man in his late seventies with Parkinson's, if he liked to dress in leather (apparently there’s a specific verb for that in Spanish), causing us both to laugh ourselves to utter helplessness.  When you meet at least once a week for months, you can’t help but develop friendships.

These practices will be invaluable preparation for moving to Mexico. You learn, like Charlemagne, to take a deep breath, gather your verbs and go forth and conquer.  

About the author:

Kerry Baker is the author of a four books, including If I Only Had a Place, a guide to renting in Mexico, The Mexico Solution: Saving your money, sanity and quality of life by living in Mexico part-time, an entertaining how to guide to setting up a min-life in Mexico, and The Lazy Expat: Healthy Recipes That Translate in Mexico, a cookbook for travelers, snowbirds and expats who want to maintain a healthy diet in Mexico (spoiler: You must cook.)