My Spanish Language Journey

Hello world, I am writing about my Spanish Language journey today. Strap in for a wild ride because to be honest, my Spanish language journey is the thing that I attribute to the path I’m on right now in 2025, and it’s also over a decade and a half long- ewww that makes me feel old! It’s a crazy thing to think that all of this started BY ACCIDENT.

You heard me right (or read me right?!?), my whole journey of making languages my ENTIRE personality started by accident on a random Friday when I was 6. Now, this isn’t me in any way saying starting languages by accident is a bad thing: it is just not what people expect from a language nerd (I now wear this badge with pride because, like, can you talk to 3.3 BILLION PEOPLE?). I should learn to tangent less but everyone loves a tangent in a chaotic stream-of-consciousness-style blog. Anyway, back to the point, you’re eyes aren’t deceiving you. I started Spanish when I was 6. My parents worked shifts and wanted to give me a change from “After-school Club” some days… enter Spanish Club. On a Friday after school. I LOVED this club, loads of my friends went, including 2 of my current best friends from home (hi KB and KB). It was educational, I learnt a lot. I still remember having to construct my dream sandwich in Spanish and playing “¿Qué hora es señor Lobo?”. It was a great foundation for not just Spanish but for language learning generally. I want to give a big shout out to Louise, who was my first ever Spanish teacher, for this opportunity, and another to my parents for putting me in the club in the first place. It meant I didn’t grow up with the same consensus and opinion of languages that everybody else in the UK tends to be exposed to.

So I guess we’ve established I did Spanish club. This continued until I finished first school at the age of 9, which was when I went to middle school. Don’t fight me! The school system where I live is different than the usual UK one! So, in middle school in year 5 and year 6 we studied Spanish before switching to French for year 7 and 8. I loved Spanish in school. Now you might be asking why I loved Spanish so much and the honest answer is I knew more than everyone else (with the exception of the other Spanish club alumni). So, essentially, it was a massive ego boost for 9 year old me. I remember one teacher being irritated because we’d finish the lesson too fast when we already knew farm animals. It’s good to know that even at 9 years old I enjoyed academic validation.

Unfortunately, then came the 2 years of French (keep an eye out for my French Language Journey coming to your screen soon). I loved French, but as my fellow language learners will know, but 12 year old me didn’t, you have to keep up a language or you will forget some stuff. So, when I eventually moved to high school at 13 years old and continued Spanish (and French), it was a bit rusty, although still good, as by this point I had realised I did have a “language brain” after my experience with French. I am using the term “language brain” loosely here, as I personally believe a vast majority of people would be multilingual if they put in the effort to learn another language. However, my understanding of grammar and memorising of vocabulary is quick. Not to sound conceited, but everyone has to be good at something; it just transpires that I’m good at talking, but my family could have told you that when I was a one-year-old! I continued Spanish in high school, I was one of 20 people in a year group of over 400 people to take 2 languages at GCSE, and then one of about 3 or 4 people to take 2 languages at A-level. I was fortunate enough to go on two exchanges to Zaragoza in Spain with my school, which were incredible experiences to practice the language, and I am still in touch with both of my exchange partners now, 5 and 6 years later! I have to say A-level languages are not to be looked down on. I essentially studied: politics, sociology, literature, economics, geography, history, psychology, and business, all in a completely different language (AND I CHOSE TO DO IT TWICE….. THE INSANITY!) One of my favourite things I did during A-level, Spanish was my IRP (Independent Research Project) which contributed to my A-level speaking exam. Most people found it a drag, as did I at the time, but I chose the topic of Femicides in Mexico and if anything was being done to stop them. This was a harrowing topic to choose at 16, but I do have to say it was an eye-opener, and changed how I look at things even today, after studying further into masculinities, inequality, politics, and social issues. So, as you can imagine, my level of Spanish was pretty decent at this point! To no one’s surprise, I decided to take Spanish and French at university. However, to EVERYONE’S SURPRISE (INCLUDING MYSELF), I decided to throw in intensive ab initio Chinese! (I’ll touch more on this in my Chinese Language Journey post, and it was also mentioned in my Where I’ve lived and why- China edition post.)

Now getting to University was wild. First year was full of all the partying and academic impostor syndrome that everybody loves to call “freshers”. Maybe I could have focused more on Uni in first year, but who knows! I did spin all my plates pretty successfully, but Spanish was on the back burner as it was the language I had the most confidence in. Second year was a shambles for me; nothing bad happened, but I had so many modules (I was oversubscribed) that I wasn’t really given a fair chance in any of them from the start. Second year also contained the fun time of planning my International Placement Year. I chose to go to Beijing, China, to study intensive Chinese from September to January. Followed by applying to a South and Central American placement company to get the placement I’m currently doing in a hotel in Costa Rica from the start of February to June! Hello from my bed in Costa Rica! This experience has been by far the best experience for my Spanish. I hate to bring up immersion because everybody is always spouting about it, but it is the BEST way to learn a language as long as you’re confident enough to be wrong! These 5 months of speaking Spanish 80% of the time has been insane! My brain honestly struggles to find English words sometimes, but it’s all in the name of greatness and fluency. If I’m being honest, it’s all in the name of extreme bragging rights when I’m with the monolinguals in my life (Shout-out monolinguals, I love you all!). I have learnt so many new words and phrases since being here in Costa Rica, a lot of them are local tico slang, and some of them are definitely NOT BLOG FRIENDLY. I will miss this place so much! I am, however, excited to not be doing an unpaid internship for 48 hours a week and to travel this summer!

I will definitely be using immersion as an excuse for any and all future travels because in my head a holiday and a string of language lessons can reach similar price ranges!

Overall, I would say my Spanish language learning journey has been one of relative success. Although there have been peaks and troughs when I put it on the back burner, I can communicate pretty fluently about almost everything I need to talk about! “Almost” is being used because I’m keeping myself humble, and you don’t know what you can’t talk about until you’re in the moment and have no clue what to say! I will never be able to explain how happy I am that Louise set up a Spanish Club at my school or that my mum and dad decided to put me in it because who knows what random uni course I’d be studying now if I hadn’t discovered my love of languages!

I will keep the blog updated with my amazing journey, and my travels, but for now I’m signing off as I want to watch Ally and G’s latest YouTube video before I meet my friend to go for our tea! (or dinner for all those wronguns who say dinner.)

If you got all the way here to what I can only describe as my BIGGEST RAMBLE YET! Thank you so much, and congrats! Even though you’ve probably only wasted 20 minutes to learn something about some random girl on the internet!